by Ingrid Riley, Founder
I started Kingston Beta because I needed it myself. I needed that communal face-to-face, those constant conversations that made you feel good about your entrepreneurial journey, that you’re not so crazy after all. I needed to sit with people smarter than me, less experienced than me where there was such generous knowledge sharing, that it would leave all parties pumped and ready to pull all nighters to test a few ideas or fix the problem with the solution someone just gave you. I craved the connection with like minds and I hated to think that I had to fly to New York or San Jose to get it.
I had started techwatchcaribbean.com my first blog in a bid to find and share what was going on in my tech world, who was out there, what were they doing and ohhh yeah give my opinions about it all of course. That blog later morphed into what is now SiliconCaribe.com, a Caribbean tech blog that I have ambitions to grow into the Caribbean Techcrunch.
It was while writing that blog, that weird things started to happened. I started to get loads of calls, emails from people sharing information on what they were doing, what others were doing and to check out this or that website. Then some of us started to meet for drinks or coffee and in one of my marathon inhaling of information online, I saw that other tech entrepreneurs where having these things called “meet ups” at Starbucks, their favourite bar or some hotel lobby. So I decided yep, let’s have one here too in Jamaica and I named it Kingston Beta an event where we’d meet to learn from each other, be inspired and network.
My then business partner in the web development company Dutchpot Interactive, Susan LeeQuee, designed the logo, the event blog and we launched it using about $150,000 of company funds in February 2007 at the Talk of the Town at the Jamaica Pegasus. Of course I called on who was already in my world to be the event’s first speakers.
We had:
Sandor Panton, domainer, affiliate marketer and creator of Top5Jamaica.com who revealed that he had over 6000 domain names registered and introduced us to the world of affiliate marketing and making money online that way.
Rodney Browne who I’d only known via email, ICQ, MSN chats and when he flew in from St Kitts it was the first time we had met face to face in the 7 years we had known each other online. He founded what I believe was the Caribbean’s first social network CaribbeanMassive.com and owned eCaribbean Ltd a web development company.
Then there was Mark Allen who we beamed via Skype video from Vietnam. Yes, he’s Jamaican and along with his business partner had started Net Vision Interactive here in Kingston, super talented programmers, foremost users of Flash in the Caribbean. No surprise then that they were recruited by a Hong Kong based dot com company and have lived in Asia ever since.
That launch of Kingston Beta had around 80 people attending and we charged $600 to enter. After 2 additional events that year, Kingston Beta went quiet.
Then Kingston Beta went quiet
After leaving the web development business and the partnership of Dutchpot Interactive in the latter part of 2007, Kingston Beta went dormant for 2008 until I crushed it for a while getting my new digital marketing company ConnectiMass started. While doing that I was still toying with the idea of restarting it but was consumed with getting my startup focused and earning first.
While working on getting ConnectiMass a couple of clients, I was always asked by some members of the tech community asking when is the next Kingston Beta. I was also getting encouragement and a few threats from Sandor Panton, Chad Cunningham ( Jamdeal.com) and Jamie Ranston (WebFx) a bunch of friends, colleagues I’d known for about 10 years so much so, we loosely called ourselves the Internet Alliance.
So in February 2009, I restarted Kingston Beta and held monthly meetups at Susie’s Bakery and Coffee Bar. It regained momentum, won new converts and the word started to spread once again. Then I took it to the sexiest business hotel in Kingston – The Spanish Court Hotel in January this year and staged bi-monthly events and had our first short term sponsor Jamaica National, thanks to David Mulllings a fellow tech entrepreneur ( Real Vibez Media).
What’s Next for Kingston Beta ?
We’ve just completed our 3rd year with our final event for 2010 on Wednesday November 10th and we’ve come full circle, the event, the community is back home at the Jamaica Pegasus Hotel, which is now fondly called the techie hotel, the home of the Jamaican tweetup and arguably the most social media savvy hotel brand in the country.
Here I am, here we are about to take the event to another level, this time, with a small, passionate and powerful team. Thanks to the members of the community, its supporters and critics, Kingston Beta has become a go-to event that has seen over 40 Caribbean Startups and 1000 attendees. It has an online community and regional reach of over 10,000 and has hosted international guest speaker Marc Canter, the founder of the billion dollar company Macromedia thanks to our Silicon Valley based connector and ally, mathematician and software developer Peter Rothman.
We’ve also hosted Dana Todd, conference circuit speaker, one of the pionners of the American search marketing industry, Chief Marketing Officer of NewsForce ( San Diego) and Director of SEMPO – Search ENgine Marketing Professional Organisation. As well as Fionn Downhill, CEO of Elixir, a Digital Marketing Agency based in Arizona and leading conference speaker who has spoken at major conferences such as Search Engine Strategies, SMX Expo and Searchonomics.
Kingston Beta has grown from being a casual meetup of tech friends over drinks to keep each other abreast of industry runnings, to becoming a significant bi-monthly event for the community of bloggers, online publishers, software architects and entrepreneurs who power over 80% of the internet and tech activity out of Jamaica and the Caribbean.
So with the unofficial yet focusing theme Technology, is New Coffee for Jamaica,coined by Khary Sharpe, Founder of Bakari Digital, the goal is to expand on what was always Kingston Beta’s mission of being the event, the community that helps to inspire and nurture a generation of digital entrepreneurs who are not limited by conventional boundaries in their global impact. ( Thanks for understanding it putting it in your own words like that Sarah Hsia)
For 2011 each Kingston Beta event will have a startup pitch competition with prizes, cash and connections as rewards for ambitious Caribbean tech entrepreneurs. Yes we’re working on having more international guest speakers. We’re ending 2011 with Caribbean Beta a one day conference which will bring together Caribbean tech entrepreneurs globally in a single space to learn,be inspired and network. We have some other initiative such as Startup Bootcamps that will help guide and hone the entrepreneurial thinking and actions of our amazing Jamaican and Caribbean talent pool. We simply must have our own slew of success stories here that will make the world sit up and say…they’ve got some serious shit happening in the Caribbean let’s support it, fund it, partner with it, promote it and celebrate it.