Judg­ing by the re­sound­ing ap­plause of more than 300 per­sons in at­ten­dance, the in­au­gur­al Caribbean Dig­i­tal Ex­po (CDX) held at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad ho­tel, Dock Road, Port-of-Spain, last week Tues­day was an over­whelm­ing suc­cess.Or­gan­ised by Caribbean Ideas, a dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and on­line ser­vices provider, the ex­po was sup­port­ed by a num­ber of com­pa­nies, of which the front­line spon­sors were bpTT, Guardian Me­dia Ltd and First Cit­i­zens bank.

With more than 25 ma­jor com­pa­nies and var­i­ous small busi­ness rep­re­sent­ed, the all-day dig­i­tal ex­po fea­tured con­tri­bu­tions from keynote speak­ers, in­clud­ing Jen­nifer Kat­tula, head of agency mar­ket­ing at Face­book, and Sean Killen, Caribbean re­gion­al di­rec­tor of Re­search in Mo­tion, which is re­spon­si­ble for de­vel­op­ing the Black­Ber­ry smart­phone.Danielle Jones, man­ag­er, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion at bpTT, ex­plained, "It was an easy fit for bpTT be­cause of our track record of spon­sor­ing ini­tia­tives in ed­u­ca­tion and mi­cro-en­ter­prise de­vel­op­ment.

This ex­po brought in­ter­na­tion­al lo­cal ex­per­tise in the grow­ing field of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing and fo­cused on the lo­cal con­text in. In fact, bpTT is mak­ing this a part of our in­te­grat­ed ap­proach to show­case the en­er­gy and di­ver­si­ty of the com­mu­ni­ties across T&T that we in­ter­act with," said Jones, in a state­ment from Caribbean Ideas.A num­ber of oth­er lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts in tech­nol­o­gy, com­mu­ni­ca­tions and sales, con­tributed in pan­el feed­back ses­sions with the au­di­ence. Di­verse top­ics were ad­dressed, in­clud­ing the use of so­cial me­dia in cre­ative brand­ing, the state of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing in the Caribbean and op­ti­mis­ing busi­ness pro­duc­tiv­i­ty through soft­ware.

Chike Far­rell, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Caribbean Ideas, was pleased at the suc­cess of the con­fer­ence. "From the turnout and pos­i­tive re­sponse, there is a def­i­nite need for this type of in­for­ma­tion. We are re­al­ly in­debt­ed to bpTT-they were the first to em­brace what we tried to achieve here to­day-es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to ar­eas of mu­tu­al in­ter­est, in­clud­ing ed­u­ca­tion and skills build­ing. We will work hard to see the CDX be­come an in­te­gral part of the busi­ness cal­en­dar in the re­gion," Far­rell said in the state­ment.

There were al­so a num­ber of dis­play booths at the ex­po which pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion on dig­i­tal prod­ucts and ser­vices, in­clud­ing Black­Ber­ry, Blink/bmo­bile, Il­lu­mi­nat, Kir­ton Com­mu­ni­ca­tions and Sim­ply In­tense Me­dia.Karel McIn­tosh, founder and ed­i­tor of Out­lish Mag­a­zine un­der­scored the pos­i­tive re­sponse the ex­po gen­er­at­ed."This event re­al­ly show­cased the util­i­sa­tion of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing strate­gies and tech­nolo­gies. Per­sons of all lev­els at­tend­ed and the in­ter­face with the in­dus­try ex­perts dis­cussing the Caribbean per­spec­tive was very in­for­ma­tive and en­light­en­ing.

Full ku­dos to every­one who had the vi­sion and in­sight for mak­ing this ground­break­ing ex­po a re­al­i­ty," McIn­tosh said in the state­ment.