ICT – Page 5 – Go Lean…Caribbean

Tag: ICT

Securing the Homeland – On the Ground

Posted on September 16, 2016 in Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The issue of security in the Caribbean homeland is fully encompassing, it covers region-wide issues from military intrusions down to 911 emergencies. Yes, the concern is not World War III, but when someone’s security is threatened, the urgency is always life-and-death. So any efforts to improve homeland security must consider the emphatic view of the beholder:

Just like “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, so too is the perception of security.

Continuing with the series on Security Intelligence, this commentary – 3 of 3 from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean – focuses on the urgency of security threats. The consideration is given for the need to communicate urgent-emergent situations, proactively and reactively. How can we optimize Security Intelligence (military episodes, border-encroachments and police-crime scenarios) on the ground so as to better secure our Caribbean homeland? All the other commentaries in the series covered these details:

Each commentary relates to the Caribbean security apparatus being promoted in the Go Lean regional empowerment effort.

There is no doubt that the subject of Security Intelligence needs a fresh look in the Caribbean. Among the “push and pull” reasons why people have emigrated away from the region, personal security has been listed as a high rationale. As communicated in previous blog-commentaries (see list below), our concern for homeland security is not communism or terrorism – as is the case for our American neighbors – but rather it is the risks and threats of crime and the dread of emergencies. Remediation and mitigation for the Caribbean homeland must focus more on the micro, than on the macro.

For the macro, we are fortunate to be within the border vicinity of the United States. They are a militarized society – boasting the biggest, most equipped Armed Forces in the history of mankind – so we benefit from Pax Americana. This feature was previously detailed as follows:

Pax Americana is not a “de jure” policy of the US government, but rather a “de facto” policy. The spirit of the Monroe Doctrine is still imbued in US foreign policy. This implies that any European aggression in the Americas is an affront to the US. Practically, the US strong military ensures peace in the region. There is no need for massive military output by Caribbean states… Previous expressions of Pax Americana have resulted in a trade embargo for Cuba.

Pax Americana will not address all of our security needs. The American priority is America. We need our own resources to prioritize our needs and our solutions. How many satellites does the US have pointing to Caribbean neighborhoods? How many “Persons of Interest” are being surveilled for unbecoming activities? These are good questions, and the answers correspond with this point made in a previous blog-commentary:

[The US has a] security commitment to their Caribbean neighbors, but the amount they devote is such a piddling – they prioritize 0.1968% of the total security budget towards the region – that the Caribbean should not be lulled into complacency. We need our own security solutions!

For the micro, we see the need to remediate and mitigate crime; accepting that this challenge is both an “Art” and a “Science”. We have to rely on security professionals – Soldiers, Sailors and Police – to do this job. When there are failures in these executions, we all feel the pressure in society. This is not just academic, this is life-and-death. The result could be an alarming crime problem that draws the attention of local, regional and international stakeholders. This attention can dissuade inter-trade activities for our Caribbean region.

For the micro, we also see the need to optimize ‘Emergency Management’; this too is defined in the book Go Lean…Caribbean as both an “Art” and a “Science”. The book embarks on the strategy to integrate Emergency Management (Preparation and Response) into the regional homeland security efforts. Therefore the issue of Security Intelligence is of serious concern, requiring serious solutions if we want to ensure that all our stakeholders – residents, tourists, trading partners – are safe and secure within our borders.

This quest is not just a desire, it is also a job description, as related in the first submission in this series. According to the implied Social Contract between citizens and their governments, citizens are required to surrender some of their natural rights and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for added protection of their remaining legal rights. This Social Contract authorizes the State to raise a militia and establish police forces to ensure public safety and protections against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Fulfilling this job responsibility is a BIG deal; and very expensive, where some governmental entities spend the lion-share of their budgets on their security fulfillments. This is all due to the one ingredient that is most expensive: Personnel.

The Go Lean book presents a strategy for better securing the homeland by employing new Security Intelligence tools to optimize the investment in people. While the approach is to ensure homeland security by confederating a regional force – military and police – under the guise of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), most of the Security Intelligence initiatives considered here are on the State-side of the Federation/member-state separation-of-powers line. The Go Lean/CU approach is to leverage the size of the CU to deploy investments too big, out-of-reach for anyone one member-state alone.

Consider these Security Intelligence solutions that will bring great benefits, protections, to any community:

Shots Fire Monitoring	There is a myth that gun crime doesn’t matter unless it results in a homicide or a gunshot wound. But the truth of the matter is that for every homicide committed with a gun, there are more than 100 gunfire incidents. So as to make neighborhoods safe, it is essential to employ a system that delivers an accurate and real-time picture of gun crime. The US provides a fitting model with deployments in many cities. See full details on the ShotSpotter product and VIDEO 1 in the Appendix below.
Traffic Cams	Road traffic is a sore subject in many communities; it is usually the Number One killer of young people. Yet, the solution for dangerous driving is so simple: stick a police officer on the scene; everyone slows down and drives more cautiously and safely. Now technology allows this disposition all the time, without the human police officer; with the deployment of Traffic Cameras. The realities of these implementation have been detailed in a prior Go Lean blog: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2782
Crowd-Control Drones	Drones are here to stay. There has been countless blog-commentaries depicting the tactical benefits of aerial drones (UAV’s) and the vantage point they provide for a Unified Command & Control structure. As the technology advances, the benefits of drone deployments increase accordingly. This does not only apply to UAV’s, but robotic tanks for crowd-control, hostage stand-offs, bomb-mine removals and infantry ground support. See the Photos here and embedded VIDEO 2 and VIDEO 3 in the Appendix.
Helmet & Body Cams	There are undeniable benefits when military and police personnel dawn helmet and/or body cameras. There isn’t just the accountability for justice assurance, but also the elevation of more intelligence during tactical missions. This is the benefit of Unified Command & Control. See sample Photos here.

These solutions reflect the need for regional oversight, as envisioned in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic entire Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This CU roadmap is designed to elevate Caribbean society by these prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines; growing the regional economy.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

All of these foregoing features relate to this topic of Unified Command & Control. The Go Lean book stressed the effectiveness and efficiency of this strategy, for protecting life and property of all Caribbean stakeholders: residents and visitors alike. This is why the book posits that some deployments are too big for any one member-state to manage alone – especially with such close proximities of one island nation versus another – there are times when there must be a cross-border multi-lateral coordination. This vision is defined early in the book (Pages 12 – 14) with these statements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence:

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices of criminology … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

Unified Command & Control requires an efficient collaboration of the regional stakeholders delivering security solutions in the Caribbean. The Go Lean book describes this effort as heavy-lifting and the required oversight as agile or “lean”. The concept of “lean” is very prominent in the Go Lean book (and movement), even adapting the title, Go Lean, for this quest.

The focus of the Go Lean book has been towards economics and security from the start. While there is no plan to amass any great Army or Navy, there is the plan to “double-down” on efficient, agile, lean coordination for the homeland’s security. Notice this quotation from the book (Page 103):

Unified Command & Control with State Militias and Police
The CU is not waging a Cold War against a Super-Power, so there is no need for a military-industrial complex. There is only the need to secure the economic engines in the region, and to assuage against the regional threats that arise. As such, most CU homeland security initiatives will be targeting regional policing needs. So the CU security institutions will lock-step with the police & militias of the member-states. The CU will enhance this collaborative effort with advanced monitoring systems, crime laboratories and tactical response units – a complete unified command & control eco-system.

Previous blogs/commentaries also exclaimed societal benefits from pursuits in regional coordination for homeland security; consider this sample of previous blogs, and the submissions on drones:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8431	Bahamas Issues a Proactive Advisory Citing American Police Violence
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7485	A Lesson in the History of Interpersonal Violence – Street Crimes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7449	‘Crap Happens’ – So What Now?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7179	SME Declaration: ‘Change Leaders in Crime Fight’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7119	Security Role Model: African Standby Force
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6103	Sum of All Fears – ‘On Guard’ Against Deadly Threats
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5376	Drones to be used for Insurance Damage Claims
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5002	Managing a ‘Clear and Present Danger’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3881	Regional Coordination: Cyber Security Cooperation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3834	State of the Caribbean Union’s Regional Society
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3713	Model of Regional Border Control
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1965	America’s Navy – 100 Percent – Model for Caribbean Regional Security
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1554	Status of Forces Agreement for Regional Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1487	Here come the Drones … and the Concerns

The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to better secure the Caribbean homeland and foster better regional coordination. The list is as follows:

Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Security Principle – Privacy versus Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principle – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research and Development	Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Provide Emergency Management Arts and Sciences for Disasters	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Embrace the Advances of Technology	Page 46
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology	Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Climate Change	Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Homeland Security – Emergency Management	Page 76
Tactical – Separation of Powers – CariPol: Marshals and Investigations	Page 77
Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up – Intelligence Collaboration	Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid – Natural Disaster Relief	Page 115
Planning – Big Ideas – Homeland Security Pact	Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Remediate and Mitigate Crime	Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Gun Control	Page 179
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism	Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering & Analysis	Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Natural Disasters – Emergency Management	Page 184
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management – Trauma Medicine	Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights	Page 220

Security in the Caribbean requires proactive and reactive measures on the regional level. The CU – with an agency within the Homeland Security Department – also doubles as the regional Emergency Management entity. Our delivery of security cannot resemble a sledgehammer, but rather it must model the precision execution of a surgical scalpel. This is demonstrated with the heavy emphasis on Intelligence Gathering & Analysis.

The promoters of the Go Lean … Caribbean book has only one goal: to make this homeland a better place to live, work and play. While the Caribbean is arguably the best address of the planet, there are societal defects as well. Our security mitigations must therefore be executed in a smart – intelligent – manner so as not to dissuade our primary economic driver: tourism, while still ensuring a safe homeland. This is important for how we live, how we work, and how we and others play here in the Caribbean.

So the issues raised in this series on Homeland Security, and the proposed Intelligence Gathering & Analysis solutions are all of serious concern. These allow for our vision of an elevated society to be fully manifested today and in the future. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Appendix: ShotSpotter Overview

Title: Is reducing gun violence a priority in your city?

The communities most affected by gunfire are least likely to call it in. With fewer than 1 in 5 shooting incidents reported to 9-1-1 [Emergency Reporting], gun crime is vastly underreported. When 9-1-1 calls are made, unfortunately the information provided is typically inaccurate. Without knowing exactly where to respond, police waste valuable time and resources driving block by block looking for evidence as criminals escape the scene. Dispatching officers to an active shooting without all available intelligence is a threat to officer safety and needlessly places the public at risk.

Intelligence-Led Policing
ShotSpotter gunfire data enables intelligent analysis. With that, law enforcement can move from the reactive to the proactive. ShotSpotter has been called “a force multiplier” because it provides critical information for better, more timely resource allocation — especially important as agencies are being asked to do more with less.

ShotSpotter Flex instantly notifies officers of gunshot crimes in progress with real-time data delivered to dispatch centers, patrol cars and even smart phones. This affordable, subscription-based service enhances officer safety and effectiveness through:

Real-time access to maps of shooting locations and gunshot audio,
Actionable intelligence detailing the number of shooters and the number of shots fired,
Pinpointing precise locations for first responders aiding victims, searching for evidence and interviewing witnesses.

Source: Retrieved September 14, 2016 from: http://www.shotspotter.com/law-enforcement

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Appendix VIDEO 1 – ShotSpotter in San Francisco – https://youtu.be/1MiKY1ADAAU

Published on Oct 8, 2014 – ShotSpotter gunfire data enables intelligent analysis. With that, law enforcement can move from the reactive to the proactive. ShotSpotter has been called “a force multiplier” because it provides critical information for better, more timely resource allocation.

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Appendix VIDEO 2 – Top 5 Drone Inventions you Must Have – https://youtu.be/_l6CQRHIGyg

Published on Jun 22, 2015 – Drone Inventions you never knew about …

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Appendix VIDEO 3 – ROBOT TANK DRONE: Unmanned Ground Vehicle | RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! – https://youtu.be/HpECV7wGZwI

Published on Feb 24, 2016 – Estonian defense company Milrem took the wraps off its robotic Tracked Hybrid Modular Infantry System (THeMIS) – a “first-of-its-kind modular hybrid Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV)” that acts as a multi-mission vehicle platform to assist or replace soldiers on the battlefield.

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ICT, Security, Transform

Securing the Homeland – From the Seas

Posted on September 15, 2016 in Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Continuing with the series on Security Intelligence, this commentary – 2 of 3 from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean – focuses on the Caribbean Sea and adjoining waterways. It addresses how we can optimize Security Intelligence (Naval/Coast Guard and police-crime issues) emanating from the seas so as to better secure our Caribbean homeland. All the other commentaries in the series covered these details:

Each commentary relates to the Caribbean security apparatus being promoted in the Go Lean regional empowerment effort. They consider the short-term, mid-term and long-term needs of our communities.

The 1,063,000 square miles of the Caribbean Sea are very important to our economic wellbeing, in addition to the banks and straits surrounding other islands in the Atlantic Ocean like the Bahamas, Bermuda and Turks & Caicos Island. There are fishery issues, commercial shipping, mineral extraction, pipelines, cruise lines and personal boat-based tourism (yachting, sailboats, etc.) issues. Island-hopping is an important activity for visitors.

The promoters of the book Go Lean … Caribbean wants to protect these activities and the homeland in general. We want to ensure that all our stakeholders – residents, tourists, trading partners – are safe and secure within our borders, on our waterways and within our Exclusive Economic Zone. This would fulfill our implied Social Contract, where citizens surrender some of their natural rights in exchange for additional protections from the State. The normal Social Contract would authorize the Caribbean member-states to deploy Naval operations and Coast Guards. The Go Lean roadmap extends the Social Contract further, empowering the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and its security apparatus … for a CU Navy.

For Security Intelligence related to the seas, the focus is not only on human “bad actors”; sometimes the nemesis is Mother Nature. As related previously, the Caribbean region must be ready for when “Crap Happens“. The qualifying incidences include events and hazards that pose a ‘clear and present danger’ to everyday life for Caribbean communities. So in addition to terrorism-related events like piracy and economic crimes like fishery encroachments, the Caribbean security apparatus must also include an Emergency Management operation. This covers the communities for “911 dangers” like “Search and Rescue” plus regional catastrophes; which includes natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes/tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, etc.), industrial incidents (chemical & oil spills), and sea-bourn bacterial & viral pandemics; think “red tides”.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation. This implementation would allow for the establishment of a technical efficient Navy – bleeding with cutting-edge systems and technologies – incorporating the existing Navies and Coast Guards of all the member-states. This allows for greater leverage and economies-of-scale.

Naval operations are costly to maintain; it is prudent to spread this large cost across the wider (wholesale) base of 42 million people in the 30 member-states. In addition to the pure economic metrics, the Go Lean roadmap also allows for smart, efficient and agile deployments; (lean = agile). But the focus of this commentary is not so much on naval hardware (ships, sub-marines, piers and docks), as it is a focus on software: Intelligence Gathering & Analysis, un-manned vessels, positioning and surveillance systems, like radar, GPS and e-LORAN.

These executions are a BIG deal, not just for the world of nautical arts & sciences, but also for the Caribbean historicity. Nautical failures have always plagued Caribbean maritime operations. In a previous blog-commentary, the practice of “Shipwrecking” was exposed, reflecting a bad community ethos that permeated the region at the time. The encyclopedic details are as follow:

Shipwrecking was the practice of taking valuables (cargo) from a shipwreck which has floundered close to shore; this evolved into what is now known as “marine salvage”. While wrecking is no longer economically significant, this practice was in itself an industry as recently as the 19th century in some parts of the world, and a mainstay in many Caribbean economies. The Caribbean islands, waterways and ports have to contend with a lot of hidden water hazards, like reefs. So this industry thrived on the uncertainty of shipping, (before better navigational tools and systems), but also created their own pro-wrecking incidents and threats, like false lighting and sabotage.

