WIRELESS TECHNOLOGY SUMMIT TO TARGET BUSINESS DECISION-MAKERS

Excerpt from the JIS Online Newsletter - February 18, 2005

The 2005 Regional Summit on Wireless Technology is targeting business decision makers rather than Information Technology (IT) personnel.

Speaking at a press briefing, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Central Information Technology Office (CITO), Michael duQuesnay said, “The April 14 summit is a conference for business people who are faced with the challenge of making decisions about IT increasingly on a day-to-day basis, and who are faced with making decisions on behalf of their organisations, based on recommendations that are coming to them from technology people within their organizations.”

Some 600 people from across the region and Jamaica have been invited to the summit, with the theme: ‘Demystifying the Technology for Decision Makers’. The conference will be held at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel in Kingston.

The CEO said that sometimes decision makers did not understand what those recommendations really meant, because they did not fundamentally understand the technologies. "That is not a criticism of the business executive, it's just a fact of life. They come from a background of finance or marketing or operations and are not IT people, so it is an attempt to educate these people in some of the critical technology areas and that is why we are using the phrase demystifying as a theme for the conference," he pointed out.

Expounding on the areas to be explored at the summit, Mr. duQuesnay said, "the structure of the event is based around spending a short time talking about the technologies and explaining them, hopefully in understandable English, and then the bulk of the time will be spent talking about the business of wireless".

"The first chunk of that will talk about business applications, the opportunities that exist, the emerging new business opportunities that wireless creates, as well as the opportunities for businesses to take advantage of wireless, to cut costs or reduce their overheads by applying this technology. We will also be addressing security and the other implementation issues," he added. The second portion of the business aspect of the summit and the note on which the conference will end, involves a plenary session where some successful implementations of wireless technology will be highlighted.

He pointed out that the sponsors represented three groups: traditional telecommunication providers (Digicel); traditional ICT providers (Microsoft, Fujitsu, IBM); and the financial services industry (National Commercial Bank), as well as partners and sister agency, Spectrum Management Authority.

In her remarks, Sandy Jones of Fujitsu said the company was committed to using technology to improve communication and the way business was done. "We believe that mobile and wireless technologies is the future of how we will work and conduct business," she said.

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