Practising and aspiring local app developers will soon get the opportunity to take their creativity and business acumen to another level, thanks to a new initiative by the Barbados Coalition of Service Industries (BCSI) called the Industry Genius Mobile App Competition, which would help showcase their talent to a global audience.

During a Genius Lab session yesterday evening at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, participants met to share and discuss their respective ideas and to gain insight on how best market their product.

Programme Officer at the BCSI, Adrian Reid, said about the project, ???We have a culture of young, bright aspiring app developers and many times they are doing the apps just as a hobby and not really having a market or real use for the apps. On the other side, you have businesses who are actually looking to use apps in their business models to improve their hypotheses???to deal with their customers better???to build community around their brands.

???So, we have these two groups who are operating but don???t know each other or talk to each other. [Therefore] we thought that this platform Industry Genius Mobile App Competition would be a great bridge to link the private sector and these young app developers together. Companies can actually share with developers what their real problems are and they can use their talents to develop real apps to solve real problems,??? he explained.

Mr. Reid further noted that the response has been overwhelming. ???We have all been surprised that we have so much talent in the ICT space, especially with apps in particular???so now we have companies that are very keen and eager to find other local talent that has been hiding in the woodwork,??? he surmised.

Meanwhile, President of the Board of Directors of BCSI, George Thomas, told participants that Barbados was generating higher qualified persons at a greater rate than the present economy could accommodate.

He said: ??????You are going to have to be able to market your services outside of Barbados in addition to inside of Barbados??? and that is why we are here to prepare you and service providers current and future to compete in an international market.???

Launched in August, the Industry Genius Mobile App Competition will climax on Thursday, November 13, at the Hilton Barbados. There, finalists will make their final pitches before the judges and the eventual winning team will walk away with a trip to CeBiT, the world???s largest computer exposition, which takes place in Germany next year.

theresa.blackman@barbados.gov.bb

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