This history helps us to appreciate the need for good nautical intelligence.

Where are the ships/vessels?
Where are they going?
How do they plan to get there?

These simple questions can mean life-or-death. We have the unfortunate experience, just this past year, of the cargo ship El Faro, that sank of the coast of the Bahamas in the middle of a quickly developed storm, Hurricane Joaquin. See details of the incident in the VIDEO here and the full news story in the Appendix below:

VIDEO – Search for survivors of cargo ship that disappeared during Hurricane Joaquin – http://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article37787241.html

Posted on October 5, 2015 – U.S. Coast Guard Captain Mark Fedor addresses journalists about the search for survivors of El Faro, the cargo ship that disappeared during Hurricane Joaquin. The Coast Guard now believes the ship has sunk, but the search continues for survivors. Video by Walter Michot (wmichot@miamiherald.com).

This type of incident should NEVER happen again under the CU regime. Modeling the Air Traffic Control eco-system, the CU mandate is to know the geo-position of every vessel (of a certain tonnage) in the Exclusive Economic Zones of the Caribbean Seas.

How?

How do we gather this intelligence from the Caribbean Seas? Considering that maritime satellites are already in place, and weather forecasting is already a mature ‘Art & Science’, here are 3 additional deployments embedded in the Go Lean roadmap slated for the Caribbean Seas region:

Lighthouses	This 300 year old technology of a physical lighthouse is now anachronistic. With satellite-based GPS, there is no need for a flashing light to distinguish a coastal destination. This is not the case for virtual lighthouses, where a unique radio signal may constantly ping so as to establish the location. The location is established by triangulating 3 distinct signals. The CU will install e-LORAN virtual lighthouses all along coastlines in every Caribbean member-state. These sites will identify their locations and also gather radar & surveillance data of all passing vessels, then report the data back to the Unified Command & Control Centers for Maritime Operations. See encyclopedia details on e-LORAN in the Appendix below.
Buoys	Modeling the successes of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US, the CU will deploy advanced buoys that broadcast atmospheric data in short range burst to nearby vessels, plus transmit the data back to Maritime Operations Centers. The American example provides for dynamic data from these buoys to be uploaded to searchable websites, like this example here: http://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=44013. See Photo of Buoy website below.
Unmanned vessels	While there is a jockeying for position in the race for unmanned self-driving cars on land and unmanned aerial drones in the air, there is also an “arms race” for autonomous ships. A strategy of a wide network of connected unmanned boats conducting continuous surveillance on the Caribbean Seas will enable tactical management within the Unified Command & Control structure. See Photo of Ghost Ships below.

Gathering nautical intelligence does not have to be a covert activity. This could simply be the law: every vessel – over a certain tonnage – must register with Caribbean maritime authorities when entering our waters. We must have a physical or virtual transponder to recognize them on regional radar and surveillance systems.

The previous submission in this blog series describes that the regional security pact must be instituted with a legal treaty – Status of Forces Agreement – at the launch of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. This treaty also enables the establishment of the CU Navy and an accompanying Marine Expeditionary Force to facilitate the region’s security interest. In addition, the roadmap details the width-and-breadth of a complete Intelligence Gathering & Analysis Apparatus. Nautical data – of every ship/vessel in the area – adds to the intelligence gathering.

Imagine the presence – on radar – of a ship that has not registered its transponder – suspicious.

The Go Lean book asserts there is a constant ‘clear and present danger’ on the Caribbean waters. There is the need for remediation and mitigation. This point is pronounced early in the Go Lean book with the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 12) that claims:

v.    Whereas the natural formation of our landmass and coastlines entail a large portion of waterscapes, the reality of management of our interior calls for extended oversight of the waterways between the islands. The internationally accepted 12-mile limits for national borders must be extended by International Tribunals to encompass the areas in between islands. The individual states must maintain their 12-mile borders while the sovereignty of this expanded area, the Exclusive Economic Zone, must be vested in the accedence of this Federation.

x.    Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.

xii.   Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

The CU Security/Defense Pact establishes the Homeland Security Department with jurisdiction over the 30 member-states and the Exclusive Economic Zone. Even though there will be the need for collaboration with the formal Armed Forces of the US and their Coast Guard, the CU must take the lead for the region’s security apparatus, in support and defense of the region’s economic engines. In fact, the Go Lean roadmap stresses its prime directives with these 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy and create new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and the Caribbean homeland.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The requirement for the Status of Forces Agreement, to empower our security apparatus, is “Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap. The Go Lean book details the series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to provide the proactive and reactive public safety/security in the region and the Caribbean Seas:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Privacy –vs- Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering	Page 23
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens	Page 23
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederating a non-sovereign permanent union	Page 45
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Coast Guard & Naval Authorities	Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Ground Militia Forces	Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Emergency Management Agency	Page 76
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Department of Agriculture and Fisheries	Page 88
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Start-up Foreign Policy Initiatives	Page 102
Implementation – Start-up Security Initiatives	Page 103
Implementation – Start-up Benefits from the EEZ	Page 104
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid	Page 115
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – #3: Consolidated Homeland Security Pact	Page 130
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better – Safer	Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Escalation Role	Page 134
Planning – Lessons from the American West – Needed Law & Order	Page 142
Planning – Lessons from Egypt – Law & Order for Tourism	Page 143
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy – Quick Disaster Recovery	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice – Piracy & Terrorism Enforcement	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime – Regional Security Intelligence	Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism – Combat Piracy	Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering & Analysis	Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Natural Disasters	Page 184
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Emergency Management	Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Develop Ship-Building	Page 209
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Fisheries	Page 210

Other subjects related to security and governing empowerments for the region’s defense have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentary, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8819	Lesson from China – SouthChinaSeas: Exclusive Economic Zones
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7449	‘Crap Happens’ – So What Now?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6893	Meteorology Realities for Modern Tropical Life
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6103	Sum of All Fears – ‘On Guard’ Against Deadly Threats
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5396	‘Significant’ oil deposits changes Exclusive Economic Zone Security Needs
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5002	Managing a ‘Clear and Present Danger’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4360	Dreading the ‘CaribbeanBasin Security Initiative’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3881	Intelligence Agencies to Up Cyber Security Cooperation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1965	America’s Navy – 100 Percent – Model for Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1554	Status of Forces Agreement = Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273	10 Things We Want from the US – #4: Pax Americana

The promoters of the Go Lean … Caribbean book has only one goal: to make this homeland a better place to live, work and play. This also means stability and safety on our waterways.

The Caribbean is arguably the best address of the planet, with some of the best waterscapes; but there are societal defects as well. These must be remediated and mitigated. Our primary economic driver is tourism, including cruise tourism. There have been incidents in the past within the cruise industry, where the implementations of this Go Lean/CU roadmap would have helped to maintain business continuity. See samples/examples of previous incidences in the link here: http://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/travel/2016/02/09/cruise-ship-incidents/80049070/

To succeed in the region’s execution of Homeland Security on the waterways, we must lead first with nautical intelligence.

To succeed in the region’s execution of Emergency Management, we must lead first with nautical intelligence.

A safe, secure homeland and a safe, secure Caribbean Sea is important for how we live, how we work, and how we and others play here in the Caribbean. So the issues in this Homeland Security series is of serious concern. This allows for our vision of an elevated society to be fully manifested in good times and bad. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———–

Appendix – eLORAN

Loran or “long range navigation” was a hyperbolic radio navigation system developed in the United States during World War II. After some evolution, Loran-C was the navigation standard for a number of decades. This system allowed a receiver to determine its position by listening to low frequency radio signals transmitted by fixed land-based radio beacons. [It has now been mostly de-commissioned] due to the expense of the equipment needed to interpret the signals, compared to civilian satellite navigation – GPS – systems introduced in the 1990s.

With the perceived vulnerability of global navigation satellite system (GNSS),^[47] and their own propagation and reception limitations, renewed interest in LORAN applications and development has appeared.^[48] Enhanced LORAN, also known as eLORAN or E-LORAN, comprises an advancement in receiver design and transmission characteristics which increase the accuracy and usefulness of traditional LORAN. With reported accuracy as good as ± 8 meters,^[49] the system becomes competitive with unenhanced GPS. eLORAN also includes additional pulses which can transmit auxiliary data such as DGPS corrections. eLORAN receivers now use “all in view” reception, incorporating signals from all stations in range, not solely those from a single GRI, incorporating time signals and other data from up to 40 stations. These enhancements in LORAN make it adequate as a substitute for scenarios where GPS is unavailable or degraded.^[50]

United Kingdom eLORAN implementation
On 31 May 2007, the UK Department for Transport (DfT), via the General Lighthouse Authorities (GLA), awarded a 15-year contract to provide a state-of-the-art enhanced LORAN (eLORAN) service to improve the safety of mariners in the UK and Western Europe.
Source: Retrieved September 13, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loran-C#eLORAN

———–

Appendix – News Article: Despite warnings, lost Florida ship steamed into Hurricane Joaquin

By: Alex Harris and David Ovalle

OCTOBER 5, 2015 – When the cargo ship El Faro left Jacksonville for its regular run to Puerto Rico, its owners considered a tropical storm named Joaquin drifting near the Bahamas nothing that the rugged 790-foot vessel and its experienced 33-member crew couldn’t handle.

The forecast changed as soon as the massive ship set sail but its course — the shortest, straightest shot across the Atlantic to offload containers — never did.

In the face of increasingly ominous warnings about Hurricane Joaquin from the NationalHurricaneCenter, tracking data shows that the El Faro steered almost directly into the strengthening eye of a major hurricane, a decision that appears to have contributed to one of the worst cargo-ship accidents off the U.S. coast in decades.

On Monday, the U.SCoast Guard confirmed the worst fears of families awaiting word in the ship’s homeport of Jacksonville: The massive ship, missing since a last communication Thursday, sank. Its hull spewed so much Styrofoam packing debris from within its bowels that a Coast Guard officer said the waters off the Bahamas resembled a golf course driving range dotted with balls.

One corpse was found Sunday night, as well as an empty and badly damaged 43-seat lifeboat. There were unidentifiable human remains inside a “survival suit,” which helps crew members float and avoid hypothermia.

Despite the Coast Guard’s grim discoveries, the search will continue for possible survivors. The questions about what happened to the ship have only begun.

While much remained unclear, some commercial shipping experts said federal investigators, who will produce the final report on the El Faro’s fate, will almost certainly focus on the call to risk navigating through a hurricane rather than the captain or company deciding to take the safer, but longer route down along the more protected Florida coast.

“He was going to cross the storm at some point. In my opinion, it makes no sense to do that. When you’re a ship, you want to avoid the storm at all costs,” said Capt. Sam Stephenson, who teaches emergency ship handling at Fort Lauderdale’s ResolveMaritimeAcademy.

“A lot of questions will be about what the company and the captain knew and when, and what action was taken,” Basil Karatzas, of Karatzas Marine Advisors & Co., told the Wall Street Journal.

The 790-foot ship departed from Jacksonville on Tuesday when Joaquin was still a tropical storm. The American-flagged El Faro, which means The Lighthouse in Spanish, had a crew of 33 — 28 Americans and 5 from Poland. The captain, Michael Davidson of Maine, was a veteran. The ship was due to arrive in San Juan on Friday.

In a statement on its website, TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico, which owns the ship, said that when the crew set sail on Tuesday, the weather called for a tropical storm, not a hurricane.

“Our crew are trained to deal with unfolding weather situations and are best prepared and equipped to respond to emerging situations while at sea,” the company wrote. “TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico authorized the sailing knowing that the crew are more than equipped to handle situations such as changing weather.”

But by 11 p.m. that night, with the El Faro still not far from Jacksonville, forecasters warned that Joaquin had already hit 70 mph and would become a hurricane by the next morning. Forecasters also noted that Bahamian waters were warm and wind shear was mild, conditions that can fuel intensification. Some computer models saw Joaquin growing fiercer fast. “It should be noted, that the UKMET, GFS, and ECMWF models all significantly deepen Joaquin during the next few days, and the NHC forecast could be somewhat conservative.”

That’s exactly what happened. By 8 a.m. Wednesday, with the ship still hours from the northern Bahamas according to data from Marinetraffic.com, the NHC declared Joaquin a hurricane with 75 mph winds. Forecasters also cautioned that additional strengthening was expected. Over the next 12 hours, Joaquin exploded, wind speed leaping with every NHC advisory. By 11 p.m. Wednesday, it was a Category 3 storm with 115 mph winds.

At least one crew member expressed concern. “Not sure if you’ve been following the weather at all,” crew member Danielle Randolph wrote in an e-mail to her mother, according to the Washington Post, “but there is a hurricane out here and we are heading straight into it.”

By 7:30 a.m. Thursday — about when the ship would have been hitting the hurricane wind field of a storm on the cusp of Cat 4 — the El Faro reported losing power and taking on water. According to TOTE, the company that owns the ship, the crew reported successfully pumping the water out. The weather conditions kept the ship leaning a “manageable” 15 degrees to the side, according to TOTE. That was the last communication from the ship.

At a Monday press conference, Coast Guard Capt. Mark Fedor said that would have left the ship, unable to make headway, at the mercy of 100-knot winds and waves estimated at 50-feet high. Hulls can crack when suspended between waves. Container ships, which can be top-heavy, also are prone to capsizing. Unless the hull is found, how the El Faro went down may always be a speculation.

It’s unclear if that will happen. The ship, packed with 391 containers above deck and 294 below, sank in an area where the Atlantic runs 15,000 feet deep.

The conditions of a major hurricane — where wind and waves can be blinding — also make the process of abandoning ship dangerous. But Coast Guard rescue teams haven’t given up hope of finding survivors. Fedor said a person could survive four to five days in the 80 degree water.

“These are trained mariners,” he said. “We’re not going to discount someone’s will to survive.”

Because El Faro is an American-flagged vessel, the investigation into the sinking will be led by the National Transportation Safety Board and aided by the Coast Guard. Fedor said the Coast Guard will likely launch an independent investigation as well.

U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown of Jacksonville, a senior member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, also called for a congressional inquiry. She planned to meet with El Faro family members Monday afternoon.

TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico did not respond to calls for comment. But in a statement released Monday, President Tim Nolan expressed gratitude to the Coast Guard and dismay at the situation. “We continue to hold out hope for survivors,” he said. “Our prayers and thoughts go out to the family members and we will continue to do all we can to support them.”

But some commercial shipping experts question whether there was a push to try to cut it too close around a developing storm. The Marinetraffic.com data shows El Faro steaming along toward the Bahamas at 18 to near 20 knots — close to its maximum speed.

Giving Joaquin a wider berth and traveling south down the Florida coast might have added 200 miles, and anywhere between six and 10 hours of travel time, Stephenson said. “Prudence plays a large role in this situation.”

Capt. Mark Rupert, who worked the Jacksonville-to-Puerto Rico route for over a decade on cargo ships, agreed the route nearer to Florida was the safest option. Trying to outrun the storm by heading east could lead a ship right into the system’s nastier side.

Rupert and Stephenson said a loss of power would have led to cascading problems, breaking cargo free, worsening violent lurching in waves and adding to any list from taking on water.

