Day 1 - Open Forum - Trinidad and Tobago Internet Governance Forum 2025

4:44PM Jan 30, 2025

Speakers:

Ajmal Nazir

Jacqueline Morris

Nigel Cassimire

Tracy Hackshaw

Lance Hinds

Dev Anand Teelucksingh

John Lewis

Abdullah Mohammad

Patrick Hosein

Albert Daniels

Stephen Abhiraj

Keywords:

Internet governance

Caribbean IGF

ccTLDs

domain registration

multi-stakeholder groups

policy development

capacity building

data centers

cybersecurity

work from home

regional collaboration

AI research

quantum computing

funding challenges

legislative harmonization.

Hey everybody, Welcome back. You. Okay, welcome back. We are now coming into the open forum, and as I said before, we to break the open forum is really the heart and soul of an IGF, because this is the open area where all stakeholders can discuss and ask, discuss, bring up anything that you want to in regards to the field of internet governance. So Jacqueline Morris, chair of the TT mag, and we will also have with us some directors of the TT mag, Dr Dev Gosine and Ajmal Nazir, and I'm not sure who else will be joining us. I for this session.

So does anyone have anything that they'd like to discuss? Ask? With regard to internet governance.

Jackie, I like to pose a question, if I may, I thinkall of us here and where there's TT IGF or the Caribbean IGF. This is, this continues to be rarefied here in terms of the the reach and the access of internet governance we have served in quite a few parts of either ICANN or the IGF, and it doesn't unless my imagination is completely off, but the outreach and trying to get, trying to move from where We are at the moment, so reaching governments and reaching international organizations in the region, trying to see if we can weave Internet governance, policy, international deliberations, continues to be a challenge. And I think the question now is, where do we go from here? There is a there's a limited amount of work that could be done, and how do we reach out to the largest stakeholders to make a case for the importance of internet governance and establish that nexus between, I guess, internet governance and national and regional development, but no doubt we've been trying but and they may be different levels of success in other parts of the region, but certainly I don't think we are anywhere near where where we should be In terms of the implementation of internet governance at a regional level. Thanks.

Okay, AjmalDo you want to start with that? Or do you want me to I'll

let you go ahead. I was just disrupted.

Okay, this is the thing. Internet governance is because it's such a catch all thing, people seem to it's really big and it's difficult. It's kind of like eating an elephant. You know, it's, it's really a large thing to get your to get your head around, and so, not sure. I mean, I've been in this for, what, with you, Lance, like, what, over 20 years, and we've reached out. But there's also, I'm not sure how to put it, but there is this thing about breaking it down to specific areas where we find people. So we go to people in their space. So for example, we have this IGF, we had the education aspect. So we bring in the educators, and we have technical people, and we have people who, tomorrow we've got disaster resilience. And so hopefully there'll be people there who are interested in climate and geography and that sort of thing. Jon, did you have something to say about this?

Yes, good afternoon, everyone. I was just wondering Antigua is one success story. I mean, can't we leverage on what Antigua has done?

What has Antigua then?

Well, I mean, they have capitalized on their domain. Is one example. And they have, they have leading some of the the new discussions in AI and so on. So they must be doing something, right? So can we leverage on what they have done to try to bring other countries, you know, in that vein, I know one other country is looking at trying to control their domain, so just turn that out there for for discussion. I mean, I haven't been too much on the the cutting edge of where things are in terms of internet governance, but, you know, grateful for some feedback on that.

Nigel, No, you. You're working with the ccTLDs.

Yes. Thank you. Jacqueline, I kind of only got the last part of Lance's comment, but what I gathered is that there is he's perceived that maybe we could do better in terms of awareness and involvement with Internet governance and so on and so on. I would say, for the ones who really involved with the Indian governance, I think they will always see that or feel that, you know, maybe we not really we want to be or supposed to be. I was listening to Sally Wentworth's comment this morning. One of the things she said is not endorsing the GDC, because the I get, as I understand it, they weren't quite satisfied with the inclusiveness of the whole process, right? But I don't know it's a question to me. Is a question of recognizing progress, right? So from my vantage point of the CTU certainly, and I've been involved a lot with IG around the Caribbean, we've seen movement. We've seen improvement. So to me, we could always say there is a lot more to be done. You know, there's a long way to go still, but I think progress is being made, and I think we need to recognize that the fact that there is a TT IGF, go in for nine years now, shows that we've made some progress over the years, right? We have a TT, IGF that's consistent, St Vincent, the Grenadines is another one that is consistent, and Barbados not as consistent, but we've, we've, we've made some, some progress in terms of getting a multi stakeholder type of group, or discussions going in in Barbados, right? And, like you said, Jacqueline, trying to reach people where they are. You may be commenting in in terms of sector, but from the Caribbean point of view, I would make the comment in terms of national efforts, right? So part of what we specifically aim to aim to do with the cigf was reach out to the national communities. And yes, there is only three examples I could call out of 20 countries. So yeah, definitely, we have a lot more that we need to do there, and we need to review strategy that we've been using. We also have made efforts at Sectors right ccTLDs in particular, in this TT IGF, there's going to be a session tomorrow where we reach out to them again. And this is something that at the CTO level we had been doing. I would say we would have done at least twice before over the years. I would take the comment from the point of view of, yes, we want to be more effective, and maybe we we could look for some more, um, effective methods. Maybe we need to evolve the methods we've been using and so on and but I think we should also recognize that progress has been made over over over the years.

