Gillian Moore

Caribbean Ax­is (Pro­fes­sion­al & Stu­dent) host­ed a se­ries of work­shops at the Au­dio Vi­su­al Room at Nalis in Port-of-Spain, from 1 pm on Feb­ru­ary 8. The ses­sions were aimed at young pro­fes­sion­als in the fields of event and artist man­age­ment, the arts and en­ter­tain­ment, mar­ket­ing and me­dia. Ac­cord­ing to Bre­vard Nel­son, one of the com­pa­ny's founders, Caribbean Ax­is aims to" fa­cil­i­tate pro­fes­sion­al net­work­ing, specif­i­cal­ly among Caribbean peo­ple". Found­ed in 2007, the com­pa­ny seeks to fos­ter con­nec­tions be­tween the re­gion's busi­ness peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly via the In­ter­net and "new me­dia" tech­nolo­gies.

Nel­son said the com­pa­ny al­so aimed to en­gage "ca­reer-ori­ent­ed stu­dents in need of men­tor­ing and those seek­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for ca­reer ad­vance­ment and jobs". He said stu­dents of in­sti­tu­tions such as Costaatt, UTT and UWI were tar­get­ed for the work­shops. At Tues­day's ses­sion, young, as­pir­ing pro­fes­sion­als turned out to hear prac­ti­tion­ers give of their ad­vice and ex­pe­ri­ence. At each work­shop, they lis­tened at­ten­tive­ly and asked ques­tions of the pre­sen­ters af­ter­ward. From 3 pm, pho­tog­ra­ph­er and writer Mark Lyn­der­say joined chore­o­g­ra­ph­er and founder of Elle NYTT, LaShaun Prescott to dis­cuss their ca­reers.

Aha mo­ment

Lyn­der­say-whose tech­nol­o­gy col­umn, Bit­Depth, has been run­ning for 15 years and is pub­lished week­ly in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Guardian-said jour­nal­ism "just made sense" for him, since he had worked on his high school news­pa­per as a teenag­er and con­tributed work to the Sun­day Punch. He said his "aha mo­ment" came when he found him­self as a young re­porter, "in a room with the Jack­son 5 and Pen­ny Com­mis­siong,"-with­out a cam­era­man. He used his small cam­era and snapped what would be­come "the de­fin­i­tive pho­to of that mo­ment." "That's when it flipped from my be­ing a writer who took pic­tures to a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who writes." He lat­er went on to be­come the Guardian's first pic­ture ed­i­tor in 1990. At that time, the com­pa­ny was mov­ing away from its old, out­dat­ed ana­log sys­tem and bring­ing in Mac­in­tosh com­put­ers. He was fas­ci­nat­ed, and his love of learn­ing about tech­nol­o­gy has dri­ven him ever since.

'You have to choose'

Prescott's im­pres­sive list of cre­den­tials in­cludes sit­ting on the T&T Ent and T&T Film Com­pa­ny Boards, as well as danc­ing and chore­o­graph­ing for Machel Mon­tano for the last four years, un­der the ban­ner of her com­pa­ny, Elle NYTT (for­mer­ly Elle In­cor­po­rat­ed). She start­ed danc­ing at 13, work­ing with top com­pa­nies like Car­ol La Chap­pelle, As­tor John­son and Meta­mor­pho­sis. Lat­er, af­ter pur­su­ing a Mas­ters de­gree in Busi­ness and while work­ing at the Min­istry of Trade, she re­alised she would have to choose be­tween her cor­po­rate ca­reer and danc­ing. She said: "I had to ask my­self, where does my pas­sion lie?"

She told her lis­ten­ers that if they want­ed to take their "game to an­oth­er lev­el," they would have to make a se­ri­ous com­mit­ment of time and en­er­gy. She said her job of­ten re­quired long hours but be­cause it is what she loves, "it doesn't feel like work." Prescott ad­vised that em­brac­ing new tech­nol­o­gy could great­ly as­sist in fa­cil­i­tat­ing one's goals. She said on­line re­sources of­ten helped her con­duct nec­es­sary re­search and that Face­book's so­cial net­work has been her "num­ber one mar­ket­ing tool," keep­ing her con­nect­ed with her youth­ful client base.

The peo­ple fac­tor

Both speak­ers stressed the im­por­tance of net­work­ing, es­pe­cial­ly for the self-em­ployed. Prescott ad­mit­ted it could some­times be chal­leng­ing, "keep­ing a smile on your face," but said it was im­por­tant to keep a pos­i­tive and ap­proach­able ap­pear­ance at all times. She said one had to "bal­ance hav­ing a prod­uct of a high stan­dard," with "a good at­ti­tude and work eth­ic, so peo­ple will want to work with you."

Lyn­der­say said he wished he had re­alised years ear­li­er that it was not enough to sim­ply pro­vide a good prod­uct; that the hu­man as­pect was equal­ly cru­cial. He said the biggest ad­vice he had to give was to strive to re­main con­nect­ed with one's client base-es­pe­cial­ly via a good, eas­i­lyup­dat­a­bleweb site. He said "there's noth­ing wrong with work­ing for some­body else, but there's noth­ing like work­ing on your own."

Net­work­ing

Al­so speak­ing at Tues­day's ses­sion were Mar­lon Grant and Si­mon Bap­tiste, on artist man­age­ment; Sean Bur­kett, Heath­cliff West and Tama­ra DaBreo, on event man­age­ment; and, Dale Har­ris, Nigel Teles­ford, Nigel Jor­dan and Caribbean Ax­is co-founder Chike Far­rell, on mar­ket­ing and the me­dia.

On Feb­ru­ary 9, Caribbean Ax­is held a net­work­ing ses­sion where pro­fes­sion­als could dis­cuss their projects and pas­sions, and source ser­vices. Nel­son said the com­pa­ny planned to con­tin­ue host­ing net­work­ing ses­sions on a quar­ter­ly ba­sis.

More in­for­ma­tion on Caribbean Ax­is is avail­able on the web site, carib­ax­is­pro.com.