“When you don’t have propulsion, you can’t do anything. You’re at the mercy of the sea,” said Rupert, a veteran shipping captain who now works as a harbor pilot in Fort Lauderdale. “It’s kind of terrifying to think of what the crew would have went through in their final minutes.”

Stephenson said the fact that the remains of a crew member were found in a survival suit also tells a story. “They knew the ship was going down.”

In the Bahamas, meanwhile, donations continued to pour as officials worked to assess the extent of the damage in its southern and central islands from Hurricane Joaquin. The government still has not confirmed any deaths from the storm. But Rev. Keith Cartwright of the Anglican Diocese of the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands told the Miami Herald that according to Bahamian officials, a man died when the roof of his home on Long Island collapsed as a result of high winds

Downed utility poles and flooded runways continue to pose challenges, though Police Commissioner Ellison Greenslade and his team were able to land in Acklins and CrookedIslands Monday as they traveled to assess the situation.

“Please help the people at ColonelHillAirport to get to Nassau before sunset. They need airlift. 46 persons and counting,” Greenslade Twitter account read. Colonel Hill is in CrookedIsland.

Prime Minister Perry Christie also continued his tour of the devastation and his appeal for assistance. He pledged that no resources would be spared in providing assistance in the Joaquin’s aftermath but said the country cannot do it alone.

“We are going to need help,” Christie told the government news station ZNS Sunday after his second visit to Long Island in 24 hours. “We made a commitment to go all out, to bring relief in the shortest possible time, to bring restoration in the shortest possible time. We have now spread our teams around the affected areas.”

MIAMI HERALD STAFF WRITER JACQUELINE CHARLES CONTRIBUTED TO THIS STORY.

Source: Retrieved September 13, 2016 from: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather/hurricane/article37779879.html

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Fisheries, ICT, Security, Ships, Transform

[Top]

Securing the Homeland – From the Air

Posted on September 14, 2016 in Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean wants to protect the Caribbean homeland. We want to ensure that all our stakeholders – residents, tourists, trading partners – are safe and secure within our borders.

This quest is not just a desire, it is also a job description. According to the implied Social Contract, citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights. This Social Contract authorizes the State to raise a militia and establish police forces to ensure public safety and protections against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

This job responsibility is a BIG deal; and very expensive. For some governmental administrations – think local municipalities – security fulfillment is the lion-share of their budgets. This is because of the one ingredient that is most expensive:

Personnel.

The Go Lean book presents a strategy for better securing the homeland by optimizing the investment in people. The approach is to ensure homeland security by confederating a regional force – police and military – under the guise of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This allows for greater leverage and economies-of-scale.

Security is costly; both on the macro and the micro (price per citizen/capita). So it is prudent to spread the large cost of security across a wider base; think wholesale versus retail. The bigger the confederation, the cheaper the cost per capita. This strategy allows us to attain our objectives while confronting the reality of Caribbean life, that the 30 member-states are mostly all Third World countries; they hover near the poverty line; we do not have money to field a Big-Bulky military or police force.

If a community wants to have the protections without the expense, then there is the need to be smart, efficient and agile: “Jack be nimble; Jack be quick”.

Agile or nimble? These are descriptors synonymous with “lean”.

Just the name of the book – Go Lean … Caribbean – is a clue to this strategy: to provide a nimble, agile security solution in conjunction with economic empowerments. So when we think of lean security, do not think sledgehammer, think scalpel, or surgical precision.

There is a primary functionality that the CU can provide that is surgical? Intelligence.

The Go Lean book provide comprehensive details on Intelligence Gathering and Analysis. See this sample here from Page 182:

The [enlarged] size of the CU market will allow it to afford cutting edge equipment, systems and training to facilitate the intelligence gathering functionality for all CU defense initiatives.
The CU’s law enforcement agencies will work in conjunction with the Homeland Security apparatus. Even though the CU jurisdiction extends to economic crimes and regional threats, the CU will provide intelligence gathering and analysis for domestic and foreign security entities. The CU will also extend grants to local agencies to acquire and maintain surveillance equipment: CATV, dashboard cameras for police cars and helmet “cams” on tactical (SWAT) team members.

Security Intelligence is the focus of this series of commentaries. There is the need to optimize military intelligence and police-crime intelligence to better secure the Caribbean homeland. This commentary is 1 of 3 from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean, in consideration of Security Intelligence. The other commentaries detailed in this series are as follows:

All of these commentaries relate to the Caribbean security apparatus being promoted in the Go Lean regional empowerment effort. They consider the short-term, mid-term and long-term needs of our communities.

As related in previous commentaries – see list below – there is the need for overt and covert security in the region. These previous submissions describe that the regional security pact must be instituted with a legal treaty – Status of Forces Agreement – at the launch of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The Go Lean book therefore serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the CU. The security apparatus within the CU would be established by all sovereign powers of the 30 Caribbean member-states to empower the region with this Security / Defense Pact (Armed Forces) with a fully-empowered Naval Force and adequately manned Expeditionary Marine Forces to facilitate the region’s security interest. For covert empowerments, the book details the width-and-breadth of an Intelligence Gathering & Analysis Apparatus to fully round-out the security efforts.

For this consideration, we should answer the question: how can we secure the Caribbean homeland from the air?

Hardware and software…

So hardware refers to the following military equipment (satellites, planes, air-ships, etc). While software refers to intelligence, communications and computer applications. Today’s military establishment is part-soldier, part-sailor, part-aviator and part-computer-programmer!

Satellites

The Caribbean owns no satellites! Yet, the Go Lean book details that Security Intelligence can still be fulfilled by engaging other satellite solutions providers:

The Bottom Line on DigitalGlobe
In addition to skilled people, overt intelligence gathering is accomplished by systems architecture (hardware, software & communications) and applications. The combination of DigitalGlobe and GeoEye creates a global leader in earth imagery architecture and the means by which to perform geospatial analysis. They now boast 5 advanced satellites with harmonized collection programs, a collection capability of 3 million square kilometers per day. This provides a worldwide infrastructure for optimized data upload/offload operations and shorter delivery timeframes. A partner client of DigitalGlobe is the Washington, DC-based non-government organization (NGO) Fund For Peace Institute that performs threat assessment and conflict analysis. (Annually, they publish the FSI – Failed State Index). The following is their published statement (Fundforpeace.org):
“As part of our quest to find new and innovative methods for conflict analysis, we have begun working with DigitalGlobe’s Analysis Center, which has access to real-time and archival satellite imagery captured by DigitalGlobe’s own fleet of satellites that have been made famous for their role in the Satellite Sentinel Project over Sudan and South Sudan. We are exploring these new forms of data to watch human patterns change and understand the impact on potential for conflict, or how a change in patterns may be an indicator of conflict. We also want to see how digital imagery – and data generated from the analysis of it – can be integrated into our data, both that used for the high-level FSI and other more granular analysis”. – Go Lean book Page 182.

See the VIDEO here on the GeoEye system:

VIDEO – GeoEye – https://youtu.be/oUhYndAfKyA

Uploaded on Jan 13, 2009 – Learn about GeoEye 1 – the world’s highest resolution commercial earth imaging satellite.

Continuing the theme of “Other People’s Satellites”, the Go Lean roadmap also identified the reality that many Caribbean member-states are overseas territories of major military powers, with their own array of satellite offerings. Consider this list:

Military Power	Dependent Territory
USA	Puerto Rico
	US Virgin Islands
United Kingdom	Anguilla, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Montserrat
	Turks & Caicos, British Virgin Islands
Netherlands	Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Sint Maarten, Saba
	Sint Eustatius
France	Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Martin, Saint Barthélemy

Planes

There is no need for the Caribbean to deploy or maintain intercontinental ballistic missiles, long-range bombers and fighter jets. But still, many of our allies – see above list – maintain such a readiness. We would welcome their placement in the Caribbean region, whether from ground-bases or aboard aircraft carriers. The Go Lean roadmap allows for a role of these above-identified Military powers in securing the Caribbean homeland from the air. The book implies this at (individually at Pages 245, 246, 247, 248):

The CU Security Pact will allow American/UK/France/NATO forces to patrol, train and visit Caribbean waters [, airspace] and CU ports.

The primary responsibility then for the CU Security Pact in securing the homeland from the air will be the Unified Command and Control of all the intelligence activities from these other powers. This point was stressed in the book on Page 180 – Ways to Improve Homeland Security:

CU Defense Pact
The CU region has enemies, examples being narco-terrorists, and sworn enemies of the CU‘s allies and legacy nations (US, Britain, France, and Netherlands). As a result, the collective security agreement will create a Homeland Security Department, to defend the member states against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This Department will coalesce with the US/British, French and Dutch military liaisons to coordinate the public safety needs of the region against systemic threats. The CU, by the sheer size of the market, will fund the acquisition of cutting edge equipment and defensive weapons – i.e. Un-manned Aviation Vehicles (Drones), anti-aircraft systems, and Attack helicopters.

The Go Lean roadmap does not only call for use of other people’s planes for communications and surveillance, we can and should deploy some of our own as well. How about cutting-edge Un-manned Aerial Vehicles (drones) designed to stay aloft for weeks, months, years at a time. This is now reality…

… see the VIDEO here of a sample UAV, developed with support from Facebook, designed to remain aloft for indefinite periods of time. (In addition, see this related news article here on this breakthrough accomplishment; retrieved September 13, 2016 from: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jul/21/facebook-solar-powered-internet-plane-test-flight-aquila):

VIDEO – Facebook’s drone Aquila project tries to bring internet to the rest of the world – https://youtu.be/v5_kGZS3yr8

Published on Jul 31, 2015 –

Mark Zuckerberg the CEO of facebook on his facebook shares this:

I’m excited to announce we’ve completed construction of our first full scale aircraft, Aquila, as part of our Internet.org effort.

Aquila is a solar powered unmanned plane that beams down internet connectivity from the sky. It has the wingspan of a Boeing 737, but weighs less than a car and can stay in the air for months at a time.

We’ve also made a breakthrough in laser communications technology. We’ve successfully tested a new laser that can transmit data at 10 gigabits per second. That’s ten times faster than any previous system, and it can accurately connect with a point the size of a dime from more than 10 miles away.

This effort is important because 10% of the world’s population lives in areas without existing internet infrastructure. To affordably connect everyone, we need to build completely new technologies.

Using aircraft to connect communities using lasers might seem like science fiction. But science fiction is often just science before its time. Over the coming months, we will test these systems in the real world and continue refining them so we can turn their promise into reality. Here’s a video showing the building of Aquila.

For more information, see website: http://www.hackindo.com

——–

First flight – June 28, 2016 …

“We’re proud to announce the successful first test flight of Aquila, the solar airplane we designed to bring internet access to people living in remote locations. We look forward to the rest of the journey toward making the world more open and connected.”

Accompanying VIDEO: https://youtu.be/lKdmLbxK5dQ

Air-ships

The Caribbean is an ideal market for modern air-ships.

Gone are the days of the Hindenburg – the German hydrogen-powered air-ship that crashed in the US state of New Jersey in 1937. Now the “lighter than air” class of dirigibles feature stable and secure operations – powered by safe helium – with solar-paneled embedded frames/coverings to enable continuous high-end electronic surveillance. They can remain afloat for weeks at a time. Imagine an inter-connected network of constantly flying air-ships circum-navigating the Caribbean skies-and-waters, always watching, always on guard to protect the homeland from the skies. See a sample air-ship here in this VIDEO:

VIDEO – Lockheed Martin – P-791 Hybrid Airship – https://youtu.be/isJRgEu7DQo

Uploaded on Sep 10, 2010 – Success in the war on terrorism depends on knowing where the enemy is hiding and having resources in place to act on that knowledge quickly. In a war where the adversaries of freedom can strike at any time and from any point, our servicemen and women need the most sophisticated intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets available. Their lives and the lives of innocent civilians may hang in the balance.

—————

Considering the foregoing solutions to secure Caribbean intelligence from the air, there is one consistent adjective: not labor-intensive.

Yes, we want the advanced security options.
No, we do not want high maintenance costs. We want lean, technocratic options … only.

There is the need to reform and transform the societal engines of the Caribbean. This refers to economics, security and governing aspects in the homeland of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region: all the Caribbean islands, plus the 2 member-states on the South American mainland (Guyana and Suriname) and 1 member-state on the Central American isthmus (Belize). Despite our difference, “we are all in the same boat” and must band together to ensure our homeland is protected.

We know that “bad actors” abound now; and we expect even more … to come.

The Go Lean book asserts that once we remediate and mitigate our broken economic engines, we most assuredly should expect more security challenges, as economic success brings “bad actors” looking to exploit the environment for their own illicit gains; (Page 23). This point is pronounced early in the Go Lean book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

The CU Security/Defense Pact would be established by the 30 member-states to empower the region, above and beyond any offerings from our neighboring Super-Power, the US. We are responsible for our economic engines, and must also be responsible for our own security apparatus. In fact, the Go Lean roadmap stresses these 3 statements in the Go Lean/CU prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy and create new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and the Caribbean homeland.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Privacy –vs- Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering	Page 23
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens	Page 23
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederating a non-sovereign permanent union	Page 45
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Coast Guard & Naval Authorities	Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Ground Militia Forces	Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Emergency Management Agency	Page 76
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Start-up Foreign Policy Initiatives	Page 102
Implementation – Start-up Security Initiatives	Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid	Page 115
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – #3: Consolidated Homeland Security Pact	Page 130
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better – Safer	Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Escalation Role	Page 134
Planning – Lessons from the American West – Needed Law & Order	Page 142
Planning – Lessons from Egypt – Law & Order for Tourism	Page 143
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy – Quick Disaster Recovery	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice – Policing the Police	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime – Regional Security Intelligence	Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism	Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering & Analysis	Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Emergency Management	Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197

Other subjects related to security and governing empowerments for the region’s defense have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentary, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8819	Lesson from China – South China Seas: Exclusive Economic Zones
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7449	‘Crap Happens’ – So What Now?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7345	ISIS and Terrorism reaches the Caribbean Region
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7119	Security Role Model: African Standby Force
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6720	A Lesson in History – During the Civil War: Principle over Principal
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6103	Sum of All Fears – ‘On Guard’ Against Deadly Threats
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5183	A Lesson in History – Cinco De Mayo and Mexico’s Security Lapses
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5002	Managing a ‘Clear and Present Danger’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4360	Dreading the ‘Caribbean Basin Security Initiative’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3881	Intelligence Agencies to Up Cyber Security Cooperation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1965	America’s Navy – 100 Percent – Model for Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1554	Status of Forces Agreement = Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=535	Remembering and learning from Boston
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273	10 Things We Want from the US – #4: Pax Americana

The promoters of the Go Lean … Caribbean book has only one goal: to make this homeland a better place to live, work and play. This also means stronger and safer!

The Caribbean is arguably the best address on the planet; but there are societal defects that must be remediated and mitigated. Our primary economic driver is tourism, and tourists do not visit “hot-spots” with civil war, genocides, active terrorism and rampant crime. We cannot allow these threats to arise and must be prepared to mitigate them at the earliest signs of trouble.

We must lead first with intelligence … gathering and analysis.

A safe, secure homeland is important for how we live, how we work, and how we and others play here in the Caribbean. So the issues in this discussion is of serious concern. We are not preparing for war; we are preparing for peace; preparing to secure our homeland. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Lessons from China – WeChat: Model for Caribbean Social Media

Posted on August 31, 2016 in Implementation, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

“In one country, 90 percent of adults use mobile money to conduct commercial transactions” – previous 60 Minutes report: “M-Pesa, the Future of Money”.