I agree, because, I mean, I remember the first ones we had? It was what the first conversations with 1015, people, and we've got hundreds of people now talking about this around the thing, Devin and,

hi, hi. This is Dev Anand Teelucksingh. Um, so let me ask a question, and it gets to throw it back to throw it back to you, what region or what country or what region do you think has done Internet governance? Well, I mean, yes, I understand the what you're saying about the Caribbean, but is there a particular territory or region that is looked at and thought, wow, they are. That country of region is really taking Internet governance in a multi stakeholder way, etc, because I struggle to find a good example, because I think Internet governance as a whole, globally is still a very hard thing for people to get involved in, to understand the topics, and because it requires study and listening to a lot of different perspectives from the different stakeholders, and then forming opinions and just to comment on what Jon was saying, I think Jon wasn't referring to Antigua, to referring to Anguilla, which has.ai and which has seen a rise in ccTLD registrations due to its happens. Happy, happily, happenstance to have dot ai as their ccTLD, right,

right, but dot ai isn't run by anguillans. It isn't run it isn't run in Anguilla. It's outsourced to a large company.

Yes, now, now it is, yes, it was run by a private individual before, but now it's, I think, identity digital, yeah, is now handling the back end, which was just recently announced. Yeah,

I think Abdullah, and then Dr Hosein, and then Albert.

Hi, more of a observation than a question. Jackie, I was just pleasantly surprised. I think in one of the slides, I saw the.tt and then there was the word Trust in the middle of it. I think it was an Indiana sec Slide. And actually, I was kind of wondering what progress if any we've made in terms of because the dotted all our country level domain is our national assets, at least, that's how we used to refer to it back in the day. What if any progress has been made. And as as we just mentioned, Angola in terms of promoting the.tt domain for businesses and so on, because I this is something I like to observe. When I see a business with a dot tt domain or dot co dot tt I usually feel like, okay, well, they're actually utilizing the domain not to put Professor Hosein on his spot. But you know, is any is, is there any movement in that regard? That was my kind of my question.

Well, Patrick, you're next up anyway.

Yeah. So you know, over the years, we've tried different things to encourage locals to, you know, to use.tt In fact, as you as you know, it cost locals half as much as foreigners to register.tt domain. We work with different chambers. You know, George COVID has been, you know, leading that we've worked with different chambers trying to offer incentives to different companies to go with.tt instead of in tt.com we will continue. I mean, you know, we, we, we do not have, you know.tt, we have been able to find something that you would, you know, like.ai has artificial intelligence, so that that was the reason it's it has grown so so quickly. But in terms of security, you know, you mentioned something about security, wasn't our trust. Not sure what that what, what that was about. But we do support DNSSEC. We've been, we've supported DNSSEC, for instance, for, I think, over to nine years now. So it's just a matter of local companies taking advantage of these additional things we support. One other thing I want to talk about in terms of internet governance, with respect to the the other islands, I think one of the reasons why, you know, we have TT IGF and we have a TG, mag, et cetera, is because the local CC, ctld, kind of blowing my own horn here, has been supporting them. I mean, we were the ones who kind of initiated the TT bag, TT mag. You know, years ago, initially it was sort of an ad hoc group and it, we formalized it, etc. We do support support. We provide funding to them as well. The past, you know, especially for things like attending ICANN conferences, etc. We also support the TT IGF, you know, the you know, they have been able to get funding from various organizations, but we have to close the gap in the end. So the point I'm trying to make is that, I think what is, what needs to happen in the other islands is to get the local ccTLDs to, you know, to start supporting some of these efforts, IGF efforts. Unfortunately, a lot of them have outsourced their administration of their domain, and that makes it difficult for those outsourced Well, it's not difficult, but the outsourced companies have to be the ones who would support the local IGF initiatives, you know. But I think you know, again, the the main issue is support, and we genetic has been pushing, not only with respect to IGF or internet governance, but in terms of research. You know, we do quite a bit of stuff in research and education as well. So it's all a matter of having the local ccTLDs, you know, move forward and do more than than we have been doing.

Thanks, Albert, your hand was up next.

Thank you very much. Jacqueline, you know, I'll start with your comment about the elephant, and you're absolutely right. It is big job to eat the entire elephant, and we have to decompose and look at small pieces bit by bit, there was a comment I agree with Dev. I think perhaps he was speaking about.ai although dot ag also is in a sort of favorable position with regard to their top level domain, because dot ag means limited in German. So you find that they have been doing quite a bit in that area. But we need to recognize that there are different aspects to internet governance, and we can't do the whole thing at once. And Nigel is very right, there's a lot of good that has happened. There a lot of significant achievements, the Caribbean IGF, the work that CTU has done in collaboration with ICANN, with regard to trying to help ccTLDs, ICANN has worked also with with other entities to try to the ccTLDs in 2007 we had a meeting looking at the different models for for running ccTLDs. And one key issue is that, as much as we've been doing this, in some cases, for over 20 years, I think we simply have to recognize that our work has to continue. We need to continue with the awareness. We need to continue with the capacity building, and we need to hold our breath and continue to try to bring new people on board with regard to internet governance. Just yesterday, I was in Curacao and speaking with some government officials who were involved in managing the ccTLD, they've dissolved their parliament and called election, so there will be a period of about a month where inputs from stakeholders in Anguilla are not going to be directly feeding into the management of their ccTLD. So you have those kinds of issues where the political system puts us in a position where from time to time, you literally have to start over in terms of capacity building and awareness raising with regard to certain aspects of internet governance. So I think to sum it all up, it's a situation where we need to continue what we're doing in terms of building awareness, doing capacity building, and try to concentrate a little bit more on sustainability or continuing to completion efforts that we actually start.

