By DENISE MAYCOCK
Tribune Freeport Reporter
dmaycock@tribunemedia.net
CARNIVAL Corporation opened its technology centre in Freeport on Friday, putting Grand Bahama on the way to becoming an offshore technology hub.
Minister of State for Grand Bahama Senator Kwasi Thompson attended the soft opening of Carnival’s Experience Configuration Centre in the Freeport Ship Services building on Peel Street.
He commended the company for its confidence in establishing an operation of such “significance and magnitude” in Grand Bahama.
Eight Bahamians have been initially hired as IT/Electronic Technicians.
“I am excited to be here today, to celebrate the future of Grand Bahama as the industry, innovation and technology hub for the Bahamas and the Caribbean. This is our future,” said Minister Thompson.
Carnival Corporation is launching a new interactive technological device to significantly enhance passengers experience on board their cruise ships.
The Ocean Medallion project is the first of its kind wearable device that enables a personal digital concierge by bridging the physical and digital worlds to deliver a new level of personalized services not previously considered possible.
“We are very proud to play an important role in this project, said Mr Thompson. With this type of interactive technology not only does it change the cruise industry but for Grand Bahama it diversifies our economy.”
According to the minister, the Bahamians hired will be trained to assist with programming and installing the ocean medillion systems onboard Carnival’s fleet of ships.
He said because the project is ongoing, employment will be available for qualified Bahamians at a steady pace.
John Padgett, chief experience and innovation officer, said all the technical equipment that comes from around the world – all the hardware, switches, computing devices, sensors – will be sent to the Excellence Configuration Centre in Freeport, to be configured and staged to go onto their ships at the shipyard in Freeport, as well as other shipyards around the world.
“So the work we are doing here takes the work off the ships and improves our overall conversion of ships in our dry dock cycle,” he explained.
Minister Thompson believes that Grand Bahama is positioned as the perfect fit for industry and innovation where industry connects with technology.
He stressed that the government is focused on the development, promotion, and advancement of GB as an offshore technology hub.
“The message our government wishes to articulate to the innovation team at Carnival and all of the technology companies who are a part of this project, Hugh Systique Corp, you are truly welcome and we believe this is only the beginning of an exciting and prosperous partnership,” stated Mr Thompson.
He indicated that government would like to lend support and incentivise Tech entrepreneurs to establish businesses in the Bahamas, similar to that of Carnival Corporation.
“As we seek to rebrand Grand Bahama for industry and technology we will launch the GB Tech Summit next week,” he said.
At the summit, he noted that there will be some of the best and brightest minds in technology will be there, including Bahamians who are making big strides in the technology worldwide particularly in Silicon Valley.
The minister is optimistic that Grand Bahama can potentially become the Silicon Valley of the Caribbean.
He added that government hopes to empower Grand Bahama through foreign direct investments, particularly those investors with the need for IT engineers, technicians, specialist and project managers to monitor and management facilitation of their projects.
Also attending the opening were Carnival Corporation executive Marcelo Freire, Director Global IT PMO, Guest Experience and Innovation, and Grand Bahama Port Authority president Ian Rolle.
Comments
OldFort2012 7 years, 2 months ago
An excellent idea. The Minister is right: this COULD be our future. But for this kind of project to succeed it needs more help than just a low or no tax regime. Software developers from around the world need to be attracted and retained. They have families. Those families need SECURE and adequate accommodation, a low crime environment and good private schooling. All things that GB lacks. The Minister and the Government now need to focus on helping to provide those. That will be a great challenge.
banker 7 years, 2 months ago
Unfortunately, the technology is not emergent technology. Technicians are the lowest on the ladder of technology. We need engineers, programmers and scientists on the ground. Those are the people who have the theoretical understanding to make new products.
ThisIsOurs 7 years, 2 months ago
"Software developers from around the world need to be attracted and retained."