That country is Kenya on the African continent. That penetration rate – 90% – was believed to be one of the highest acceptance rate in any large country.

And now we are learning about the business model of WeChat … in China …

… it is a Social Media SuperApp, messaging and digital assistant with an electronic payment functionality similar to M-Pesa. This is the Smartphone answer to a basic phone’s utilitarianism.

See the story in the VIDEO here and the encyclopedic reference that follows:

VIDEO – How China Is Changing Your Internet – http://nyti.ms/2bhgH5s

Posted August 9, 2016 – What was once known as the land of cheap rip-offs may now offer a glimpse of the future — and American companies are taking notice. By JONAH M. KESSEL and PAUL MOZUR. Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters.
———

Reference Title: WeChat

WeChat (literal translation: “micro message”) is a cross-platform instant messaging service developed by Tencent in China, first released in January 2011.^[10] It is one of the largest standalone messaging apps by monthly active users.^[11][12]

The app is available on Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Symbian phones. Web-based OS X^[13] and Windows^[14] clients also exist; these however require the user to have the app installed on a supported mobile phone for authentication, and neither message roaming nor ‘Moments’ are provided.^[15] As of May 2016, WeChat has over a billion created accounts, 700 million active users;^[16] with more than 70 million outside of China (as of December 2015).^[17][18]

WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, sharing of photographs and videos, and location sharing.^[19][20] It can exchange contacts with people nearby via Bluetooth, as well as providing various features for contacting people at random if desired (if these are open to it), next to integration with social networking services such as those run by Facebook and Tencent QQ.^[21] Photographs may also be embellished with filters and captions, and a machine translation service is available.

For work purposes, companies and business communication, a special version of WeChat called Enterprise WeChat (or Qiye Weixin) was launched in April 2016. The app is meant to help employees separate work from private life.^[22] Except the usual chat features, the program lets companies and their employees keep track of annual leave days and expenses that need to be reimbursed, employees can ask for time off or even clock in to show they are at work.^[22][23] Security has been upgraded and companies must register before their employees can use the service.^[24][25]

Security concerns
WeChat operates from China under Chinese law, which includes strong censorship provisions and interception protocols.^[51] WeChat contains the ability to access the text messages and contact books of its users and users’ locations through the GPS feature.^[51] Countries and regions such as India, the United States, China and Taiwan all fear that the app poses a threat to national or regional security for various reasons.^[51][52][53] In Taiwan, legislators were concerned that the potential exposure of private communications was a threat to regional security.^[51] In June 2013, the Indian Intelligence Bureau flagged WeChat for security concerns. India has debated whether or not they should ban WeChat for its possibility in collecting too much personal information and data from its users.^[53][54][55]Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – Retrieved August 30, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat

This push for emergence of Internet & Communications Technologies is a familiar advocacy for the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book identifies a possible universe of 130 million active users; this is huge from a Caribbean perspective, but actually small compared to other source countries. The book detailed the full inventory of global Social Media sites around the words with greater than 100 million active users as of November 2013. See the list here:

Rank	Name	Registered users	Active user accounts	Date of stat	Date launched	Country of origin
1	Facebook	1+ billion	1 billion	October 2012	February 2004	United States
2	Tencent QQ	784+ million	712 million	September 2012	2003	China
3	Skype	663+ million	280 million	January 2013	August 2003	Estonia
4	Google+	500+ million	235 million	December 2012	June 2011	United States
5	Twitter	500+ million	200+ million	December 2012	March 2006	United States
6	LinkedIn	200+ million	160 million	January 2013	May 2003	United States
7	Tencent Qzone	597 million	150 million	September 2012	2005	China
8	Sina Weibo	400+ million	100+ million	February 2013	August 2009	China
9	Dropbox	100+ million	100 million	November 2012	September 2008	United States
10	Windows Live	100 million	100 million	December 2012	November 2005	United States
11	Instagram	100+ million	100 million	February 2013	October 2010	United States

Notice that 3 of these 11 sites are based in China. (WeChat is a product from China-based Tencent; see Appendix).

This commentary completes the series on China; this is commentary 6 of 6 in consideration of the good and bad lessons from China. The other commentaries detailed in this series are as follows:

History of China Trade: Too Big to Ignore
Why China will soon be Hollywood’s largest market
Organ Transplantation: Facts and Fiction
Mobile Game Apps: The new Playground
South China Seas: Exclusive Economic Zones
WeChat: Model for Caribbean Social Media – www.MyCaribbean.gov

All of these commentaries relate to nation-building, stressing the community investments required to facilitate the short-term, mid-term and long-term needs of our communities. This last commentary admires how the China-based WeChat online product is all-encompassing for all daily activities, facilitating value-added experiences for its users. It brings the benefits of the virtual world to the real world.

The WeChat experience in China is unique in that access is blocked from foreign access – no inputs nor outputs; this is referred to as the Great Firewall of China. (See more details here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/technology/china-homegrown-internet-companies-rest-of-the-world.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1).

So the lesson for the Caribbean is how to regulate technology in our society. With the Great Firewall and all the security threats, we do not want to invite WeChat to the Caribbean region. Rather we want to model WeChat for our own homegrown Social Media product, identified in the Go Lean book as www.myCaribbean.gov, (but without the Great Firewall features).

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) as regional stewards of Cyberspace and the economy, or better stated: electronic commerce. e-Commerce will drive change in payment systems, to include options depicted in the foregoing VIDEO.

The CU oversight is to be executed in conjunction with the Caribbean Postal Union (CPU), the administrator of the www.myCaribbean.gov Social Media site and network. The purpose of the CPU charter is the efficient and effective facilitation of postal mail and messaging. To be consequential in 2016, no postal initiative can launch without an online/email solution. This implementation is embedded in the Go Lean roadmap, as detailed here in the book on Page 108:

The CU will include e-delivery of government operations so as to integrate and consolidate services that are usually a cost center. The resultant economies-of-scale will result in Postal operations (CPU) emerging as a logistics Profit Center rather than Cost Center.
…
Cyber Mail Assistance (First Leg & Last Leg)
E-mail is a reality that should be embraced. The CPU will coordinate and collaborate with the www.myCaribbean.gov portal to offer email to all 42 million citizens, [10 million Diaspora and 80 million visitors]. The CPU will offer products, for a fee, like “last leg” postal mail for emails that need to be delivered on paper, or “first leg” postal for paper mail that can be scanned and delivered as email.

The CU, CPU and CCB are all organs of the new Caribbean elevation initiative. The CCB will facilitate transactions settlement for the new payment eco-system. The Go Lean roadmap calls for a regional currency for the Caribbean Single Market, the Caribbean Dollar (C$), to be used primarily as an electronic currency. This scheme will impact the growth of the regional economy in both the domestic and tourist markets. Economic growth is only one of the objectives of the Go Lean/CU roadmap; in fact, the Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

To be counted on the world stage, the Caribbean region must conquer Cyberspace – for our own people – to elevate the interactions among the business and consumer virtual communities. When we say interactions, we mean payment transactions as well.

The benefits are undeniable: instant access, safer transactions, expanded networks, and an expanded money supply.

This last one, expanded money supply refers to the feature in Economics of M1. Electronic payment schemes causes a shift in the measurement of M1 and M0. M0 refers to the “cash currency” (paper notes & coins); M1 refers to the measurement of overnight bank deposits plus the “cash” in circulation (the M0). The Go Lean book explains the money multiplier effect, how M1 increases allow central banks – in this case, the CCB – to create money “from thin-air”.

A mission of the Go Lean roadmap is to prepare the Caribbean region to adapt and thrive in the new global marketplace. This goal requires strenuous currency management and technocratic oversight of the region’s technological initiatives. This need was pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

xv. Whereas the business of the Federation and the commercial interest in the region cannot prosper without an efficient facilitation of postal services, the Caribbean Union must allow for the integration of the existing mail operations of the governments of the member-states into a consolidated Caribbean Postal Union, allowing for the adoption of best practices and technical advances to deliver foreign/domestic mail in the region.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster the proper guidance for the deployment of an advanced Social Media network (and accompanying e-Payments scheme) in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Economic Principles	Page 21
Community Ethos – Money Multiplier Principle	Page 22
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Privacy versus Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 35
Strategy – Mission – Fortify the monetary needs through a Currency Union	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Facilitate modern communications with postal enhancements	Page 46
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Central Banking	Page 73
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Postal Operations: CPU	Page 78
Implementation – Assemble Central Bank Cooperative	Page 96
Implementation – Assemble Caribbean Regional Organs – like CTU	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Improve Mail Services – CPU Deployments	Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – #2: Currency Union / Single Currency	Page 127
Anecdote – Caribbean Currencies	Page 149
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Black Markets – Benefit of e-Payments	Page 165
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Cruise Tourism – e-Payment scheme	Page 193
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Reforms for Banking Regulations – Central Banking Efficiencies	Page 199
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street – Downtown Wi-Fi – Time and Place	Page 201
Appendix – Assembling the Caribbean Telecommunications Union – As Regulator	Page 256

As depicted in the foregoing VIDEO and these previously Go Lean blog-commentaries, those involved in retail commerce – in general – must now adapt to this new electronic commerce/payment world … or perish:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7991	Transformations: Caribbean Postal Union – Delivering the Future
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7297	Death of the ‘Department Store’: Exaggerated or Eventual
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7034	The Future of Money – M-Pesa Model
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6635	New Security Chip in Credit Cards Unveiled
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5668	Move over Mastercard/Visa… here comes a Caribbean Solution
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4425	Cash, Credit or iPhone …
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3889	Caribbean banks are ready to accept electronic payments transactions
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2488	Chinese Role Model Jack Ma brings Alibaba to America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2074	MetroCard – Model for the Caribbean Dollar
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1416	Amazon – Role Model for Caribbean e-Commerce & Logistics
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1350	PayPal expands payment services to 10 markets
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=906	Bitcoin needs regulatory framework to change ‘risky’ image of payments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=528	Facebook plans to provide mobile payment services

The world of Social Media networking and electronic payment systems is here. China has demonstrated a successful model for us in the Caribbean to emulate.

The lesson from China is that a low-technical population can assimilate high-tech solutions, provided that solutions are real. China has a population of 1.3 billion people; WeChat has 700 million active users. All those people cannot be “Geeks”. Many are just plain folks, the sort that comprise the 42 million in the Caribbean.

And then imagine the “Geeks”; imagine the opportunities: jobs and entrepreneurship. Imagine…

The lesson from China is that the business axiom is true:

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

This gives us confidence that the Caribbean Social Media network, www.myCaribbean.gov, can be fully accepted in the marketplace.

Yes, this Go Lean roadmap is conceivable, believable and achievable. The benefits are too enticing to ignore: fostering more e-Commerce, increasing M1, growing the economy, creating jobs, enhancing security and optimizing governance. Now is the time for all stakeholders – people and businesses – of the Caribbean to lean-in to this roadmap. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————–

Appendix VIDEO – Preview WeChat for Android – https://youtu.be/y2uRA9qji_I

Published on Apr 25, 2016 – WeChat is a free messaging & calling app used by 700 million people that allows you to easily connect with family & friends across countries. It’s the all-in-one communications app for free text (SMS/MMS), voice & video calls, Moments, photo sharing, and games.

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Lessons from China – Mobile Game Apps: The New Playground

Posted on August 29, 2016 in Ethos, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Oh the games people play now
Every night and every day now
Never meaning what they say now
Never saying what they mean
Song Lyrics: Joe South, “Games People Play” – 1969

Games are just a way of life. We start playing them as children and we do not stop…even into old age; think “Shuffle Board” for the elderly. Where there are games and play, there must also be playgrounds, whether physical or virtual.

Not all games are physical, requiring an actual playground; we must also count board games, games of chance and the new phenomena of electronic games (Video and Smartphone). This focus of Smartphone games or Apps seem to be all the rage. Considering just one country China, we glean so much insight about their “flourishing market” for Mobile Game Apps:

… the biggest in the world, in fact. In 2015, that market was worth 7 billion dollars, with 400 million gamers consuming 10,000 games released that year alone. That’s about 27 new games a day. – Except from below article.

From a perspective of China, there is a lot of business opportunities in the business of games. Considering the economic laws of “supply and demand”, there is a lot of demand in … China.

“There is gold in dem there hills”. – Outcry for the California Gold Rush of 1849

The “hills” in this case refers to the 1.3 billion people in China. That’s a lot of people, and a lot of demand. This is commentary 4 of 6 in consideration of the good and bad lessons from China. The other commentaries detailed in this series are as follows:

History of China Trade: Too Big to Ignore
Why China will soon be Hollywood’s largest market
Organ Transplantation: Facts and Fiction
Mobile Game Apps: The new Playground
South China Seas: Exclusive Economic Zones
WeChat: Model for Caribbean Social Media – www.MyCaribbean.gov

All of these commentaries relate to nation-building, stressing the community investments required to facilitate the short-term, mid-term and long-term needs of our communities. But this one commentary stresses the viability of Mobile Game Apps (applications), positing that if any entity (individual, company or community) that invest in the development of Mobile Game Apps – the new playground – for China and other markets, that there would be some definite returns, reaping of the benefits.

With 1.3 billion people, the entities that foster innovation for electronic games for China will surely enjoy the resultant economic benefits – those who sow will reap – such as entrepreneurship and jobs. This fact is among the lessons, good and bad, for the Caribbean to learn from China. This is a fine model for economic empowerment; consider the experiences of the Mobile Game App Candy Crush Saga below in Appendix A – $633,000 in revenue per day! Wow!.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean recognizes the emergence of this new playground; it seeks to make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. It makes the claim that innovation and economic growth can result from a progressive community ethos. The book defines this “community ethos” as the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of society; dominant assumptions of a people or period. The book thereafter recommends the ethos of Entrepreneurship (Page 28), Intellectual Property Promotion (Page 29), Bridging the Digital Divide (Page 30) and fostering Research and Development or R&D (Page 31).

The landscape for Mobile Game Apps in China is not easy; it is heavy-lifting with all the government rules, regulations and restrictions. But for the “champion” that endures and traverses the obstacles and deliver: Gold! Consider the story here, from this VIDEO:

VIDEO Title – Did China Just Kill Its Mobile Game Industry? – https://youtu.be/8sSeOShvXik

Published on Jul 13, 2016 – Mobile Video Games are a huge industry in China, whether Android or iOS. But insane new censorship laws might spell game over for the industry.
Contribute! Join the China Uncensored 50-Cent Army!
https://www.patreon.com/ChinaUncensored

China Uncensored is a weekly satire show produced by NTD Television. The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of Epoch Times.

See the full transcript of the VIDEO in Appendix B below.

The foregoing news story, about Mobile Game Apps, validates the strategies, tactics and implementations of the Go Lean book, which had placed a priority on Mobile Applications – The book defines the mastery of time-&-space as strategic for succeeding in mobile apps development and deployment for the region (Page 35), specifying this encyclopedic detail:

The Bottom Line on Mobile Applications
A mobile application (or app) is a software application designed to run on smart-phones, tablet computers and other mobile devices. They are usually available through application distribution platforms, which are typically operated by the owner of the mobile operating system, such as the Apple App Store, Google Play, Windows Phone Store, and BlackBerry App World. Some apps are free, while others must be bought. Usually, they are downloaded from the platform to a target device, such as an iPhone, BlackBerry, Android phone or Windows Phone, but sometimes they can be downloaded to laptops or desktops. The term “app” is now popular; in 2010 it was named “Word of the Year” by the American Dialect Society.