Thank you. Lance Your hand is up. Sorry.

One to answer dev that I wasn't necessarily, I was necessarily comparing us in terms of where we are or where we should be, versus any other jurisdiction. I was merely my direct concern is where we should be in terms of what Internet governance should hopefully be able to do for us as a region, in terms of progressing, in terms of in terms of growth, and in terms of in terms of general advancement. So I know things in difference are different in other countries. I remember when we Jacqueline, when we first went to form like Rallo in Argentina. And then we left there, and we went to our we went in there as technologists, primarily. And then when we went to our first ICANN meeting, I think it's in, I think it was in Sao Paulo, and then ran into a room of lawyers. And, you know, ran into a room of lawyers and policy makers. And then begin to realize that the whole concept of ICANN and internet governance was an entirely different thing from what we might imagine, because we went out of there, certainly I thought that, you know, the, you know, this was, this is a lot about tech and what have you, and run into an entirely different ball game in terms of economics and legal, you know, legal efforts and some intellectual property in terms of, you know, ownership of domains and that type of stuff. So this really was an evolved conversation after that. So really, when I talk about the next steps in terms of how we go forward and how we and, you know, how we reach those who can, you know, you know the you know who could help it buy in, and who could have an adoption of the ground that is really my, my, my interest in terms of, how do we now fashion the message? Do we need to fashion the message any better than we doing it? Or is it a reality that IG is always going to have, that is always going to be in that limited space that, you know, that we have to work with. Could we do? I mean, we've been around for quite a while, and if it is a things take time, fine, but I just think we need to be able to think now about, you know, in 2024, you know, where do we go from here in terms of, yeah, our application of energy?

No, you're right. I came in to, I went into that from the policy development side. Because, remember, that's why I came in with the with the UN and, you know, developed that whole policy development and bringing and gender and so on, and that's how I came in, even though I do technology, but I wasn't coming from a position of technology, but that is that has been the stakeholder group, the people who have come on to This most, from what I've seen, is that it has, in the Caribbean, especially, taken a technology bent and not quite so much a social type thing. And it's one of the things that, depending on where you are, the multi stakeholder group is going to be different stakeholders, and the balance differs depending on where you are. And I think I better agree with that, that because you travel all over for ICANN, depending on where you are, some people will be ready to jump on, and those might be the technology people, or, if it's in some other places, it might be the legal people, like we know, we got all those people from EFF and the various law schools in the States, where a lot of them came in on on it very early. And I don't think that we we need representation from every sector, but I don't think that we need to be upset that we don't have enough from one sector or the other just yet, because, as remember, we also came in with very low internet penetration and so on. So a lot of people, the people who knew about internet, were excited about internet with technology. People now, 20 years later, everybody's on internet. So I think we start seeing a lot more people, especially when they realize, hey, my business depends on this. Maybe I should start thinking about how it's managed so that I can have a say in if there's an issue with my with internet and my business, I can come in and have a say if there's an issue with internet and whatever I'm doing, but I think I agree with Nigel, it has increased. It has improved drastically since those early days.

What is something that is going to be very interesting, I think, is the and this will, this will probably show the ability in this neck of the woods, and I include Latin America as well. ICANN, for the first time, has put out a probably the most favorable opportunity to be able to apply for generic, top level domains with an application support program to do that. And I think it doesn't, I think we have until next year to be able to do it, but it's going to be very interesting to see whether we can participate at any level. The conditions are set in terms of how you do it. I think the last time I checked the link out of some of the other lesser developed reasons around the serve regions there probably there was 16. There could be more by now, who have, who have expressed an interest in participating in the program. But it would be interesting to see as the year goes by, whether there is any chance there may be some creative ways to do it. But if there's any chance of us, or even Latin America, participating in that as well, it's, it's $30,000 I think some will argue that that's even for this region. That's too high. But it's going to be interesting to see whether any any sectors business, NGOs or international, the IGOs, anybody could would have the way with all to participate in that. I don't know whether that chance is going to come out again, I suppose it would be based on what comes out of this of this experiment, but it's going to be interesting to see if anybody could respond from this negative words, Albert go aheas

thanks, Jacqueline. I don't know if it's on any motivation, but Lance is right. There's a tremendous opportunity now for the Caribbean, you know, another small island developing states, to get involved in perhaps getting a new top level, generic domain name. But this opportunity has arisen because of the strong and sustained voices that have been in ICANN advocating for this kind of thing. Okay. Jacqueline, yourself, Lance, you know, Carlton and others. I mean, this was no accident that the opportunity arose. And the very important thing to understand is that the more forceful voices from the Caribbean and this, this this region, the more our situation will be understood, the better it will be understood, and the more opportunities we will have. So it's incumbent upon us, as as much as some of us may feel, you know, that we're hitting our heads, you know, against a brick wall saying the same thing for 20 years, you know, and starting over every five years, when the elections, I think perhaps that might be an encouragement for others to realize, Wow, we have this opportunity, because there were voices in the ecosystem which laid the foundation and developed a situation which gave this opportunity. So I don't know if that would encourage anyone to continue to participate in these kinds of forum.

