Jamaica is definitely emerging on the e-commerce scene. On the 5th of April 2008 There was an event held called Emerge (click for event details). It featured Jamaica’s best web applications along with some other booths that weren’t necessarily web related (but could be if you think about it). It was a great networking opportunity and extremely good for promotion purposes as quite a few media people passed through. Among my happiest moment of the entire expo is hearing about paymasters move to online payment processing. Genius and should have been done along time ago. But i will not be the dark person that complains even when the item of desire is delivered. Kudos to paymaster on that move (praise is deserved) Ncb can go and die with their merchant accounts for all i care as its super difficult to acquire one as a little guy in the business-scape of Jamaica / the Caribbean / world.

For the geek i think the booth of choice to stop by would have definitely been FennTech they had the super sized plasma tv’s hooked up to pc for your gaming pleasure. They had a lot of ipod accessories and pc accessories and gave away a lot of cool swag (free stuff that people love receiving at expos). After seeing those plasmas in action I’m contemplating ebaying one of those bad boys imagine my pc hooked up to a 42″ or more screen.. Jeez *faints*.

For the event seeker events.in876.com was the booth to be at, to basically orient ones self with the most diversified event listing website available. With the most feature rich and social oriented approach to make the user feel comfortable with using the product. events.in876.com launched version 2.0 of their product at the Emerge Expo, it was well received by the patrons.

The food lovers would have found them self over by Cb chicken who had food for tasting (not sure why they were there.. but if they pushing for e-commerce with chicken orders i guess they have a legitimate reason). Also indulge another food company was present.

Audio was up in the place showing off their roadster and the new audi A6 which you’ve gotta be filthy rich.. like if cut you bleed money to kinda rich to buy one.

There were quite a few booths there but I was representing so i didn’t venture alot. But overall the vibe at the expo was great and i think anyone could have enjoyed it techhead , geek, audiophile, gamer or just a simple person. For those interested in photos there are a few photos on my profile at events.in876.com feel free to check em out

While making my rounds i stumbled on this lil guy emergexpo.com. An event slated for february 2n’d 2008. Where they allow companies which are backed by highly functional websites to setup a booth to showcase their online products to potential customers. Very nice. finallly a break for the webmasters out there tryign their best to market to the general public but cant afford the reach of the giants out there that control the media. For more information on the event click here. From there you can track who’s attending and so on.. From the general public that is..

Thanks alot guys. Great idea, I’ll definatly tell the people i know.. They also have a blog located here. Kinda lame that they hosted it at wordpress might add. Extremely lame.. A hosted wordpress solution is always the way to go no questions asked there.

Photo by Gladstone Taylor [ PHOTOJA.NET ]

Every game head should know about this store ‘str8games‘ [ pronounced ’str-eight’ games ]. They’re located in liguanea upstairs in Village Plaza accross from burger king. They got really reasonable prices and offer some neat deals and game trading. They’ll also purchase old games from you and so on. Saw them at an expo on saturday the put on a really good show and was among the most impressive of the booths. I saw the first supernintendo in about i dunno 5 years or more. Had to play, and sadly i got my assed kicked on killer instinct by falgore.

After visiting all the booths I eventually ended up back at the str8games booth and no it wasn’t because of the women they just had the best vibe going.

I like the idea of trying to push the gaming scene in jamaica, Hope there can be combined effort from the other major players in this market to take us where we need to be. But before you can get their str8games. You must and i emphasize MUST make a better website!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The current one is horrid distasteful and extremely hard to look at but its all a work in progress and I’m sure you’ll get to it eventually. Just dont’ take too long.