Mobile apps were originally offered for general productivity and information retrieval, including email, calendar, contacts, and stock market and weather information. However, public demand and the availability of developer tools drove rapid expansion into other categories, such as mobile games, factory automation, GPS and location-based services, banking, order-tracking, ticket purchases [and sharing services]. The popularity of mobile applications has continued to rise, as their usage has become increasingly prevalent across mobile phone users. [The resultant mobile commerce is obvious] as many choose to think of Mobile Commerce as meaning “a retail outlet in your customer’s pocket.”

Due to these conditions, consumer sharing applications have now become intuitive; supplying demand at the right place and right time, dynamically or pre-scheduled.

The book, Go Lean…Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This administration must ensure that there is accountability and transparency in the governance of the Information Technology Arts and Sciences. The book stresses that the current community spirit/ethos must change. What can motivate people to change their values and priorities? Compelling external and internal drivers! The roadmap commences with the statement that the Caribbean is in crisis, and that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. The region is devastated from external factors: globalization and rapid technology changes. The book then posits that to adapt, there must be a new internal optimization of the region’s strengths. This is defined in (Page 14) of the Declaration of Interdependence:

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

In line with the foregoing story, the Go Lean book details some applicable community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to better foster these qualities and their resulting benefits. See the sample list here:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – All Choices Involve Costs	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Return of Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development	Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology	Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization	Page 57
Tactical – How to Grow to an $800 Billion Economy – Trade and Globalization	Page 70
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – www.myCaribbean.gov Portal	Page 74
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – Caribbean Postal Union	Page 78
Implementation – Assemble Caribbean Postal Union – Facilitator for www.MyCaribbean.gov	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – # 8 – Cyber-Caribbean	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Better Manage Image – Jamaican Yardies Example	Page 133
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications – Foster new ethos	Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Reforms for Banking Regulations – Foster e-Payments	Page 199
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street	Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living – Mobile Apps – Time & Space	Page 234

There is a lot to learn from the analysis of market conditions for Mobile Apps in China and other communities. The lessons of successes and failures of these deployments were further elaborated upon in these previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8262	Uber App: UberEverything in Africa
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5648	Taylor Swift withholds Album from Apple Music App
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4793	Truth in Commerce – Learning from Yelp and India’s Model
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3974	Google and Mobile Phones – Here comes Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1416	Amazon’s new FIRE Smartphone and Apps
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=486	Temasek firm backs Southeast Asia cab booking app

The roadmap posits that the CU will incubate a Mobile Apps industry, forge entrepreneurial incentives and facilitate the infrastructure upgrades so that innovations can thrive. As related in the foregoing story, with some collaboration with a local Chinese company, we in the Caribbean can even gain access to the 1.3 billion potential customers in China.

That’s a lot of low hanging fruit:

Imagine the jobs.
Imagine the entrepreneurial opportunities.
Imagine the generated foreign currency.
Imagine the …

We need a lot of imagination … to conceive, design and develop Video Games and Mobile Game Apps. Where do we look for this imagination? Clue: Not from the generation of people playing “Shuffle Board”.

Video Games and Mobile Apps are designed for and by the generation identified as Millennials.

Millennials are also known as the Millennial Generation^[1] or Generation Y, abbreviated to Gen Y). They are the demographic cohort between Generation X and Generation Z. There are no precise dates for when the generation starts and ends. Demographers and researchers typically use the early 1980s as starting birth years and use the mid-1990s to the early 2000s as final birth years for the Millennial Generation.

This question of who do we look for to champion our cause in fostering a Video Game and Mobile App industry must consider the Caribbean youth or Millennials. This population has always been identified as critical stakeholders in the Go Lean/CU roadmap. The book identified and qualified the challenge of reaching this group with these opening words:

Our youth, the next generation, may not be inspired to participate in the future workings of their country; they may measure success only by their exodus from their Caribbean homeland.

The promoters of the Go Lean movement conducted a structured interview with a Millennial Mobile Game App Designer and Developer, Faisal Kahn (FK). He is also a student matriculating in Asia (Karachi, Pakistan) and makes the following contributions to this discussion on China’s vision of Mobile Game Apps; (he is also the Web Designer / Social Media Coordinator for the Go Lean movement; see a sample of his portfolio at www.goleancaribbean.com). Consider these responses here related to his insights and experiences regarding Mobile Game Apps:

Considering China’s government regulating impressions of Chinese people, is it important to depict different ethnic groups?

FK : No, it is not important, except from a marketing point of view then. As you know, the game industry wants to sell more and more games, so they add different ethnic groups in the game story to make the game more fun and to add more violence to the game.

Is it important to portray different political, religious and cultural scenarios?

FK: No, its not important because it can spread hate between politics, religions and cultures. But there is a new trend in the Gaming Industry to add more religious and political themes. I think this is unfortunate and unbecoming.

How important is “violence” in your game design? How important is “sex” in your game design?

FK: Game designers are always looking for ways to make their games more interesting and increase the amount of time people will spend playing them. So they add Adult Content (for ages 18+) like “violence” and “sex”. Even though it is rated for adults, that makes teenagers more eager to purchase the game and play it. These days teenagers think that without “violence” and “sex” the video games are boring.

Do you plan for multiple languages? In spoken words? In written text?

FK: Yes, if we want to target the whole world and get them all interested in the game, then we have to add languages like Italian, French and Spanish. All-around the world, except for China, most people understand and play games in English; the exceptions are the Italians, French and Spanish; those language groups normally don’t understand English well enough to consume these games, and they try to learn English. China is a special exception because the government there doesn’t allow the sale of games made in America, especially those games in which there is war between China and America.

Do you plan for In-Game Purchases in your game design?

FK: Teenagers spend their money on games and for in-game purchases; they want more fun out of their games and they don’t mind spending few more bucks to buy special items or new Downloadable Content (DLC). If they will not get new items and new DLCs, then they will be bored from the ones they are using again and again. So yes, in-game purchases are vital for success in any video game design.

Do you plan for Social Media interactions in your game design?

FK: Yes. And this is a simple, obvious question. Absolutely yes … because Social Media is the best way to market games to reach out to the targeted users, the teens and “gamers”.

We have so much to learn about the Mobile Game App industry; we have so many lessons to learn from China. Their large population creates a viable market for Mobile Game Apps. A specific lesson we learned from China is the need for balance in governmental stewardship. China does not want games that denigrate Chinese culture, politics or people, so their approach is more totalitarian in scope. We want to be more balanced in the Caribbean region, but we do need to be “on guard” for defamations against the Caribbean image; for example, the game Grand Theft Auto use of the Uptown Yardies (Jamaican) is a negative depiction of a Rasta Gang that should be mitigated.

So the ideal is a Mobile Game App industry that reflects positively of a free society, yet still fosters commerce, electronic commerce and entrepreneurship. We can tailor Mobile Apps with diverse languages (like Mandarin) to appeal to foreign markets, like China.

Sample Video Games Popular on the Market today.

The Caribbean is hereby urged to lean-in to this Go Lean confederation roadmap. These efforts can help our region, create jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities, to help make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

—————

Appendix A – “Candy Crush Saga” Reception

Candy Crush Saga is a mobile match-three puzzle video game released by King on April 12, 2012, for Facebook, other versions for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and Windows 10 followed. It is a variation on their browser game Candy Crush.^[1]

According to review aggregator website Metacritic, the game received an average review score of 79/100, indicating generally positive reviews.^[5] Ellie Gibson of Eurogamer referred to Candy Crush Saga as 2013’s “Game of the Year”.^[6]

Candy Crush Saga had over ten million downloads in December 2012.^[7] In July 2013, it was estimated that Candy Crush Saga at the time had about 6.7 million active users and earned revenue of $633,000 per day in the US section of the iOS App Store alone.^[8] In November 2013, the game had been installed 500 million times across Facebook and iOS and Android devices.^[9] According to Business Insider, Candy Crush Saga is the most downloaded iOS app for 2013.^[10] In 2014, Candy Crush Saga players spent over $1.33 billion on in-app purchases which was a decline from the previous year, since in the second half of 2013 players spent over $1.04 billion.^[3]

Candy Crush received particular mention in Hong Kong media, with reports that one in seven Hong Kong citizens plays the game.^[11] The game is also featured in [Music Artist] Psy‘s music video “Gentleman“.^[12] In December 2013, King entered the Japanese market with a series of television commercials in Japan, and by December 4 it had become the 23rd most downloaded game in Japan on Android devices and number 1 most downloaded from the App Store.^[13]

Source: Retrieved 08/28/2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candy_Crush_Saga#Reception

—————

Appendix B – Transcript – China Uncensored: Did China Just Kill Its Mobile Game Industry?

By Chris Chappell

Your princess isn’t in another castle. She’s been kidnapped by…Chinese censors.

Video games makers are no strangers to censorship. Now there are a lot of different opinions about the degree to which video games should or shouldn’t be censored—mainly over the level of violence. But as of the beginning of this month, China has taken video game censorship to a whole new level.

For years, the Chinese regime had banned video game consoles. Although that ban has now been lifted—restrictions apply. And it’s left a void that allowed a flourishing mobile game market.

The biggest in the world, in fact. In 2015, that market was worth 7 billion dollars, with 400 million gamers consuming 10,000 games released that year alone. That’s about 27 new games a day.

But this is about to be a thing of the past. As of this month, Chinese censors will need to approve every mobile game before it’s released. Games that are already released will have to retroactively get approval before an October deadline.

The government organ in charge of this is the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television. And now apparently games? The guidelines allow the Chinese authorities to ban pretty much any game they want.

For example, some developers in China have reported their games got canned because they contained English words. Not politically charged words. Pointless video game words like “mission start” and “warning.” Others have reported similar problems with games containing traditional Chinese characters—that’s what they use in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but not the Mainland.

Doesn’t stop there. The Cyberspace Administration of China is the agency responsible for censorship and control over China’s Internet. Starting August 1st, mobile app developers will be required to give users’ personal information to the agency. That’s crazy! I much prefer to voluntarily give all my information up.

But this isn’t just about censorship. It’s also about business. And this is going to kill the indie game scene in China. The mobile game market in China is super competitive. According to one developer interviewed by Sixth Tone, “If you’re lucky a game will make you 1,500 yuan.”

That’s about 200 bucks. But getting your new game approved can cost over 2,000. Why so much? Well, for one, don’t expect the censors to download your game. They don’t have time! You, the developer, have to send them a phone with an active sim card and data plan, and your game pre-installed. Two phones if you’re publishing on iOS and Android. It’s a pretty sweet gig, being a Chinese censor. It also can take up to 3 months to get your game approved. If you’re an indie developer, working alone, investing your own money into a project, that’s a long wait for a return on investment. That is, if everything works smoothly.

This basically means most indie game makers won’t be able to survive. Instead, they’ll get stomped on—like proverbial goombas—by big corporations like Tencent and Netease, companies with close ties to the government.

Now these new restrictions don’t apply to foreign game makers. They were taken care of back in February. Foreign companies are required to work with domestic content providers. And they now need to get approval from… SAPPRFT… for online publication of any “creative works.”

Wait, so does that mean they don’t need approval if their games aren’t very creative? There might be a future for Great Giana Sisters after all!

So what do you think about the future of gaming in China? Is there room for a sequel? Or will it be…game over? Leave your comments below.
Source: The Epoch Times Magazine – Posted 08/13/2016; retrieved 08/28/2016 from: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/2114481-china-uncensored-did-china-just-kill-its-mobile-game-industry/

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Now it’s Detroit’s turn to rescue Silicon Valley

Posted on August 14, 2016 in Economics, Government, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

“I see dead people.” – Movie quote from The Sixth Sense (1999); see Appendix VIDEO below.

This is what Detroit is saying to Silicon Valley: “they see dead people” along the road of development for the autonomous vehicle (AV). Automobile accidents are one of the leading causes of death in most countries, therefore developing cars that drive themselves and interact with real world conditions on real streets is bound to have some mishaps/fatalities along the way.

Detroit: “Been there, done that!”

This consideration is in line with the book Go Lean… Caribbean; it serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). One of the features of the Go Lean/CU roadmap is the development of an automotive industry for the Caribbean region. Of course the reference here to Detroit is a metonym; so too the reference to Silicon Valley. Other metonym references were defined in a previous Go Lean blog-commentary, which detailed these ones in the book:

Detroit – Page 206 – American Automakers Planning/Design
Silicon Valley – Page 30 – AmericanHighTechCenter
Wall Street – Page 155 – Big Banks/Financial Center
Hollywood – Page 203 – US Movie/TV/Media Producers

The issue now is the risk associated with road traffic. Detroit has been there before. They were the Silicon Valley of the early 20th Century, as regards innovation for the automotive industry. Detroit has competence for this industry. Today, Silicon Valley wants inroads in the automotive industry. They need to tap Detroit’s legacy and insights. See the related article here:

Title: Now it’s Detroit’s turn to rescue Silicon Valley

Five years ago, when the U.S. auto industry was just beginning to recover from the Great Recession, there was widespread speculation that the old model of the car business was broken, and that only the new economy could come to the rescue.

And with good reason. The U.S. auto market had cratered, plunging from a peak of over 17 million to a devastated 10 million in yearly sales.

Both General Motors and Chrysler had been bailed out by the federal government and gone bankrupt. Ford saw its stock price fall to less than $2 a share. Gas had spiked to over $4 a gallon in some parts of country. Credit, the lifeblood of the car business, had been wiped out.

Meanwhile, Apple was on a path to become the world’s most valuable company. Facebook was tasking over the media landscape. And Tesla, after suffering a brush with financial death in 2009, looked like the most innovative company of four wheels.

Silicon Valley and California in general was suddenly filled with new and futuristic ideas about transportation, from Google driverless cars to numerous electric-car startups. Detroit, by contrast, was lurching toward the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history (it would come in 2013), and its great automakers looked to be crippled dinosaurs, completely out of step with the times.

The U.S. auto industry was a problem to be solved, and Silicon Valley specialized in solutions.

A doomed industry?
“The automobile industry is in the middle of a fundamental transformation,” wrote in 2009. “There is a lot of information available on how companies have dealt with major changes in their business environments, but little is known about the transformation of entire industries.”

“History shows that most companies do not deal well with transformation.” he continued. “One reason has to do with senior managers. They usually ‘don’t get it.’ They have a difficult time accepting that the future will be vastly different from the present because they rose to power in the old business environment. They excelled in the old environment and didn’t acquire skills necessary to operate in the new.”

Fast forward to 2016 and the senior mangers in Detroit that Grove worried about have deepened their engagement with Silicon Valley and the technology industry to an unprecedented degree. General Motors already had a venture-capital arm before it invested $500 million in Lyft and bought Cruise Automation for its innovative self-driving tech.

Ford had such a solid connection with Microsoft that outgoing CEO Alan Mulally was discussed as a successor to Steve Ballmer, earlier this year. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has teamed up with Google to create driverless minivans. And all the automakers have a Silicon Valley presence, which enables them to scout emerging technologies and act on them quickly.

An auto sales boom in the U.S. that started in 2013 and set a record in 2016 with 17.5 million new cars and trucks delivered has fueled Detroit’s engagement, as has the broad realization among the car maker’s executive teams that this is their opportunity to disrupt themselves and profit from the experience. Cheap gas, an improving employment picture, and ample credit means that Detroit is selling pickups and SUVs and raking in cash. The game plan is to take some of those winnings and send them in search of rapid innovations that Motown can’t create on its own.