I don't know, because I had started talking to some Trinidad based multinationals, you know, the multi Caribbeans. And they come down to that one question, how are we going to make money on it? And when there are easier ways of making money, because that's what, basically, I was told, listen, if this is how much this is going to cost, but I have all these other opportunities to put the same sum of money, and I have a duty to my shareholders and so forth, and I need to be able to be sure that there's going to be a certain return on this. And why should I put that money in this part, the domain name thing, versus things like tourism or manufacturing, opening another factory, making jam, because we're exporting soft drinks in a major aid we're exporting an awful lot of things out of trend that we're manufacturing and exporting things. So it might be easier for them to say, hey, we're going to do another one of these, we're going to expand in an area that we're already making money in, rather than going to a whole new area. And especially since a lot of them really don't understand so I don't know, I know what you've been talking I know Nigel, y'all talk to some of those higher level CEOs and stuff, but I don't know if there's any way that you can see. How do we get them to see the opportunity? Because the money is around. We've got the money. There are people who have there are organizations and stuff who have the money. But the concept of why it should go into a cc regional gTLD, isn't there?

You're right. Jacqueline, I mean, again yesterday in QSO, at the event that can too was having I spoke with some of these people, and it's the same thing. I mean, and I get chased, you know, to certain countries when I go talking DNS, you know, because the question is asked, well, how is this going to affect my bottom line? And you're absolutely right. We should never go into any kind of business. And this is how the Daniel is talking now, you know, unless we can see good return on investment. But speaking from a broader perspective, though, I do feel that we are making a little bit of progress, maybe more than that in the Caribbean because of the involvement and because of the inputs that have been occurring due to events like the TT, IGF, like the cigf, where we raise more awareness, we explain to more people what this thing is all about and show them that particular opportunity. So from from that perspective, I'm happy to continue doing what we are doing here and encouraging new persons to get in. But Jacqueline, you're right. In the end, it will come down to, you know, how does this, you know, benefit you and what's in it for you?

I had floated locally, I took a slightly different tack, and I went down the road of the brand gTLD. So we have some multinationals here. And one of the things because I don't think, I don't think the gTLD as a function. May you know, you might not convince anybody to make money. But I was going along the dot Amazon model, where some of the multinationals say, Well, look, if you could have a talk with that answer, because they have so many products under their under their conglomerate. I was talking with the local producer, the local rum producer here, because they do so many other things. And I said, Well, look, if in this way, you could have, you can have everything on the one brand, dot answer, dot DDL, dot gkrs, or something like and that might be the only attraction that I see. The only slight hedge with that is some of the limits that they have put in terms of how much money a company can make and how much the SMEs could earn. So this, they may have to be, if anybody bites at that, they may have to be. We'll have to go back to Albert a bit to have a talk about some creativity in terms of how, well it is possible to apply it, because it, you know, as it stands now, is a little outside of the rules. But there may be room to have a discussion, but I but certainly from this end, I mean, the the response may be different in other parts of the Caribbean, but, but, but certainly in our initial discussions, there was some, there was some interest in, in the in the in the Brian gtla, and especially some of those who might have come through the the geographic indicator exercise, like what two of the companies here would have gone through. So they've spent money in in applying, you know, intellectual assets on property, or they've experienced doing that, so the argument is not as hard, but they, you know, again, you still have to make the case to close it. But that may be an avenue that we could, we could look at in the region as well.

Just quickly Jackie to say that the Latin American Caribbean engagement team at ICANN has has renamed the way we do our road show, slash lucky road show. And we're calling it ICANN near you. And it is specifically, you know, to bring home the point that we want to come close to you. We want to come into these countries and sign out like, how, um, what Lance is saying right now? How do you think it's best to approach a particular issue in your specific region and take that back and see how we can work with you to actually make that a reality? So I mean, I'm entering that for a day or two Lance from time to time, I'm with you as well, but I'm happy to work with any stakeholder to to see how we can refine this to bring it to the point where advantage can be taken of the opportunities that are there.

Thank you. Um, does anyone else have any comments topic you want to bring up? Intellectual TTIP, anything about intellectual property and the internet that you'd like to have us discuss?

Uh, Jackie, is this the forums for a government policy and work from home?

