Where are our Caribbean writers and their writing?
In the Caribbean, many Universities and Colleges teach project management but there are many failed projects. There are also many support institutions for business but many businesses fail. The area of life skills training is becoming increasingly critical as many are living below their full potential. Google and other searches on the internet for project management issues in the Caribbean often yield newspaper articles that may just describe what is happening, and do not always delve into the reasons for problems being experienced.
Government web sites, sites of international agencies, and a few others give some information on project management and business, but some is not in the form that the average man can access and understand. At present much of our information in these areas is from sources outside of the Caribbean, often written by persons from outside of the Caribbean whose focus is on their countries, not ours.
Information required
The information I am hoping to marshal on the Internet- the main vehicle for information- must be in a form that the ordinary man can understand, appreciate and act on. Our best practices, our experiences, etc. must become common, shared knowledge. As we seek to protect what we have, at least the fact that we did it should be known to help us to refute later claims by other persons that they invented/created it.
Too many of our people have died with knowledge of doing so many things and that information was never recorded. Part of the problem is a lack of trust and part a lack of opportunity. I was told of someone who prepares herbs for cancer patients and has had some success in dealing with cancer, but he is not willing to share what he is doing even with his family. When he dies, it is lost. It may make a difference if he could be assured how to protect and monetize his discovery/knowledge.
In the Caribbean, there are valuable writings available on project management, life skills and business. Often these sources of information are known in the individual countries but not across the Caribbean. We have just formed a group “Business, Project Management and Life Skills Writers of the Caribbean” to address this issue. This group is seeking to identify writings that originate in the Caribbean on Business, Project Management and Life Skills and to establish a network of such writers who are willing to work to ensure that the Caribbean develops in these areas by providing regional information that can easily be accessed and understood. Discussions will also be held on relevant topics.
Writings can focus on:
- Informing persons of important and topical issues in business and project management and ways to resolve them
- Informing persons of best practices and lessons learnt in project management so that they can adopt the good lessons/ best practices and avoid repeating the bad experiences.
- Informing persons of issues that they need to take into consideration as they try to reposition themselves to keep abreast of the ever changing environment
- Exposing persons to support systems that exist for businesses/persons in the Caribbean
- Exposing persons to relevant training / mentoring/coaching that can address their concerns/problem areas or just assist them to move to another level in their business and/or career
Requirements
There is a concerned about plagiarism and other issues re copyright and so it in not intended that entire papers/writings be lodged on the group’s page but that suitable summaries be made and links provided to contributors’/writers’ websites. To these ends we are requesting that persons interested in being on this data base submit brief personal bios of not more than 50 words. Work that they want referenced can be summarized again in not more than 50 words and a link established. For bodies of information e.g. libraries, they can give a brief summary- not more than 70 words and give a link to that information.
Discussions can be started on the any relevant topic given the area or on the way forward. We have to give our students the option of easily accessible Caribbean Writings and more in-depth information about what is happened with our projects as we try to respond to an even changing environment. We have to give our small and micro entrepreneurs easy access to Caribbean Success Stories and how to relative to the local environment.
The group will issue a disclaimer to the effect that a reference to someone’s work is not necessarily a recommendation of that work.
The Caribbean Writers Market Place
We have also produced a website www.caribbeanwritersmarketplace.com
Our vision is to provide a high ranking on-line market place where Caribbean writers on business, project management and life skills can make their products and coaching services available.
Our mission is to achieve our vision by:
- Having a high ranking website
- Hanging out where the target groups hang out
- Having very strong marketing for the writers