Caribbean Bloggers Week Starts Online Today! A Message from the Founder Ingrid Riley

I want to amplify the magnificence and stunning current work and potential of our Caribbean Digital Content Creators – the bloggers, the podcasters, the Youtubers, Instagrammers and other Digital Creatives.

That’s been the essence of why I launched our first inaugural Caribbean Bloggers Week on October 7th, when I was in Minneapolis. A mere 60 days to the start on December 5th, 2016 and that which will run until December 10th, 2016.

I had been considering  the idea for over a year and decided to launch what is called a public beta in our tech circles. This means to launch into the world a minimum viable product, a level of our event product that we believe speaks to the essence of what we seek to achieve, a delicious sliver of a grander vision if you will.

The goal is to have 5 days of publishing inspiring and value-rich branded content here on siliconcaribe.com, a conversation or two on twitter around a specific topic or two, launch our Status of the Caribbean Blogosphere survey, encourage people to register their blogs on our Caribbean Blog directory so more people can find them, and then end the week with a community building and conversation amplifying meetups.

Now regarding meetups, we were going to only do two cities…Kingston and Trinidad, then New York and London raised their hands and we said yes to the Diaspora joining the party in year 1, rather than year 2 as was planned. Additionally, we also had 6 other cities in the Caribbean, US and Canada raise their hands too but we decided to manage our growth and cap it at four.

So here we are, at the end of that 60 day sprint, with a larger launch year experience than originally planned, with all of its deliciously perfect imperfect self and we are thankful.

And along this 60 day sprint to here, we recognised that we are indeed on to something because of how our Platinum and Gold sponsors ( National Commercial Bank Jamaica, Jamaica Tourist Board, Heineken) partners , our City Meetup Hosts (all but Kingston is sold out), the media Caribbean digital influencers and creatives plus so many others have responded to what we have. We are happy and thankful for them joining us.

As we roll out this week come visit us daily, check the hashtags #cbw2016, then #cbwkgn, #cbwpos, #cbwnyc, #cbwldn for the Meetups on Saturday. We are listening, tracking and learning because we’re committed to growing this every year.

Enjoy the thoughtful articles we publish today and until Friday and the profiles of people we want you to know more about, savour data we share, participate in the survey we launch here on Wednesday, twitter chat we’re going to have on Thursday, the meetups we end the week with this Saturday December 10th.

We will publish our detailed schedule of twitter chat as well as the agenda for the meetups later today. So pop back on later today.

Along the way or at the end of it all, tell me how you feel, send me the feedback directly email me ingrid@getconnectid.com I would love to hear from you.

Welcome to SiliconCaribe’s Caribbean Bloggers Week 2016!  #cbw2016