Um, you can talk about it. I don't know anything about it, so I can't say anything about it. I don't think there's anyone here from that ministry. Yeah,

I just just throwing out there. I can't speak on the title,

but we could talk about work from home in general. I mean, I work from home. I I got hired on the judiciary in the middle of COVID, and at the beginning, yeah, kind of the beginning of COVID. And I, I have an office, and I go there. So twice a month, maybe I have an issue. I just have an issue with air conditioning and so, and I get quite sick, so I have a logical reason to work fofrom my house. But a lot of people did have who started working from home during the pandemic and so business wise, but not the government yet, has really not totally gone back. It would be interesting to find out how many people are still even without the official work from home policies, how many people are still flexible at working from home.

I only brought stuff because I have had an interesting conversation with a colleague recently who born and raised in the caucus and works in Port of Spain. And yeah, no, he doesn't, he doesn't commute from the carcass, to be clear. But obviously that would be crazy, but we were talking about in our conversation about, you know, the benefits as an IT person working from home and, you know, not having to get dressed shit and pants iron and so on, just to come to work to code and then go back home so, and then all the implications around that, working from home, in terms of development of the local like supermarkets and so on the area, because now we don't have to go out to town, you know, all those kind of benefits kind of came up, and then not having to rent, you know, all those things. So I just thought you were asking for topics. I just thought trade out there. And then, of course, there's the Internet and broadband in those regions as well. But he didn't say in any caucus, they do have, they do get good service broadband. So there's that.

Okay, there's one comment, oh, two comments in the chat from [name] The first is, internet governance. Is our internet governance situation stifling our leverage of Internet technologies and services? And you suggest the undertake a study to find out, find the gaps and develop strategies to fill them. And the second comment is, we can investigate whether TT, ICT, policy and strategy address cybersecurity and internet governance, is there the need for improvement of that policy? And if there's anyone around who can speak to that, maybe, maybe Steven or Jon.

No, no one, because I really can't speak to any of the the ICT policy and strategy, because I have to admit shame I have not actually read through the policy properly yet the latest one, because that's not what my job is right now. Um, okay, so any other topics we'd like to mention? No one. I really can't speak to any of the the ICT policy and strategy, because after the gym, I have not actually read through the policy properly yet of the latest one, because

anyone else?

Jackie, I heard you mentioned Steven. Was it Steven Abhiraj you were talking about? Yeah, it was you. Oh, okay, well, no, I am. I don't wear the hat that could answer that question properly. I am now at the Ministry of works and transport. Okay, I wouldn't step into an area that is not my own, not anymore,

not a problem.

Thank you. So,

all right, all right. This is Dev Anand Teelucksingh here, one thing, and I think it touches back a little bit on the internet governance. And I think of what I'm kind of concerned is to still this. There's still a sense of, I feel anyway, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, maybe I am. The issue is that there's still, we're still very isolated among the islands and not collaborating enough when it comes to issues affecting us, and it doesn't have to be very super technical issues, because it's really the issues that affect you as an end user of the internet and technology, digital divide issues and so forth. And I don't really get a sense of what's happening all across the islands, what's happening, you know? And that gap really frustrates me, because, I mean, I could go online and find the gaps in lots of other territories and regions and Europe and all these kinds of things, but I don't really get a sense of what's, what's, what's happening here in the Caribbean, and, you know, so I think, I would think that one of the things we have to improve is a better collaboration along stakeholders, not just along the islands, but across all of the all the islands itself. I want, I like that see that type of thing happening and that, I think that way we can get a better sense of what our gaps are, and then we can try to help each other. And when it comes to issues like getting a Robin Internet governance, is that ICANN, then we could just start split splitting it, splitting up task. Everybody has to be on the gTLD. Somebody could just tackle the Whois. Well, the replacement for Whois, I should say. And you know, things like that, ha, ha. And how do we work together to do things like data, data privacy laws? Because I don't get a sense that we're working in coordination to unify our data privacy laws so that that is uniform, like, say, the GDPR, which is uniform across all of Europe, so which I think is ideal, you know, to have that kind of unified data privacy, so that you know, if you are app developer or whatever, you don't have to worry about 14 different or 15 different jurisdictions with different laws. Which makes it well, raises the cost of developing, makes it impossible.

So just throwing that out there, I know that CARICOM has been doing some of that stuff. I don't know if Nigel, I think you might know a lot more about it, but there's a lot of work being done with harmonization, especially with the laws across the Caribbean. I It's been going on for a while. I haven't been involved in it for like 15 years, but I was involved previously, and there was, like a draft set of laws, and then everybody kind of made a few tweaks, but the basic ones were, you know, the base was the same across the place. Nigel,

yeah, that was the HIPCAR project, right?