Not-so-smooth sailing
At the same time, Silicon Valley has started to encounter some investor turbulence. Startups with hefty valuations don’t see IPOs as a way to pay back their investors. That leaves getting acquired as an option, but a level of saturation with social networking and apps might have set in.

The Detroit automakers aren’t in the market for messaging apps, but they are looking for technologies that can future-proof them, or advance the process of making cars smarter. In conversations with people in the auto industry, there’s a sense that the tech sector has begun to figure out that Motown has money and wants to spend it.

The signals from the top are also strong. “We’re going to disrupt ourselves, and we are disrupting ourselves, so we’re not trying to preserve a model of yesterday,” . “And when you think of the assets the company has — the scale, the control of the vehicle platform, the ability with embedded connectivity, the knowledge we have of just every aspect of the vehicle and how we’re putting it together now — I think there’s a lot of plus signs, and we can lead.”

That attitude was echoed by Ford CEO Mark Fields, who BI also interviewed. “It’s a very exciting time at Ford, because we are transitioning from an auto company to an auto and a mobility company,” he said. “Mobility for us, at the very simplest level, is to allow people to live, play, and work where they want. How do we help enable them to get around to do that? And there’s a lot of talk around technology companies disrupting the auto industry. Our approach is very simple: We’re disrupting ourselves.”

Birds of a feather
So how did this reversal come about? Even if Detroit isn’t really in a position to rescue Silicon Valley — Silicon valley doesn’t really need to be rescued — then why is the dinosaur now so enthusiastic about participating in its own disruption?

Simple: Detroit was the Silicon Valley of the early 20th century, a hotbed of entrepreneurship, fascinated with the most high-tech contraption of the time — the automobile. True, over the decades the culture of the auto industry has become stratified and bureaucratic, but despite that, the car itself has been steadily improved. Detroit has never backed off from technology, and the engineers and executives who have chosen to work for Ford or GM are still excited about new stuff.

When they look at Silicon Valley, they see a place ruled by engineers, a contemporary version of Detroit’s own origin story. And that’s why Silicon Valley and Detroit’s newfound mutual admiration could be the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship that stretches from the Bay Area to the banks of the Detroit River.
Source: Microsoft Network (MSN) Technology Column – Retrieved 08-14-2016 from: http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/now-its-detroits-turn-to-rescue-silicon-valley/ar-BBvrK0K?li=BBnbfcN&ocid=1PRCMSE

VIDEO – Inside Silicon Valley’s secretive test track for self-driving cars – https://youtu.be/xILioJ7ZfQU

Published on Jun 2, 2016 – A former military weapons depot is now a track where companies can test their autonomous cars in private. The media has never set foot in the guarded GoMentum Station, until now. The track is not only attracting the attention of automakers like Mercedes and Honda, but also tech companies like Google and Apple. CNET’s Brian Cooley shows us how Honda is testing its latest self-driving car there.

See a more detailed VIDEO on GoMentum Station and a competing Michigan site in this VIDEO here:
“Inside the self-driving car facilities of Silicon Valley and Detroit” – http://a.msn.com/00/en-us/BBvrK0K?ocid=se

For the Caribbean effort, it will be important to observe-and-report on the developments of the Detroit-SiliconValley synergy. Both industries are being transformed. What can we learn about cooperation, collaboration and coordination among aligning stakeholders? There are jobs, public safety and public administration at stake. This relates to the CU/Go Lean roadmap, which also has a focus on the same 3 areas. This is communicated as the prime directive of the roadmap, pronounced as follows:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy, and create jobs (2.2 million new ones).
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these above engines, considering the separation-of-powers between Caribbean member states and the CU federal government.

The Go Lean roadmap recognizes the benefits of Research & Development (R&D). The book presents R&D as a community ethos, the fundamental spirit of a culture that drives the beliefs, customs and practices of a society.

Caribbean society must embrace the R&D of autonomous vehicles, automobile advances, safety innovation, and transformative technologies. We cannot ignore the formations of industrial advances. We must not just consume; we must produce as well. This is where the next generation of jobs are to be found.

The automotive industry have always been a source of high-paying jobs, that in previous generations, have transformed society. Today, Silicon Valley is a source of high-paying jobs. The transformations are continuing.

This aligns with the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 14) in the Go Lean book, as conveyed by these statements:

xxvii. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like … automobile manufacturing. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries … impacting the region with more jobs.

xxviii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

Producing and not only consuming – especially related to autonomous vehicles and robotic technologies – has been a consistent theme in prior Go Lean blog/commentaries; see this sample here:

Building the Infrastructure for Streetcars

‘Olli’ – The Self-Driving Public Transit Vehicle

3D Printing: Here Comes Change

Drones to be used for Insurance Damage Claims

Robots help Amazon tackle Cyber Monday

Here come the Drones … and the Concerns

Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market

Google conducting research for highway safety innovations

Ghost ships – Autonomous cargo vessels without a crew

The Go Lean book provides a roadmap for developing and fostering a domestic automotive industry, and for fostering R&D. The process starts with the spirit to want to improve the status quo, to innovate and make things better and safer. This spirit is described in the book as a community ethos for Research-and-Development. The book details other ethos to adopt, plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to forge innovation in Caribbean communities:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens – Like Car Accidents	Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments (ROI)	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development	Page 30
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Caribbean Integrated Single Market	Page 45
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology	Page 48
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Growing Economy – New High Multiplier Industries	Page 68
Separation of Powers – Public Works & Infrastructure	Page 82
Separation of Powers – Department of Transportation	Page 84
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Implement Self-Governing Entities	Page 105
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Cyber Caribbean	Page 127
Planning – Lessons from Detroit	Page 140
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Transportation	Page 205
Advocacy – Ways to Develop the Auto Industry	Page 206
Appendix – Job Multipliers – Detroit’s 11.0 Rate #1 of all industries	Page 260

There is a business axiom:

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

This is the goal – autonomous vehicles not mousetraps – of so many stakeholders in the technology and automotive industry space, in Silicon Valley and in Detroit; see Appendix VIDEO 2. A self-driving car is not the future, it is now; well soon. (According to the foregoing VIDEO, one automaker projects an AV for the 2020 Model Year).

This is the type of innovation now being urged for the Caribbean. Yes, we can … make an impact in this industry. We do not have to be the inventor, but at least an “early adopter”. The controlled environment of a Self-Government Entity – campus or corridor – is ideal for AVs. Imagine a toll-road across a Caribbean member-state (island or mainland) that traverses 70 miles that encourages self-driving cars, buses and trucks.

This vision is being fostered … elsewhere. Why not here?

The Caribbean region has historically been slow at adopting technological innovation. This roadmap presents a change to the Caribbean status quo. We urge all stakeholders – governments, businesses, and drivers – to lean-in to the innovations detailed in the Go Lean book. With the proper planning, preparation and participation, yes we can, we make our homeland a better place to live, work and play.:-)

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————–

Appendix VIDEO 1: Next Big Thing – Self-driving cars: Why? – https://youtu.be/QUYKSWQmkrg

Published on Oct 9, 2013 – http://cnet.co/1bfQkWn – Why self-driving cars make a whole lot of sense, how gesture control will augment — but probably not replace — a lot of technology, and is there even a third seat left at the mobile platform table?

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Appendix VIDEO 2: The Sixth Sense ….. I See Dead People …scene – https://youtu.be/QUYKSWQmkrg

Published on Sep 9, 2012 – In Your Dreams ? ….No. While You’re Awake? …Yes. All The Time, They’re Everywhere.

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YouTube Millionaire: ‘Tipsy Bartender’

Posted on June 30, 2016 in Economics, Implementation, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

“Out with the old; in with the new” …

… media that is.

The transformation to new media has taken hold. More and more people are consuming electronic media; so much so that it is becoming the mainstay for communications and entertainment.

This reference to electronic media conveys visual images; that means television, yes …

… but today, there is also the ubiquity of the internet, with its many video streaming services. The “new” in new media refers more to this medium than it does TV.

This is the change that has come to the world … and the Caribbean.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean advocates for the Caribbean region to better prepare to exploit the agents of change affecting the world. The book specifically identified technology and globalization among those agents (Page 57). It then declares that the region needs to move to the corner of preparation and opportunity.

Here – this commentary – is an example of the full manifestation of this “corner”. Identifying how – and why – networks can emerge without the need for investment into network infrastructure. The old adage is “where there’s a will, there’s a way”; but now there is only the need for the “will”, as the “way” is already in place, ubiquitous and fully accepted.

The Go Lean book relates how we are now able to have a network without the “network”. Many models abound on the world-wide-web. Previously, this commentary identified the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and ESPN-W; now the focus is the platform of YouTube, and the millionaires that have emerged. The YouTube network is delivered via the internet-streaming only.

This platform allows for nimble individuals and enterprises, the “fast and the furious”, to exploit the tenets of Internet Communications Technologies (ICT). So this platform – or even a homegrown duplicate as in the www.myCaribbean.gov portal defined in the Go Lean book – demonstrates how we in the Caribbean can elevate our eco-systems of ICT, entertainment, television, and economics.

This commentary presents the profile of one member of the Caribbean Diaspora – Bahamas – who serves as a role model for his exploitation of YouTube videos: Skyy John.

DATE OF BIRTH: January 2, 1978

BIRTHPLACE: Nassau, Bahamas

AGE: 38 years old

ABOUT
Host and creator of the YouTube channel Tipsy Bartender, the number one bartending show in the world. On the show, he makes crazy, colorful drinks.

BEFORE FAME
Before moving to America, he was a bank teller by day, a Dominos pizza delivery guy by night, and a fisherman on weekends. He is also a former member of the Bahamian military (Defence Force).

TRIVIA
He has acted in co-starring roles on television series, including The New Adventures of Old Christine, Cold Case, The Shield, The Young & Restless. He has also appeared in movies: Dorm Daze 2 (2006), Street Eyes (2015) and Whitey Goes to Compton (2011).
Source: Retrieved June 29, 2016 from http://www.famousbirthdays.com/people/skyy-john.html

See a full interview from Tubefilter in the following article. Tubefilter is a curator of online videos from industry news, web series reviews, events, and an Awards Show. They published a web series on YouTube Millionaires. See the full article here:

Title: YouTube Millionaires: TipsyBartender Is “Here To Have Fun And Make Cocktails”
By: Sam Gutelle

Welcome to YouTube Millionaires, where we profile channels that have recently crossed the one million subscriber mark. There are channels crossing this threshold every week, and each has a story to tell about YouTube success. Read previous installments of YouTube Millionaires here.

Skyy John has successfully brought the party to YouTube. The 37-year-old Bahamian has found online success thanks to TipsyBartender, a channel on which he teaches viewers how to craft a variety of mixed drinks. John’s videos tend to have several elements in common: They feature colorful beverages, feature attractive women as John’s assistants, and convey a fun-loving atmosphere. This formula has proven to be a hit with the online audience. TipsyBartender, which is partnered with the Tastemade network, now has more than 1.4 million subscribers. Here’s what John had to say about that:

Tubefilter: How does it feel to have one million subscribers? What do you have to say to your fans?

Skyy John: It feels amazing, humbling and empowering when you think of that many people supporting what you do.

I would like to tell each one of them that I love you, and you’re all very special to me. To celebrate hitting one million subscribers, I set up a meet and greet at a local bar. I bought everyone drinks and shots all night because it’s the least I could do to show my appreciation.

TF: How did you get started on YouTube?

SJ: In the early days of YouTube I had an idea for a talk show – I shot a really low budget pilot of it and posted it online. The response was good, so I kept making videos where I’d go around and interview people. As a means of diversifying my content, since I was a bartender, I’d show people how to make one or two cocktails. A friend of mine, Monroe, said “Hey, why don’t you start a bartending channel?” I said, “That’s a good idea,” and TipsyBartender was born.

TF: What made you decide to include women in all your videos?

SJ: When you come to the TipsyBartender channel and you watch an episode, yes I always have an attractive female cohost, and to the new viewer who thinks they’re there for looks, it’s much deeper than that. Behind the scenes, the show has been primarily powered by women, in terms of working out the format, designing the style of thumbnails, choosing the drinks that we make – it’s all been women. Without that very important female touch, the TipsyBartender show that you see today would not exist. I’d like to give a special thanks to Marjane and Emma, the two that really helped me create what you see today. TipsyBartender will always be home to women from all over the world who don’t get a chance in any other medium.

TF: When you create your videos, how do you balance entertaining your audience with conveying your recipes?

SJ: We maintain a very delicate balance between entertainment and education. We keep our recipes simple, which allows us to focus on the entertainment more. Our goal is to learn and have fun while doing it. We are, after all, a party channel.

TF: What in your mind is the most important component of a good cocktail?

SJ: The most important component of a good cocktail is you – the person that I’m serving. You have to like what I’m giving you. The easiest way to accomplish that is to build a cocktail using some ingredients that you already enjoy. You like Kool Aid? I’ll build around that. If you like ice cream, I’ll build around ice cream. You like Gatorade? I’ll build around that. Whatever you like, I’ll use – and that mentality is what makes me a pariah in the world of mixology because most mixologists feel that they know better than you what you should be drinking. They’ll give you a cocktail with aged whiskey, organic basil, handcrafted bitters, ice from the Alps, and tell you that “Hey, this is the most perfect best greatest drink ever!” What if that person you’re serving it to doesn’t like any of that s**t? Only you know what you like. You’re drinking the drink, I’m just working with you – i’m not a mixologist. I’m here to have fun and make cocktails. Drinking is supposed to be enjoyable, not feel like a damn chemistry exam.

TF: There don’t seem to be a ton of drinks channels on YouTube. Why do you think it’s not a more common category?

SJ: Because it’s very difficult to do. Drink-making is not that exciting because it’s very difficult to present it in an interesting format. Luckily, we’ve been able to get it right and to keep people interested, and every day we strive to continue doing what we’re doing and make our audience grow.

TF: What is your favorite cocktail you’ve made on your channel?

SJ: There are too many to list. Some of the favorite drinks I made were the rainbow shots, because that was difficult to learn how to do. Definitely some of the jungle juices because they’re pretty crazy, and believe it or not it requires a lot of math and planning to make the appropriate amounts in large quantities. Some of the jello shots we’ve made for sure. My favorites would probably have to be ice cream drinks or drinks based around rum, especially coconut rum.

TF: When you’re out bartending, do you ever get recognized as “that guy from the Internet”?

SJ: All the time – but I don’t bartend in a bar anymore. I actually got fired because of TipsyBartender. I was spending so much time on the show, so much time editing that I needed to get my shifts covered. Working in L.A. you got people covering shifts all the time, so it wasn’t really a problem at first. I was called into work for a meeting and they said I hadn’t been there in a few months – I said “I’ll get back to work, don’t worry I got you,” – but I didn’t realize that they were monitoring me. They discovered that in four months following our meeting, I only worked once. So I got the call saying “Go mix drinks man, we’ll handle the bar.”

TF: What’s next for your channel? Any fun plans?

