Bo­bie-lee Dixon

Girls from sec­ondary schools across T&T got the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet and in­ter­act with some of this coun­try's lead­ing In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Tech­nol­o­gy (ICT) fe­male pro­fes­sion­als and sci­en­tists, at the Women and Girls in ICT Fo­rum on May 21.The fo­rum, held at NA­PA and host­ed by the Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy for the sec­ond year, was held to com­mem­o­rate the in­ter­na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tion of Girls in ICT Day, which gives gov­ern­ments around the globe the op­por­tu­ni­ty to raise con­scious­ness on the glob­al de­vel­op­ment of ICT, the ca­reers and op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in the sphere and to em­pow­er young girls and women with the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion on how a ca­reer in ICT can work for them.

A pan­el dis­cus­sion ti­tled A Day in the Life of Cy­ber-Rev­o­lu­tion­ary (which fo­cused on how ICT af­fects so­cial change) fea­tured Dr Kim Mal­lalieu, se­nior lec­tur­er in the de­part­ment of elec­tri­cal and com­put­er en­gi­neer­ing at UWI St Au­gus­tine; Shel­ley-Ann Clarke-Hinds, ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er, ex­ter­nal ICT re­la­tions at the Min­istry of Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy; and Max­ine Williams, a Trinida­di­an lawyer who is the glob­al head of di­ver­si­ty at Face­book. They spoke about the im­por­tance of be­com­ing in­volved as women in ICT, es­pe­cial­ly with the con­stant evo­lu­tion of tech­nol­o­gy; and hav­ing the right at­ti­tude to sur­vive in a field that has been tra­di­tion­al­ly dom­i­nat­ed by men. The stu­dents were urged to con­stant­ly chal­lenge them­selves, un­der­stand the ben­e­fits of stay­ing fo­cused and the im­por­tance of be­ing a crit­i­cal thinker.Williams, who has a de­gree from Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, was not phys­i­cal­ly present at the fo­rum but shared her sto­ry via video con­fer­ence and spoke briefly about her role at Face­book.

Williams said she loved her job and the many op­por­tu­ni­ties it has af­ford­ed her and ex­plained that she de­vel­ops strate­gies to har­ness the un­lim­it­ed po­ten­tial of the so­cial me­dia net­work's tal­ent. She en­sures Face­book is ap­peal­ing to and en­gag­ing with peo­ple from all walks of life and across dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic, so­cial and cul­tur­al back­grounds.At the same time, Williams al­so man­ages a high-per­form­ing team of di­ver­si­ty pro­gramme man­agers from the com­pa­ny's head­quar­ters in Men­lo Park, Cal­i­for­nia.Ad­dress­ing the ques­tion of so­cial me­dia be­ing used as a plat­form to broad­cast neg­a­tive mes­sages, Williams said while Face­book can­not pre­dict what a user will post on the net­work, there are pro­vi­sions made avail­able to re­port such in­stances and these re­ports are fol­lowed up and sort­ed out by the team.

She added that Face­book was not just a "lim­ing hub," as many think, but a place where peo­ple can get rel­e­vant and re­al time in­for­ma­tion."The thing about Face­book, peo­ple look at it too nar­row­ly. It is not just about 'mac­co­ing' your friends' busi­ness, but it is about shar­ing in­for­ma­tion. Face­book pro­vides you with rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion. There are so many groups on Face­book that pro­vide valu­able in­for­ma­tion to peo­ple across the globe who have sim­i­lar in­ter­ests. So if you are in­to agri­cul­ture, botany, sky­div­ing–you can find a group for al­most any­thing on Face­book–con­nect with them and get use­ful in­for­ma­tion. The fact is you can find as many things on Face­book as you can find on Google," Williams said.

UWI lec­tur­er Mal­lalieu point­ed out the im­por­tance of ICT in so­cial de­vel­op­ment. She said ICTs, in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ty net­work­ing in­fra­struc­tures and so­cial me­dia, have an im­por­tant role in fos­ter­ing democ­ra­cy and em­pow­er­ing lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties. She added the the­o­ry be­hind this is that more and ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion com­mu­ni­ca­tion ad­vances the de­vel­op­ment of a so­ci­ety.The pan­el dis­cus­sion end­ed with some ad­vice from Clarke-Hinds, who said she be­lieved no mat­ter what ca­reer path one choos­es, they should ac­quaint them­selves with ICT, as it is a high­ly tech­no­log­i­cal era that we live in and for most, if not all jobs, tech­nol­o­gy is re­quired.