Exactly. That was HIPCAR project. And believe it or not, that was between 2009 and 2012 so what has happened since then? And there is a move to do another, another phase of hip car, you know, to take into account the more modern developments in ICT and so on. That HIPCAR was done under the auspice of the ITU, and we are working with the ITU again to see, to put a put in place, like a second phase that would get us that, that would get us there. You mentioned carry common and harmonization. Well, CTU does a lot of harmonization work in different aspects of ICT, just in terms of carry comity, they currently have a project on to assess the status of ICT policy, legislation and so on in the various CARICOM member states, to identify gaps that we can address head on to forge greater harmonization. So as I said, stuff is going on is really not necessarily going on at the pace you would like to see it happen, but, and some of that sometimes is resource limitations, money or personnel, as the case might be. But I think the points are taken that we we want to harmonize, and efforts are being made to do so we could always complain about the pace at which,

yeah, there is one thing I have noticed that people in the Caribbean like to do things behind those doors, and they don't tell people they do things that we do not like to tell people what we're doing. And I think that's one of your problems, Dave, right, you weren't hearing or anything. And so we've got two I think it is one thing we need people who are working on things like CTU to tell us what you're doing, alright? So also try and figure out some sort of in we have the like the citf. But how do you facilitate the continue those people who have met and have an exchange ideas in the cigf, how do you facilitate us working around the Caribbean afterwards? Do we have should we do, like a hub, you know, like some sort of where we can just go on and a whatsapp something where we go and post say, Hey, I'm doing this. No, I'm doing that. What are you doing? How can you help? You know, and then we find out before we find out, hey, we're doing same thing. Yes, yeah, we're duplicating efforts.

Yeah, the point is taken. And in fact, the what we call the inter intersessional work is so is one of the areas we we've been trying to improve it, and it's been recognized even in the cigf as well. And we've been trying to use our website to do some of what you're talking about there, via discussion forum and stuff like that. It hasn't been consistently effective. You know, when we first put it in, I think there was some interest. But, you know, lots of other things going on and people have, people don't necessarily remember to go on a discussion forum to to do something. But suffice it to say, though, that there, there is information on the CTU website, sometimes in terms of documents that we've done, the program of events, for example. So if you want what CTU is doing, some information is there other than that, you know you would have to contact us to find out whatever

um is going to look for information, as opposed to coming, coming to you, sit back and tell let somebody happen the same way I people ask me, How do I know about all these sets? Because people send it to me in my whatsapp, people I get it right?

Well, we do have a few different WhatsApp groups, really, at least two related to IG in the Caribbean, that, and there's one already, AI as well, that we've been sending information out. It's not so easy for people to get into it, though, if you know someone, I mean, it's not like it's out there that or maybe we could, maybe there may be a way we could find to put it on our website. So if anyone wants to join,

sign up, and then you could, we are and decide if we're going to be yes, you can bring us in. Yeah, yeah. Albert, you had a yes.

Thank you. Jacqueline, I'd like to respond to your comment you know about not knowing what's going on, and it's not to say that. I want you to include me in all of those WhatsApp groups for the fits, but I really wanted to congratulate the CTU on this coordinating role that it has been playing across our Caribbean region. Because, you know, I've seen it in the old days. You know how it used to be and where it is now. You know these names be Wilton and others. We used to sit together, because we found that it was just difficult to figure out what meetings were taking place in the Caribbean. I remember sitting in Cancun one time before the four of us and say, Okay, what are you doing at ICANN, what are you doing at arien, what are you doing at Latin and so on. And we agreed amongst ourselves that we would keep a joint calendar the CTU, you know, thanks to Nigel and Rodney and others, have taken it to the next level with these industry watch meetings that they have every quarter and talk about what meetings are coming up, and how do we go about preparing for them? So, Jackie, you're right. We need to have these mechanisms by which we know what the others are doing, and the CTU has been doing a fantastic job. Sometimes I wonder how they can do all of these things with the resources that they have at their disposal. But, but kudos to to you, Nigel and Rodney and all the stuff at the CTU, and we really need to support you know that coordinating role that the CTU is playing, and whoever, else can come on board to extend that. I mean, you know, we see how we can work together.

I see Tracy posted a, yeah, objective.

Tracy's question was, what are our thoughts about the planned tier four data center in Phoenix Park in Trinidad and Tobago? Is Trinidad and Tobago ready to become a regional data hub? And I can tell you, I know very little about the details of that data center. I don't know who does

I cannot speak on behalf of the data centers themselves, but again, you know, at the CANTO meeting, we were reminded that there is a Caribbean Data Center Association which is being driven by Blue NAP Americas. There is very up to date data center in Curacao itself, and what they are trying to do is to connect data centers across the Caribbean. So there's a lot happening with regard to data centers, but that's not an area of my expertise. I'm sure there are others who may be more knowledgeable about this, but, but, but Tracy is right. That is something that, you know, we could be talking about,

Wasn't cost, an issue. in some of the initial discussions? I remember, digital, did you sell quite a few years ago trying to offer this service? I don't know where it is now.

And Tracy, your hand is up.

Yes, thanks. So I'm not going to answer Lance this question, because I'm not sure. Sorry, I have a cough. What happened there? But the the question I posed is related, not so much, I think, to the physically possible. I'm sure it is Trinidad & Tobago has, I would say, maybe a dated legislative regime for data protection, just data