SJ: TipsyBartender morphed into a truly global brand where we have tons of fans all over the world, primarily because we focused on Facebook, where videos are very easily shared. We’re now approaching 7 million fans that are highly engaged in what we do. Our Facebook engagement is higher than that of all the biggest liquor brands around the world combined! Our next step for us is to take our cocktails and products around the world. We’re also in the developing stages of creating a Kickstarter to fund our first bar in L.A.
Source: Tube Filter Online Magazine – Posted February 5, 2015; retrieved June 28, 2016 from: http://www.tubefilter.com/2015/02/05/tipsy-bartender-skyy-john-drinks-youtube-millionaires/

—————–

Alternative Interview: http://affairstoday.co.uk/interview-tipsy-bartender/

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VIDEO – How to make Rainbow Shots! – Tipsy Bartender – http://youtu.be/MoVZoCmkdjY

Published on Nov 17, 2011 – Subscribe to Tipsy Bartender: http://bit.ly/1krKA4R
The prettiest shots ever…RAINBOW SHOTS! These are the best looking rainbow shots ever!
OUR VLOG CHANNEL: http://www.youtube.com/TipsyVlogs

Is YouTube a successful business model for Skyy John? Yes indeed. See here as to the estimate of how much money he was making in 2011, long before he crossed the million-subscriber threshold; (1.4 million as of February 2015):

“How much money does Tipsy Bartender make?”
Skyy John is the Bahamian guy who runs the YouTube channel called Tipsy Bartender. He has an estimated net worth of $500,000. …

See the full article here: https://naibuzz.com/much-money-tipsy-bartender-makes-youtube/

The actuality of YouTube and the role model of Skyy John is a lesson for the Caribbean; there is heavy-lifting required to transform society. The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a technocratic federal government to administer and optimize the economic/security/governing engines of the region’s 30 member-states. In addition, there is the vision for the Caribbean Postal Union (CPU), the focus of which is to coordinate regional mail plus the www.myCaribbean.gov portal to offer email and social media functionality for all Caribbean stakeholders: 42 million residents, 10 million in the Diaspora and even the 80 million tourists-visitors.

The Go Lean roadmap accepts the precept that one person can make a difference in society. What’s more, that one person does not have to be a genius – in the way society measures genius – they only need to be committed and disciplined. That is the example of Skyy John, committed and disciplined in the occupation of bartending, not exactly a STEM field (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), but impactful nonetheless.

Bartending is more art than science.

This Go Lean economic empowerment roadmap strategizes to create a Single Media Market to leverage the population of the entire region, an audience of 42 million people across 30 member-states and 4 languages consuming cutting-edge ICT offerings. YouTube provides a great role model for the CU‘s executions; making the regional implementation of social media and internet streaming, www.myCaribbean.gov, economically viable. This means jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities.

At the outset, the roadmap recognizes the need for ICT development and job creation with these statements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13 & 14):

xxi. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries… . In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

xxviii. Whereas intellectual property can easily traverse national borders, the rights and privileges of intellectual property must be respected at home and abroad. The Federation must install protections to ensure that no abuse of these rights go with impunity, and to ensure that foreign authorities enforce the rights of the intellectual property registered in our region.

In the Go Lean book and previous blogs, the Go Lean movement asserted that the market organizations and community investments to garner economic benefits of ICT are within reach, with the proper technocracy. The eco-system for streaming videos is inclusive of the roadmap’s quest to make the Caribbean region a better place to live, work and play.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean to lean-in to the following community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies detailed in the book Go Lean…Caribbean to deliver the solutions to elevate the Caribbean region through ICT:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – All Choices Involve Costs	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequence of Choice Lie in Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments – ROI	Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology	Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization	Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – How to Grow the Economy to $800 Billion – Trade and Globalization	Page 70
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Postal Services	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Interstate Commerce Administration	Page 79
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase – Establish CPU	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change – Group Purchase Organizations (GPO)	Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Optimize Mail Service & the myCaribbean.gov Marketplace	Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization	Page 119
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean – # 8 Cyber-Caribbean	Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street	Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood	Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218

The Go Lean book asserts that the region can be a better place to live, work and play; that the economy can be grown methodically by embracing progressive strategies in ICT and video streaming. This point was further detailed in these previous blogs:

UberEverything in Africa – Model for ICT and Logistics

Zuckerberg’s Philanthropy Project Makes Investment for ICT Education

Transformations: Caribbean Postal Union – Delivering the Future

The Future of Money

How to address high consumer prices

Truth in Commerce – Learning from Yelp

Net Neutrality: It matters here … in the Caribbean

Role Model Jack Ma brings Alibaba Social Media Portal to America

Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market

Amazon’s new FIRE Smartphone

Grenada PM Urges CARICOM on ICT

This Go Lean roadmap is committed to availing the economic opportunities of ICT but the roadmap is bigger than just videos; its a concerted effort to elevate all of Caribbean society. The CU is the vehicle for this goal, this is detailed by the following 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

This Go Lean roadmap looks for the opportunities to foster interest that may exists in specific endeavors, and then explore the business opportunities around servicing that demand. This is the example that the ‘Tipsy Bartender’ (Skyy John) provides for his Caribbean neighbors – though he now lives in Los Angeles, California. Oh, how much better to foster these passions right here at home in the Caribbean region.

This quest is conceivable, believable and achievable, but it is not easy; it is heavy-lifting. This is the quest of Go Lean/CU roadmap, to do the heavy-lifting to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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UberEverything in Africa

Posted on June 19, 2016 in Economics, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

UPDATED August 29, 2020 – Uber Technologies Inc. continues to change the Old World [economy] to a new world [economy]. This car-sharing service has already rankled taxi-limo companies and cabbies across the world, and now they are setting their sights on other industries.

They have dubbed this advance into diverse businesses as UberEverything. See the detailed news story / product announcement here of this launch in Africa, published by Quartz Africa – see Appendix:

Title: Uber Africa will diversify beyond car rides this year with its ‘Everything’ service
By: Yomi Kazeem

Having nearly perfected the business of moving people around on the continent, Uber is set to diversify the core of its business in sub Saharan Africa with the introduction of UberEverything, a division of the company with ambitious plans to plug its existing drivers network into the on-demand economy and provide services such as product and food delivery and courier services.

“The first market will probably be South Africa and we are pushing to make that happen before the end of the year,” said Alon Lits, Uber’s general manager for sub-Saharan Africa.

‘Everything’ is Uber’s strategy to build on its logistics infrastructure in the cities it operates. Once the company is at scale in a city with ride passengers it can develop other services such as UberRush, a personal courier service or food delivery with UberEats,(available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York) . “Everything we’re building is on top of a platform that already exists,” Jason Droege, head of the UberEverything division, told the Los Angeles Times last month.

With the rising popularity and adoption of e-commerce shopping and on-demand services among a growing African middle-class who live on-the-go and increasingly value convenience, UberEverything could be a hit.

Logistics have been a big challenge for e-commerce companies in African larger cities, some of which have poor road networks and other infrastructure challenges. Major local players like Konga in Nigeria and African Internet Group’s Jumia and sister company Hellofood have had to invest heavily in developing their own logistics platform to get round the weak local infrastructure.

“If things go well in South Africa, there’s no reason why we won’t bring UberEverything to more markets.” One of such markets will likely be Lagos, which Lits says Uber remains “bullish” about despite Nigeria’s struggling economy. Home to 20 million people, Lagos’ infamous traffic jams and haphazard address system make it difficult—and expensive—for delivery services to operate but could represent a big opportunity for UberEverything’s goal of providing efficient logistics using its existing drivers network.

Aided by its recent $3.5 billion funding—its single biggest investment ever— from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Uber expanded to Kampala and Accra in the last week and Lits says a launch in Dar es Salaam is imminent. This follows plans to spend $250 million on growing its market across North Africa and the Middle East.

But Uber’s operations in Africa have not been without hitches. In Cairo and Nairobi, Uber drivers have been targets of protests and, in some cases, violent attacks. In South Africa, the company was forced to provide drivers with emergency numbers and also partner with a local private security firm.

Source: Quartz Africa Weekly Brief – Posted 06/13/2016; retrieved 06/18/2016 from: http://qz.com/703087/uber-africa-is-will-diversify-beyond-car-rides-this-year-with-its-everything-service/

In a previous blog on Uber, the Go Lean commentary identified how evolutionary changes in technology and modernization affects Old World taxi businesses. Now we see how evolution is changing all businesses … everywhere.

The challenge with technology, for the taxi cab industry and many other areas of life, is one-step forward-two steps-backwards. This point aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean which anticipates the compelling issues associated with Internet & Communications Technologies (ICT) and their effect on traditional commerce. The book prepares the Caribbean region to move to the intersection of opportunity and preparation. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This roadmap accepts the tenets of ICT, that it can serve as an equalizer between big countries and small countries, or big companies and small companies. So opportunities will come to the Caribbean region as a result of the advances in technology. How will the region prepare?

First, the book asserts that before the strategies, tactics and implementations of the Go Lean roadmap can be deployed, the affected communities must first embrace a progressive community ethos. The book defines this “community ethos” as the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of society; dominant assumptions of a people or period.

The Go Lean book stresses that the current community ethos must change and the best way to motivate people to adapt their values and priorities is in response to a crisis. The roadmap recognizes this fact with the pronouncement that the Caribbean is in crisis, and that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. This ethos corresponds with the UberEverything motives. In a lot of urban communities around the world, Caribbean included, traffic is crisis-worthy. According to the foregoing article, this reality is creating business opportunities around the logistics of Uber.

The Go Lean roadmap avails these opportunities, by strategizing logistics with a regional focus. The roadmap for Caribbean logistics is also our means for delivering the mail; this is the vision for the Caribbean Postal Union (CPU). The focus of the CPU is not just postal mail, but rather all the lean technocratic activities that make up logistics. Mail requires logistics, but logistics means so much more than just mail. So we would want to model successful enterprises in this industry space, like Uber. (The Go Lean book considers the postal operation of the US Postal Service – Page 99 – and rules it null-and-void for transforming e-Commerce). Other successful enterprises that provide good examples of lean technocratic efficiency include Amazon and Alibaba.

Modeling UberEverything, the Go Lean/CU roadmap will directly employ technologically innovative products and services to impact its own prime directives, identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Uber model helps the CPU impact the economic, security and governing engines, like job creation. In the previous 2014 blog relating Uber, it was disclosed that Uber is responsible for 20,000 new jobs per month. The median income for drivers using the UberX platform, Uber’s low-cost service, is $90,000 per year in New York and more than $74,000 in San Francisco, the company said. How is this possible to make so much more money than traditional driving professionals? Uber is a sophisticated business model; one thing is Uber fully applies the laws of economics – supply and demand. Note the explanation in the VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Make More $ During Times of High Demand – https://youtu.be/cHfWwnJwyOU

Professor Wolters
Published on Nov 20, 2019 – Ever wonder how Uber and other ride sharing firms calculate their prices? Or maybe how prices are made for airlines? Well to understand the pricing you need to understand what is called Dynamic Pricing, which is constantly moving prices.

Filmed in Watkinsville, GA. Copyright Mark Wolters 2019
#marketing #pricing #principlesofmarketing

Topic 4: Digital Marketing
Topic 13: Dynamic Pricing

Learn more at http://uber.com

This model is a good starting point for elevating the Caribbean. But this is heavy-lifting; notice in the foregoing article regarding the complex issues associated with Uber in terms of security and taxi-limo licensing (governance). The Go Lean roadmap conveys that heavy-lifting of logistical details are more of an investment. The community will enjoy the returns, with the optimized commerce deliveries.

The Go Lean roadmap seeks to change the entire eco-system of Caribbean logistics and resulting commerce – the interaction with postal operations. This vision is defined early in the book (Page 12 & 14) in the following pronouncements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence:

xv. Whereas the business of the Federation and the commercial interest in the region cannot prosper without an efficient facilitation of postal services, the Caribbean Union must allow for the integration of the existing mail operations of the governments of the member-states into a consolidated Caribbean Postal Union, allowing for the adoption of best practices and technical advances to deliver foreign/domestic mail in the region.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster the best practices for the logistics of the CPU and trade marketplaces in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – All Choices Involve Costs	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequence of Choice Lie in Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments – ROI	Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Strategy – Customers – Citizens and Member-states Governmental	Page 47
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – How to Grow the Economy to $800 Billion – Trade and Globalization	Page 70
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Postal Services	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Interstate Commerce Administration	Page 79
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase – Establish CPU	Page 96
Implementation – Anecdote – Mail Services – USPS Dilemma	Page 99
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change – Group Purchase Organizations (GPO)	Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Optimize Mail Service & myCaribbean.gov Marketplace	Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization	Page 119
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean – # 8 Cyber-Caribbean	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Improve Trade – GPO’s	Page 128
Planning – Ways to Improve Interstate Commerce	Page 129
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Black Markets	Page 165
Advocacy – Ways to Manage the Federal Civil Service	Page 173
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Reforms for Banking Regulations	Page 199
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street	Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Transportation – Union Atlantic Turnpike	Page 205
Appendix – Network of Ferries – Model of Marine Highway System	Page 280

Issues related to the CPU business model have previously been detailed in these Go Lean commentaries, listed here:

Transformations: Caribbean Postal Union – Delivering the Future

The Future of Money

How to address high consumer prices

Truth in Commerce – Learning from Yelp

Net Neutrality: It matters here … in the Caribbean

Robots help Amazon tackle Cyber Monday

Role Model Jack Ma brings Alibaba to America

Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market

Amazon’s new FIRE Smartphone

Grenada PM Urges CARICOM on ICT

The foregoing article describes Uber’s activities in Africa. The Caribbean is now ready, willing and able …

The Go Lean roadmap posits that the CU will incubate the e-Commerce industry, forge entrepreneurial incentives and facilitate the regional logistics so that innovations can thrive. As related in the foregoing article about impact in other regions, these efforts can elevate the economy, security and governing engines of a community.

The world is continuing to change; and ‘change’ is bringing great new opportunities.

We need to be prepared. This is the intersection – change and opportunity – that we need to position ourselves at. Then, only then will success is within reach. We can make the Caribbean, a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

—————-

Appendix – About Quartz

Quartz is a digitally native news outlet, born in 2012, for business people in the new global economy. We publish bracingly creative and intelligent journalism with a broad worldview …

Quartz is owned by Atlantic Media Co., the publisher of The Atlantic, National Journal, and Government Executive.

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Zuckerberg’s Philanthropy Project Makes First Major Investment

Posted on June 17, 2016 in Economics, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

We hereby submit to be Number 2!

Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg – see VIDEO below – has identified and invested in his FIRST philanthropic project … in the region of Africa … with a heavy focus on Information & Communications Technology (ICT). That is Number 1; “we”, the Caribbean region would like to request to be Number 2, or 3 or 4 … anywhere. We do not care about which nominal order we receive the investment, only that he invests, along with other philanthropists of his ilk, in our Caribbean youth to help us forge technology careers in our region. See the news article here:

Title: Zuckerberg’s philanthropy project makes first major investment

(Reuters) – Facebook Inc founder Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy venture has made its first major investment, leading a funding round in a startup that trains and recruits software developers in Africa.

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative LLC, created by Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, led a $24 million Series B funding in Andela, the startup said on Thursday.

Alphabet Inc’s GV, previously known as Google Ventures, was also part of the funding round.

Andela selects the top 1 percent of tech talent from Africa, trains them and places them in engineering organizations.

The startup, which has nearly 200 engineers currently employed by its Nigeria and Kenya offices, will use the funds to expand to a third African country by the end of 2016.

“We live in a world where talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. Andela’s mission is to close that gap,” Zuckerberg said in a statement.

When the philanthropy initiative was launched in late 2015, Zuckerberg said he would put in 99 percent of his Facebook shares.

The initiative is structured as a limited liability company. This means, unlike a traditional charitable or philanthropic foundation, the venture can make political donations, lobby lawmakers, invest in businesses and recoup any profits from those investments.

