The or­gan­is­er of the “Be­yond the Blue­print,” the new Caribbean Home De­sign Ex­po and trade show, be­lieves the event can trig­ger vis­i­tor ar­rivals over time

Chris­tine Fer­reira, CEO of Me­dia Life Pro­duc­tions, said the event, which is set to held from Oc­to­ber 29 to No­vem­ber 1, will fo­cus on the built en­vi­ron­ment, in­clud­ing var­i­ous stake­hold­ers in home de­sign.

“It’s go­ing to cap­ture our ar­chi­tects, our in­te­ri­or de­sign­ers, our con­trac­tors, quan­ti­ty sur­vey­ors. It’s every­thing that is with­in the built en­vi­ron­ment, so that we con­nect the peo­ple, we con­nect the prod­ucts, we con­nect the ex­per­tise be­cause ex­per­tise is some­thing that we can sell,” said Fer­ri­era af­ter sign­ing a deal with Guardian Me­dia Lim­it­ed.

Fer­ri­era was hope­ful the in­au­gur­al event could not on­ly start a much-need­ed dis­cus­sion about con­struc­tion with­in the re­gion and al­so be­come a tourism gen­er­a­tor in the long run.

She said, “It’s about the re­gion, so it’s about bring­ing peo­ple in the Caribbean to Trinidad, so we can have a trade show that is for Trinidad. If you go to the U.S. go to Chi­na, you go to these big trade shows all over the world. We have noth­ing of this kind in the Caribbean re­gion. So, we thought that this would be a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring peo­ple to Trinidad at a time that’s dif­fer­ent from Car­ni­val, so there’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty to al­so have your tourism at that point in time, at an­oth­er point in time with­in the Caribbean.”

Fer­ri­era added, “We’re al­ways look­ing to get our forex up, and hope­ful­ly with the ex­hibitors com­ing in as well, we’re go­ing to al­so have trav­ellers com­ing in, maybe longer stays, re­peat vis­i­tors, and so on. Be­cause not every­body comes to Car­ni­val.”

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, she ex­plained there will al­so be an ex­pert per­cep­tion re­port, which is a re­search ini­tia­tive de­signed to fill a da­ta gap in the re­gion.

She ex­plained it would fea­ture in­ter­views with pro­fes­sion­als across the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean to iden­ti­fy shared chal­lenges and so­lu­tions, with the goal of even­tu­al­ly cre­at­ing a re­gion­al in­dex.

She said large­ly, such da­ta had pre­vi­ous­ly not been shared with­in the ter­ri­to­ries which may be cru­cial as the re­gion nav­i­gates chal­lenges re­lat­ed to cli­mate change.

Fer­ri­era said, “The ex­pert per­cep­tion re­port is go­ing to speak to where we are now, and the rest, the acad­e­my, over the four days, will speak to what we’re do­ing, how we’re go­ing to im­prove the sit­u­a­tion, how we’re go­ing to im­prove sus­tain­abil­i­ty, how we’re go­ing to look at the cli­mate change and all the is­sues that we have, and that is what’s go­ing to car­ry us through. “

She added re­cent ma­jor earth­quakes in and around the re­gion have al­so re­in­forced the need to have such dis­cus­sions.

“I think the ex­pert per­cep­tion re­port will prob­a­bly high­light a lot of that, and the dis­cus­sions we’ll have with­in the acad­e­my it­self, be­cause we’re go­ing to have some pro­fes­sion­als, not just from Trinidad but from all over the re­gion, com­ing to speak about all the is­sues with­in the en­vi­ron­ment,” she said, “With the earth­quakes now, how do we build re­spon­si­bly? How do we make sure that these build­ings man­age to stay up af­ter a sev­en-point some­thing earth­quake? So these are the these are the kinds of ques­tions we will be ask­ing. We want peo­ple to ask, and we want we want to learn.”

The ex­po she added, should al­so bring new aware­ness to vary­ing chal­lenges as while the Caribbean may have some sim­i­lar­i­ties, each is­land has its own unique chal­lenges.

Fer­ri­era said, “I think there’s a bit of dif­fer­ence in all of the is­lands, and that is why when we’re do­ing the re­search, we’re go­ing to be ac­tu­al­ly look­ing at the in­di­vid­ual is­lands. They’re all unique in their own way, and ask­ing ques­tions that each per­son will give an ex­am­ple of what they what they ex­pe­ri­ence on the is­land. And there­fore we’ll be able to col­late and say, well, be­cause of the con­di­tions in this is­land or in that is­land, then you know we can’t be the same for every­one, but we can get close enough to hav­ing so­lu­tions.”

An­tho­ny Row­ley, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor of So­lu­tions in Mo­tion, was al­so present for the sign­ing last week Wednes­day.

Row­ley, who has over 25 years of ex­pe­ri­ence in in­for­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy, said his com­pa­ny's role is to pro­vide con­nec­tiv­i­ty and dig­i­tal ex­pe­ri­ences, aim­ing to fos­ter re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion and ad­dress shared chal­lenges in the built en­vi­ron­ment via that con­nec­tion.

He said, “what we are work­ing on is lay­er­ing a as­pect of a cus­tomer ex­hibitor and at­tendee jour­ney in the dig­i­tal in the dig­i­tal space that starts be­fore the event build up a lev­el of con­ver­sa­tion about the event con­nec­tions be­ing cre­at­ed be­fore the event ac­tu­al­ly hap­pens and then dur­ing the course of the event, of course, tra­di­tion­al stuff we pro­vide wi-fi, phys­i­cal con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the ex­hibitors.”

He con­tin­ued, “Of course, af­ter the event, we will be able to gen­er­ate some lev­el of re­port­ing around the lev­el of in­ter­con­nec­tions that took place be­tween ex­hibitors and at­ten­dees, even be­tween ex­hibitors them­selves. We will be able to track and un­der­stand what type of adop­tion or what type of at­ten­dance the dif­fer­ent acad­e­my ses­sions had. I’m all in the ef­fort of be­ing able to bring us as a Caribbean clos­er to­geth­er as well.”

He said this would in­volve the cre­ation a dig­i­tal por­tal that al­lows ex­hibitors and at­ten­dees to con­nect and book meet­ings be­fore the event even be­gins.

Guardian Me­dia signed on to be part­ner for “Be­yond the Blue­print.”