The Rationale for the formation of Caribbean Writers Marketplace
The LinkedIn group – Business, Project Management and Life Skills Writers of the Caribbean has established this Website to identify writings that originate in the Caribbean on these areas and to establish a network of such writers who are willing to provide regional information that can easily be understood and to discuss relevant topics.
The Vision of Caribbean Writers Marketplace
To provide a high ranking on-line market place where Caribbean writers can make their products and coaching services available
It Mission
Achieve our vision by:
• Having a high ranking website
• Hanging out where the target groups hang out
• Having very strong marketing for the writers
• Having relevant training
Strategies to achieve the mission include:
1 Building a Data Base of Information
We are seeking books, eBooks, training material, etc. that can be used in our nation’s schools and universities
We are also seeking writings podcasts, videos, books, eBooks, Poems, audio, etc that focus on:
Informing persons of important and topical issues in business and project management and ways to resolve them
Informing persons of best practices and lessons learnt in project management so that they can adopt the good lessons/ best practices and avoid repeating the bad experiences – especially important if there are Caribbean experiences
Informing persons of issues that they need to take into consideration as they try to reposition themselves to keep abreast of the ever changing environment
Doing investigative work to delve behind some of the problems that plague us in the Caribbean and suggest reasons for them and possibly make recommendations. In this area attention has to be paid to the possibility of persons responding legally and so caution is needed
Exposing persons to support systems that exist for businesses/persons in the Caribbean
Exposing persons to relevant training / mentoring/coaching that can address their concerns/problem areas or just assist them to move to another level in their business and/or career
Helping persons to live wholesome lives by exposing them to information on the life skills training areas
2 Building a Data Base of Information and Sources of Information on these Areas
We are not trying to duplicate available data bases. Where they exist we will give our users information on what they contain and provide a link to the data base. We are also seeking assistance of persons who know of important information that we should carry. There is a database submission form on the top menu that they can fill out so that we can include their information on our website. Persons wishing to access our data base can use the link categories on the front page of the website
3 Providing a marketing platform that can be used by writers to display their goods for sale
The writer/publisher, etc. wishing to use our website to display his/her products has to fill out a writer’s submittal form that will give all the relevant information. For information on our policy he/she should check “Policy” on the top menu.
Whereas we have been highlighting writers, we recognize that many persons prefer videos and podcasts rather than reading. As a life skills facilitator, many of our educational videos come from outside of the Caribbean and sometimes refer to things we do not have in the Caribbean e.g. some savings programmes/methods.
We are seeking to encourage more regional videos so our people can know more of what we have. In the area of life skills we can include poems, stories, literary pieces, etc.
4 Have a blog and discuss what we call cross cutting issues affecting the Caribbean
We are continuing to plan and work out the format for the site. We have agreed that the site will have a blog so that short summaries can be placed on it. This will focus on issues of interest to the Caribbean.
The Website’s organization
A committee has to look after the affairs of the website. We agreed to use the format that PMI uses for its volunteer project teams. It comprises a manager and deputy manager and team members comprising senior experienced writers and junior writers and senior experienced users and junior users.
Writer: any writer who was born in the Caribbean, is of Caribbean heritage or writes about the Caribbean
User: anyone who is not a writer, but will like to make use of the website to get information on business management, project management or life skills
Junior: a junior writer or user is someone 35 years of age or younger.
Experienced: Experience would be anyone of age 35 or over.
Experienced writers/users have been defined as age 35+. A lot of discussion centered on the term writers and readers. The idea is that on the core team there will be persons reflecting both those who contribute (writers) and the prospective clients (users) who can inform the emphasis/focus the site should take. Our quest for users to sign up is to get their input in terms of what the website should feature. We want to be relevant to our times and we recognize that many persons using the web are in the age group 16 to 35. We want to place information in the modes that they will appreciate while not excluding the older generation. We also have to hang out where they hang out which is on the social media. Our marketing focus will therefore utilize to a great extent social media. The users will be coming to the site for information and can inform of what persons will be looking for by accessing such a site.
We are still trying to source persons who are interested in joining the team especially librarians and Information Technology persons. Much work has to be done to make the site fully operational. Show your interest in this exciting project by joining our LinkedIn group and singing up for inclusion on our email listings.