basically data governance, the whole nine yards. So

So without getting into that specifically, I remember there was some time it talks about a Caribbean data protection regime. We talked about that. We talked about having harmonized policies. That's why I was trigger my question Nigel's car, you know, let's say hip cop to Back to the Future plan or the seat. But I don't know. I don't know what you want to call it. The question I have is really only questions I try to pose, which is, I think, more deeper than whether to for DC is relevant in Trinidad Tobago, it's whether or not the Caribbean almost is ready for this. So while we plan to do what like Malaysia is trying to, or has tried to do Indonesia in Southeast Asia, and try to become data hub for that part of the world, Singapore, etc, and that competes for business in Southeast Asia and Asia generally. Can we compete for business with the DCS in the region? And this includes post Latin America, the wider America's region, so North America, obviously, and so on to sort of get business beyond our our small amounts of data we have, relatively speaking, as question A, given our regime, and question B, given the challenges We've had all over with regionalism, Git is one, I think, you know, partnering on doing other things. I remember talking about this offering on, you know, sharing, Application Sharing, purchasing of Procurement Solutions of tax system. That's all those things you talked about years ago in in sessions that never happened. Do you think we're ready to partner and collaborate on regional data sharing policies? And this would if I have my data in Toronto vehicle Vex that you know, my data in Tran Tobago, and want to take it out of the Vex with us, or something like that. Are those things? Are we ready for it, that question I'm asking, and is it time for maturity in this regard? And if so, how do we do things like this? Is there a role for, let's say, an IGF type environment to play that kind of role, to harmonize these kinds of ideas, because I think this could be a good catalyst, as Albert just spoke for the Caribbean Data Center Association, if we have something like this already, then we should be talking about regional policies and regional mechanisms to make These things happen, and these San Diego, carousel, Jamaica being nodes of this, of this policy, etc, so thoughts and maps and are we ready? Are we mature enough and our legislative environment is all an environment strong enough to deal with something like this? Thanks, especially in the Trump years.

Did you anybody want to speak to that? I mean, my thought is, now that I know that this, that sort of thing, I would be interested yet again, finding out what's going on that information. Yeah, the lacuna of information that we have nobody, everybody does their thing behind their little doors and don't talk and don't talk and don't share. And honestly, information is one of these things, to me, is one of these things that when you share it, it doubles and triples and quadruples. It's not one of those things that the more you share, the less you have. More you share, the more you get. But we do need someone, some organization, some sort of thing, to get people to start sharing that. And then we get these people, all these people who are interested in these things, can have the conversations, because we don't have all those people here. But if there were people who were interested in data centers and they knew that, hey, there's a data center chat or data center Whatsapp group or something, then they could join that and they could have those conversations, and these things will start to happen more organically, as opposed to kind of trying to show on everything into one place at one time. But I am looking at the time, and we are over time. I got a bad time keeper. Abdullah suggesting, 20 years ago, we would have had RSS feed, but now he's suggesting to have your favorite a Slack or a discord, and Tracy is now saying will Nvidia in extending the argument? Will Nvidia invest in the Caribbean? For example,

economies of scale?

Well, it depends on what Nvidia's investing. Would invest in the Caribbean to do, if it's chip side, no, if it's creative uses of for AI, yeah, if we, if we build up, you know, a cadre of people who do what they need possibly, you know, I would say, Patrick and sit down and say, Hey, what kinds of people do? Is there research that we're doing here that in video might find interesting, but otherwise, I really have no idea, even through the kind of Cari LLM or multi modal AI, or even AGI exists in the Caribbean,

I think so.

I mean, Gavin Lance, you are. You guys have started and, well, NYANG, but I'm not seeing him here, but you guys have started playing around with some of those things, haven't you.

As a matter of fact, you know, it is strange that you say it, but there is possible funding globally for, you know, for a level of innovation, that you might be able to get some decent support for. And I'm talking specifically with the LLM on the multiple AI, you'd have to put together, I think the first step of that would be to put together some kind of concept, no, so you can see what it looks like, and then this may well be something that you could go and get. I don't want to say initial support, but it these kinds of things I've seen around as I look at, as I look at what, you know, large, large agencies, fund and others fund, maybe something that, I guess I mean, initial investment to start, then you go back and do something. So it's not impossible, but, you know, you gotta put some meat on that bone.

Else, I'll go even further, so I'll announce it here. Maybe that's so people know that this, this can happen. Why are the global IGF, where my, my other hats are not wearing today, which is a UN organization hat. Another UN organization approached me and said, you know, we're looking for to deploy a quantum project in the Caribbean, where, you know, can you help? You know, we have some funding. Maybe we can find a way to have a quantum device, or a quantum project established somewhere in the Caribbean, which I think will be really interesting. You know, even beyond the AI, even having a university or some, some large entity take over a quantum project and invest in it that actually could help us significantly with our, you know, absorbing some talent and getting people things to do that are beyond the standard and UWI comp sci program. I don't know if Patrick or any others have any thoughts on something like that would happen. How is the university ready to consume at urban university as a regional entity, necessarily, St Augustine, or any one campus, but the university as a regionality, can they consume a quantum project and make it real? We thought so And I'm just trying to see where this can go. Because, you know, we we kind of stuck in our little bit of our, you know, as as Lance kind of said, you know, we kind of stuck a bit. Where can we kind of break out of this, this stuck mode, and move and take things a little further, and make our discussions here, you know, move towards something, not just solving problems, or just trying to fix things, and maybe look towards the future, you know, and I guess coming out of a different model, in working in a in a larger global paradigm, I'm seeing things in a larger perspective, and really wanting the Caribbean to move forward, having seen what's happening in Africa and Southeast Asia, even the Pacific, is doing significant things, and the Caribbean seems to be stuck a bit. So I just wanted to know, you know what? What are folks thoughts on that?