Zuckerberg has also signed the Giving Pledge, which invites the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to commit to giving more than half of their wealth to philanthropy or charitable causes over their lifetime or in their will.

(Reporting by Anya George Tharakan in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj Kalluvila)

Source: Reuters News Source – Posted June 16, 2016; retrieved June 17, 2016 from: http://sports.yahoo.com/news/zuckerbergs-philanthropy-project-makes-first-major-investment-123251464–sector.html

———–

VIDEO – Mark Zuckerberg Biography Computer Programmer, Philanthropist (1984–) – http://www.biography.com/people/mark-zuckerberg-507402/videos/mark-zuckerberg-mini-biography-36891527

Mark Zuckerberg is co-founder and CEO of the social-networking website Facebook, as well as one of the world’s youngest billionaires.

The Caribbean has a lot of expectations for technology in the region, so as to aid and assist with our goal to elevate our regional society. This campaign is detailed in the book Go Lean…Caribbean, serving as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate Caribbean society. This movement calls for investments of time, talent and treasury to effect change in this region. The book posits that all Caribbean stakeholders (governments, residents, institutions, students, Diaspora) would be willing to devote a measure of these three ingredients if they had them, but these resources are deficient here. So these stakeholders need to lean-in to the plans of others, like philanthropist Mark Zuckerberg.

The Go Lean book strategizes a roadmap for economic/security/governing empowerment; but it also clearly relates that many social aspects of Caribbean life will be un-addressed. This is a void that NGO’s (Non-Government Organizations) can fill. Many times, these organizations offer free money, that requires no repayment!

The Go Lean roadmap invites NGO’s to impact the Caribbean according to their charters. Though forging change in the region is the responsibility of the region, we must be open to ask for help, to accept the help, and respond to the help being offered. (And then to give an account of the helping resources extended).

This is why we hereby submit to be Number 2 for Mr. Zuckerberg!

The Go Lean/CU movement champions the cause of building and optimizing the Caribbean eco-system. According to the foregoing article, it is important to identify, qualify and foster those with genius potential in Internet & Communications Technology fields and to do so as soon as possible. There is the expectation that fostering such skills and industries can contribute to the fulfillment of the Go Lean prime directives, defined as follows:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Caribbean does not only want to be on the consuming end of technological developments, we want to create, produce and contribute to the world of technological innovations. So the CU/Go Lean roadmap explicitly asserts that the love and curiosity for technology must be ingrained in our youth as early as possible. So the plan is to foster genius qualifiers in our Caribbean youth for careers and occupations – at home – that involve Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

These points – of ICT and STEM – were pronounced at the outset of the Go Lean book with this opening Foreword (Page 3) and the subsequent Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12 & 14) with these statements:

Foreword: Our youth, the next generation, may not be inspired to participate in the future workings of their country; they may measure success only by their exodus from their Caribbean homeland.

xiii. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, prefabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

xxx. Whereas the effects of globalization can be felt in every aspect of Caribbean life, from the acquisition of food and clothing, to the ubiquity of ICT, the region cannot only consume, it is imperative that our lands also produce and add to the international community, even if doing so requires some sacrifice and subsidy.

This is a mission of the CU, to create an eco-system for technology education, appreciation and manifestation of industrial initiatives. The goal is to create 64,000 new direct and indirect technology/software jobs in the Caribbean Single Market. So it will be a good start – even if we are Number 2 – to use the grants and support (time, talent and treasuries) of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg – and other philanthropists and NGO’s – to foster this campaign.

Under the Go Lean roadmap, the structure is put in place to include contributions of time-talent-treasuries of NGOs/foundations. One feature of the Go Lean roadmap involves Self-Governing Entities (SGE’s); these may be structured as NGO’s at times. This structure will provide the needed regulatory oversight and accountability. The following list details other community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to optimize the region’s public/private cooperation and endeavors:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways	Page 21
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens – So solicit NGO’s Aid	Page 23
Community Ethos – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Non-Government Organizations	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate all 30 member-states into a Single Market	Page 45
Strategy – Customers – Non-Government Organizations are Stakeholders	Page 48
Strategy – Competition – Attention to Caribbean as Opposed to Other 3^rd World	Page 56
Separation of Powers – State Department – Regulator and Liaison for NGO’s	Page 80
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Implement Self-Government Entities	Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid	Page 115
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Education	Page 159
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Libraries – Portals for Technology Education	Page 187
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Foundations	Page 219
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth	Page 227
Appendix – Billionaires on the list of The Giving Pledge	Page 292

The details of such philanthropic projects have been detailed in previous Go Lean blog-commentaries; see sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7989	Transformations: Getting over’ with ‘free money
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7963	Being a ‘Good Neighbor’ – Like Puerto Rico needs right now
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7896	The Logistics of Disaster Relief
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7822	Doing more against Cancer – Facebook co-founder Sean Parker
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6422	Microsoft Pledges $75 million in Philanthropy for Kids in ICT
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5462	NGO Accountability – The Case of The Red Cross’ $500 Million Haiti Fund
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3432	International Aid “drying up” for Caribbean countries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126	Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1698	STEM Jobs Are Filling Slowly
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1193	EU willing to fund study on cost of not having CARICOM
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1112	Zuckerberg’s $100 Million Investment in Newark’s Schools Declared a Waste
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=816	The Future of CariCom – Too dependent on Foreign Aid
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=476	CARICOM Urged on ICT
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=451	CARICOM deliver address on reparations – Looking for Free Money
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=308	CARCIP Urges Greater Innovation

There is the old adage: “Charity begins at home”.

This is true, and preferable, if the resources are available “at home” in the first place. For the Caribbean, our “cupboards are bare”.

The Go Lean book describes how to empower and elevate Caribbean societal engines. The book clearly depicts that Not-For-Profit charities, foundations and NGO’s are stakeholders for the effort to make the Caribbean better. We need their access to alternate capital. Many members of the “One Percent” – see list of billionaires on Page 292 – want to help “change the world”; they want to give of their time, talent and treasuries. (But in turn, want accountability). The CU will help facilitate their vision. This is win-win!

Welcome to the Caribbean Mr. Zuckerberg. And bring your friends along.

We must accept all genuine help to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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How Local Economies Benefit From Small Businesses

Posted on May 23, 2016 in Economics, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

This sentence about small & medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) in Puerto Rico speaks true for the rest of the Caribbean:

According to government data, 95 percent of companies … are SME’s with 50 or fewer employees, and they employ around 25 percent of the jobs on the island.
Caribbean Journal Online News Source – Posted 06/12/2014; retrieved 06/13/2014 from: http://www.caribjournal.com/2014/06/12/puerto-rico-governor-signs-bill-on-small-medium-sized-enterprises/

Small and medium-sized firms constitute the economic landscape of Caribbean life. They must be cuddled; it is what it is!

The purpose of the book Go Lean … Caribbean is to elevate the economic engines in the region, to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. The book serves as a 5 year roadmap to foster new empowerments and economic opportunities for the region, with the goal of creating 2.2 million new jobs. To be successful, we must focus on the landscape – and realities – of small businesses, considering that they may constitute 95 percent of the business community.

In previous blogs-commentaries, the reality of BIG businesses are fully explored: the good, the bad and the ugly:

While there is a constant vigil against Crony-Capitalism, there is the pragmatic realization that Direct Foreign Investors (DFI) tend to be large corporations.
The Caribbean wants DFI.
The Caribbean does not want plutocracies – dominant corporate entities with abusive behavior.
Minority businesses tend to be minor businesses.

This commentary stresses jobs and entrepreneurship, features of the prime directives described in the Go Lean book. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) with the charter to facilitate jobs. These prime directives are defined by these 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion in GDP and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

How can small businesses fit in this mission? How can small enterprises succeed and compete against BIG multi-national corporations? Can they succeed? Yes, they can!

So says one of the largest banks in the US, Bank of America. They have provided a proven formula for small businesses to succeed … in competition with the rest of the world. Consider their details here:

Title: How Local Economies Benefit From Small Businesses
Posted by: Touchpoint in General Business on May 5, 2016

Studies show that when consumers spend money at a small business, their purchases have a ripple effect that spreads through the local economy. Big box or national chain stores might appear to make a bigger impact, but downtown merchants anchored in the community often provide more benefits overall. From keeping more money in the community to providing competitive deals, local economies thrive when neighborhood businesses are supported.

Click on Images to Enlarge
Bank of America – Community Economic Education Campaign. Posted 05/5/2016; retrieved 05/13-/2016:
https://smallbusinessonlinecommunity.bankofamerica.com/community/running-your-business/general-business/blog/2016/04/22/how-local-economies-benefit-from-small-businesses

It is important to note that the quest to “cuddle” small businesses likely do not involve Crony-Capitalism, as small enterprises do not wield much power. (Collectively, as in the Chamber of Commerce, the influence peddling may be more impactful).

So how can small businesses fit in with the prime directives to elevate Caribbean society?

The Go Lean roadmap anticipates the job multiplier effect. It is necessary to confederate the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region to optimize the local economic engines. This means enhancing existing industries like tourism, offshore banking, specialty agriculture; plus also creating new industries for the region like Automotive manufacturing, Ship-building, “Pre-Fab” Housing and Frozen Foods. These activities are designed to create 461,900 new jobs. The remaining of the 2.2 million jobs – 1,732,125 – are created as a result the job multiplier effect; (in which every direct job can indirectly impact multiple jobs in the economy). This is where the reality of small businesses fit into the mission to elevate the Caribbean.

According to the opening quote, 95% of the new companies will be small or medium-sized firms – with 50 or fewer employees. This is the source for the majority of new jobs.

But with the reality of the BIG multi-national corporations, how can small enterprises compete and succeed against them?

Efficiency and effectiveness is the key to “leveling the playing-field”. One leveling strategy is the use of technology. This does not mean that small businesses must buy-own the technology. No, not, in this year of 2016! It is only necessary to use the technology, other people’s technology. See this VIDEO from the same Bank of America for their offering of Account Management services, in conjunction with specialized software from Intuit’s QuickBooks®; (who partners with over 18,000 banks):

VIDEO – Account Management for Small Business from Bank of America – https://youtu.be/C3qX4oTOIcw

Published on Dec 15, 2015 – With Account Management from Bank of America you’ll get more control over your small business banking accounts plus seamless integration with QuickBooks®.

According to this VIDEO from Bank of America, there are obvious back-office enhancements for online banking systems; (other banks provide similar solutions). It is the full expectation that local Caribbean banks will launch similar products. This is a mission of the Go Lean roadmap; to provide greater stewardship (“new guards”) – setting the bar higher – for the regional banks and business communities. The roadmap commences with a Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing the need for regional integration (Page 11 – 14) and a new technology eco-system to foster a better economic future. The declarative statements are as follows:

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xxi. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxv.   Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. …

xxvi.  Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries… In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries … – impacting the region with more jobs.

xxvii.  Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

Change has now come to the Caribbean. In a previous blog-commentary it was explained that the driver of this change is technology and globalization. The Caribbean region cannot only consume the innovations being developed around the world to support small businesses; we must develop and innovate ourselves. The bottom-line for our development must be the “bottom-line” for the community, the Greater Good. The Go Lean roadmap identifies an example of the ICT advancement: the emergence of cloud computing, as similarly depicted in the foregoing VIDEO. This is the strategy of forging a Cyber Caribbean with many outsourcing/in-sourcing deployments for regional governments, institutions, businesses and consumers.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap is designed to foster ICT developments in the Caribbean region, with the motives of job-creation. This requires a full-vertical strategy: identifying the human resources / skill-set development, incentivizing high-tech start-ups and incubating viable companies. These points have been detailed in many previous Go Lean blog-commentaries; consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7847	PC industry swoons, as cloud and mobile devices dominate
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7806	Skipping School to become Tech Giants
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7646	Going from ‘Good to Great’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6422	Microsoft Pledges $75 million for Kids in Computer Science
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6341	The new Tourism Stewardship: e-Commerce
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6151	3D Printing: Here Comes Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5840	Security Concerns: Computer Glitches Disrupt Business As Usual
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5435	China Internet Policing – Model for Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4793	Truth in Commerce – Learning from Yelp
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4381	Net Neutrality: It Matters Here …in the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3974	Google and Mobile Phones – Here comes Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3881	Intelligence Agencies to Up Cyber Security Cooperation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3152	Making a Great Place to Work®
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3187	Robots help Amazon tackle Cyber Monday
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126	Computers Reshaping Global Job Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=689	‘eMerge’ Conference aims to jump-start Tech Hub
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=308	CARCIP – CariCom Initiative – Urges Greater Innovation

The primary ingredient for a Caribbean ICT strategy is Caribbean people. There is no need to create new computers, just new computer programs. There is no need to create banks, just deploy online banking. There is no need to create new accounting software, just configure existing software like Intuit’s QuickBooks with Caribbean “particulars”. This is the conceivable, believable and achievable goal for Caribbean stewards to help foster local small businesses, to include them in this regional elevation plan – see VIDEO in the Appendix below. The Go Lean roadmap describes the need to reform and transform the community “will” as a community ethos – national spirit – to promote entrepreneurship.

The Go Lean book envisions the CU – a confederation of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean chartered to do the heavy-lifting of elevating the Caribbean economy – to empower (and cuddle) small and medium-sized businesses. The book details the economic principles and community ethos to adopt, plus the executions of strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster a dynamic business environment in the Caribbean. See sample list here:

Economic Principles – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways	Page 21
Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Economic Principles – Money Multiplier	Page 22
Economic Principles – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments (ROI)	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development	Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Close the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology	Page 48
Strategic – Core Competence – Getting better at what we do best	Page 58
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Growing Economy – New High Multiplier Industries	Page 68
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Caribbean Postal Union (CPU) – Facilitating local business	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – State Department – Shepherding NGO’s and Cooperatives	Page 80
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Education Department – e-Learning Promoter	Page 85
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Labor – Promoting excellence and On-Job-Training	Page 89
Implementation – Assemble CPU and www.myCaribbean.gov	Page 96
Implementation – Steps to Improve Mail Services – Logistics for local commerce	Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver – Embrace of Project Management Arts & Sciences	Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Cyber Caribbean	Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Cooperatives	Page 169
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Events – Example of multiple small businesses	Page 191
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street	Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living – Transportation to jobs	Page 234

The Go Lean book and accompanying blogs declare that the Caribbean needs to learn lessons from organizations in other communities, especially banking entities that promote small businesses. The foregoing VIDEO provides a sample/example.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people, businesses, institutions (i.e. banking) and governmental entities, to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This roadmap will result in economic opportunities throughout the region, for small, medium-sized and large businesses and trading partners – domestic and foreign direct investors.

Overall, with these executions, the Caribbean region can be a better place to live, work and play. As demonstrated by this discussion on banking systems supporting small businesses, there is a lot of economic activity – 95 percent of all new companies – in the small business arena. The practice of incentivizing, “cuddling” and incubating small businesses must be earnestly engaged by stakeholders in the Caribbean region, especially those taking the lead. This is not easy; this is heavy-lifting, part of the process to elevate Caribbean society. But the heavy-lifting is an investment, for immediate returns, to benefit the Greater Good. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean…Caribbean now!

—————-

Appendix VIDEO – The single biggest reason why startups succeed – https://youtu.be/bNpx7gpSqbY

Published on Jun 1, 2015 – Bill Gross has founded a lot of startups, and incubated many others — and he got curious about why some succeeded and others failed. So he gathered data from hundreds of companies, his own and other people’s, and ranked each company on five key factors. He found one factor that stands out from the others — and surprised even him.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.
Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages at http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_gross_t…

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