Software developers from rychair need to be incentivized. There's nothing fancy about software development, it's the ability to follow patterns, the ability to think and the ability to use those two things to solve a problem. We act like its impossible for Bahamians in the thousands to write code
A friend of mine told me about his uncle who is a serial gambler, he says his uncle tracks winning numbers, knows what number fall when on what date and a bunch of other statistics I don't remember. I said to him, he's "reverse engineering the code!". We een dumb, we just have been taught what we good for.
OldFort2012 7 years, 2 months ago
In no way did I mean to suggest that Bahamians are dumb or that they cannot be trained or taught. However, here is my personal dilemma: I could employ 2 people to write code for me today. Salary $50k. No one applied. So I hired a company in the US and am monitoring their daily progress online. Not only do I not have the time to teach someone to code, I do not have the detailed knowledge. I know what to do with the code but not how to teach someone to produce it. I presume there are very few people (if any) who could teach coding to an adequate standard. We definitely need structured help in that department and my comment above regarded those "teachers". No one would be happier than me if we had hundreds or thousands qualified software engineers available in the Bahamas. I would save a fortune.
ThisIsOurs 7 years, 2 months ago
Ok understood, but I don't believe that view is accurate.
You may not have gotten response you expected for a number of reasons
1.persons were comfortable working for their current employer,
2.they may not be skilled in the specific language you asked for but with an intense bootcamp course they could quickly come up to speed. I guess you'd weigh your time constraint, the cost of training and employing Bahamian programmers for a minimum of two years in which time they would produce other products vs paying the US firm for 6 months along with maintenance costs. In the long run maintenance is generally more expensive than development.
3.The method you used to advertise the position may not have reached your intended target.
I assure you there are many programmers in the Bahamas. Also COB and BTVI have been teaching programming courses for decades.
The "dumb" comment wasn't targeted at you, it's a general statement, I hear this sentiment all over, from educated people too, oh Bahamians can't do this or that, ohh the great US, India and Singapore etc etc. We can do anything, at any age, sometimes all it takes is for someone to open our mind to the possibility that it "can" be done.
banker 7 years, 2 months ago
I work in a shop that not only trades equities and derivatives, but we have robo-traders (autonomous technical analysis) for arbitrage and trading opportunities. To that end, we have a dev shop (development shop) and just from the conversations going on, I doubt that a bootcamp would be enough to create an expert coder.
I talk to these lads, because I am highly interested in this stuff. As one of the lead programmers explained to me, you need a few years under your belt to become a proficient programmer that can "program down to the bare metal" whatever that means. He talks about functional programming in Haskell, recursion, weighted moving average algorithms, data structure optimization, polymorphic inheritance and other stuff.
I started reading about in getting into programming and looked at online Coursera - when you can take courses for free. As our boss explains, it is another literacy. So the other day I took a look at the whiteboard in our dev shop. I copied down this into my diary: Small-depth Multilinear Formula Lower Bounds for Iterated Matrix Multiplication. Then they had stuff like acyclic graph relationship and polynomial IMM and that's when I gave up trying to understand what was written on the whiteboard.
I think that serious programming needs serious education in maths, information theory, data science theory and a bunch of stuff that they don't teach you at coding boot camp. The geeks in my office call most programmers kiddie scripters. I think that it is like any other field. You just can't take a course and expect to be an expert. The way that tech is moving today, you need to have a deep understanding and experience of the theory.
ThisIsOurs 7 years ago
You're assuming that someone needs to write an application for your shop. Not all applications require in depth multi linear formula lower bounds for iterated matrix multiplication. You started at the wrong end:) for example if you were writing an app fir guardian radio, you're not using any of that stuff. But they will pay you for it. Granted if you added iterated matrix multiplication somewhere in there they might pay you more.
When I say a boot camp, I'm talking about 4-8 weeks to get someone somewhere between beginner and intermediate. It is possible. They won't test your coworkers, but they'll be able to apply knowledge to some business function.
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