That's if you believe attendees at 'Kingston Beta', a networking event for Web and mobile professionals, held at the Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston for the first time on Wednesday.

Technology shift happening

They believe technological shift is already happening in Jamaica.

"We have the beginnings of a 'Silicon Caribbean!'" said event organiser Ingrid Riley, chief executive officer of Dutchpot Interactive, a digital marketing solutions company.

With the passing of the e-Transactions Act, increasing Internet access and Digicel preparing to package discounted laptops with its WiMax service, due to launch mid-year, the business climate is now fertile for like-minded entrepreneurs, contends Riley.

One of several young companies represented at the event, Hondigo is a soon-to-launch 'intelligent advertising' service that sends classified advertisements via SMS text messaging to cellular phones.

Fee-paying subscribers to Hondigo will be able to specify exactly what they are looking to buy or advertise.

With almost every Jamaican owning a cellular phone, mobile technology is now the most efficient way to deliver information to consumers, maintains Hondigo CEO Wilbert Lyn Jr.

"It's got be mobile.  It's the way for information technology services to develop over here because people need to be flexible and they already own a mobile.  You only have to look at how mobile television with Digicel has come here before it has with the Web," said Lyn.

Bits & Bytes, like Lyn's company, was founded last year with its CEO Damion Daley, a freelance software programmer for Cable & Wireless Jamaica.

Both companies allow people to pay for their services via telephone credit.

Daley is currently negotiating with the cellular companies to provide a service that will allow customers to buy tickets using their cellular phones, receive the ticket, also via SMS, and then be able to forward the ticket to others - each ticket tracked by an individual code.

Patrons will then punch in their code on a touch screen upon arriving at the event, ruling out the need to reach a ticket outlet.  Electronic systems that verify tickets are already being used locally at events, such as Good Times held the previous weekend at the Chinese Benevolent Society in St. Andrew, but these still require a physical ticket.

Joining line makes no sense

"Joining a line just doesn't make sense," with the availability of his technology, believes Daley.

"I envisage a time," he said pointing out the window at the Pegasus, "where the cellphone can be used to pay for anything, like the car park down below where you can pay for your ticket before arriving.  The technology is already moving that way."

Sandor Panton established the website directory Top5Jamaica.com in 1998, which last year attracted approximately 250,000 unique visitors each month, with 70 per cent of its advertising revenue coming from North America.

A guest speaker at Kingston Beta, Panton was held up by Riley as exemplifying the potential for online entrepreneurship in Jamaica

Employed in Canada to where he migrated in 2001, he was motivated to become self-employed back in Jamaica in 2005, after attending an Internet conference in Orlando the year before where he met freelance Internet professionals earning as much as US$100,000 per month.

"You don't need nuttin' more to motivate you, trust me!"

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