Yeah, Tracy, as I mentioned, my name. The problem we tend to have it with some of these areas is critical mass to get sufficient students and faculty members a particular core area to do collaborative research and develop something you need to have a critical mass, and you could never get there, because the bright students would tend to leave. So for instance, one of my past students is now doing a PhD in in quantum physics, someone in Canada. So people like that wouldn't stick around to form this core, core mass. So it's not only in quantum computing, but also in, when we look at AI, we focus on, on, you know, applying data science to solve problems locally, as opposed to trying to compete or do anything at the at a higher level. You know, because we can't, we have, we don't have the resources first of all, and again, you know, when we do get, you know, people interested in this area, and they build up the expertise, they tend to to migrate. But, yeah, but you know, companies like Nvidia, we've been doing some stuff with Nvidia working, you know, some of my students did some work with them on on their rapids environment, CUDA. We, we, they do provide us with hardware. I mean, the the hardware we, we use right now for some of our LLM work is, is was donated. Well, we got it through our grant from them. So we, they are, in a way, supporting us. But, you know, we, we can. We can only do as much as we can because of the fact that, you know, once the students move away from Trini or the region? I don't know if that answers your question.

I think the, I think the concept of that is, is a chicken, is a chicken and egg argument, right? So if we have, is it that you bring it and they will come, or belt and they will come. So let's, for argument sake, say that we were able to accept, you know, whatever Nvidia's DC donation, you know, they've put some rocks in Phoenix Park, or they, or they buy the, let's say they buy the Phoenix Park location. Let's just say that or the quantum device or quantum project is able to be provided to the university. Do you think, you know, using that argument you had about their leaving because of nothing, you know, no projects here. Do you think of the projects arrive? Do you think they will ?

It's not only students. I mean, we need to have the the faculty members.

That's where I was going. Yes,

attracting those difficult, you know, put out next for lecturer positions in some of these areas. You won't get them, because they can make tons of money outside somewhere.

Well, Patrick, what about the concept of partnering with other universities? Like, for example, Dr Gonick from ASU was here this morning, and he had brought up the possibility of, because they're doing partnering with not in the Caribbean, but he met, he had a map, and he showed some places that in Latin America and so on that they've been partnering with with that.

Yeah, so we do collaborate with other universities, things that, especially things like climate change, we we've been doing, you know, because, again, the resources outside is is much better than what we have locally, but, yeah, but what we what we provide to them, is the fact that we are SIDS and they're interested in our particular set of constraints, etc. So, yeah, collaboration, but we have to be careful that people are not just using us, right? Because you get it to the situation where they just want us to be, to have them on the grant, you know, to put our name on the grant, but they don't really have us do anything vital.

Or, yes, you're just toting water

exactly so, so we have to be careful of that. But, yeah, no, no, we, we collaborate. You know, we've done some work with Korea University in areas that may not be of interest to Trinidad. This was on telecom stuff. But again, you know, to get a sufficient mass, critical mass, to do it on our own. Yeah, is difficult. If you look at my lab, for instance, we have a wide range of expertise, because you can't get sufficient people in one area. So it involved it in, you know, we have people from economics, mechanical engineering, computer science, statistic, whatever, you know, you could, you could call it, and we have them. So the idea is to do more multi disciplinary research, as opposed to having a core group in a specific area. I mean, when I was doing my PhD, there were like about six people in a specific area, and you could get assistance on that high tech, whatever was the latest technology at that point in time, we

When we with the with the AI driven translation project we were doing in Guyana, we had, we'd actually collaborated at some point with UCLA, where kind of exchange kind of thing that we would, we would do the monitoring and help with the help of some of the lecturing in a special project. And then we had the kids they're actually doing, actually doing some development and the project that that we wanted, so it can happen. But I think a lot of it is, is how you position it and how you do it. It's not impossible, but it does come with some challenge, but it's not impossible. We did the UCLA work that we did, I think, for probably three semesters, ending, ending this year. It's an example of some of the things that that could be done that was a special project that they were doing, and thought that they had heard what what we were trying to do, and there was a partnership there and and they had Express willingness that if there was something similar that we're doing along the AI track with that kind of they wanted to, they wanted to. They were mine being involved. But you have to go back and go through the process of vetting and checking and stuff like that. But partnerships are possible as we were just discussing,

I we're having a great conversation, but it is after two o'clock, and we are half hour over, because conversation was Good, but we should really wrap up and let everyone go get their lunch if they have not yet. And ready for tomorrow, where tomorrow morning, we start at 9am with the Youth Forum, which is going to be about bullying, the cyber age and the youth participants will lead the discussions. And then those of us from who are in country from one to from 1pm we are have the in person space if you've registered, if you register for that, we did have limited space, so I'm not sure how many you'll have to talk to Denise the Secretariat about that, but the event manager about whether there's still room for people to register and come in. But we'll still be online if you don't make it physically into the room, yes, it will be remote as well. So it's been a very, very interesting day, lots of great conversation, and we'll see you tomorrow. So thank you very much, and have a great afternoon.