Americas Quarterly Launch, Bogota: Connectivity and the New Generation

Speakers:

• Susan Segal, Publisher, Americas Quarterly and President & CEO, AS/COA
• Dr. Victoria Kairuz Márquez, Director, National Telecommunications and Information Technology Plan
• Eduardo Schvinger, Vice President, Solution Sales Cloud Computing, CA Technologies
• Angela Camacho, Associate General Counsel, Microsoft Latin America
• Martha Cecilia Rodríguez, Director, Centro de Estrategia y Competitividad, Universidad de los Andes
• Andrés Barragán, Founder, Puntoaparte Editores
• Pablo Arrieta, Colombian technology entrepreneur

Summary:
Americas Society and Council of the Americas launched the Winter 2010 issue of Americas Quarterly, dedicated to a new generation of leadership in the Americas at an event in Bogota, Colombia. While the issue features articles by young leaders in business, politics, and civil society, the Bogota event specifically focused on connectivity and the next generation. Panelists explored the role of information technology in development, entrepreneurship and education.

Building Connectivity

Connectivity is perhaps the greatest feature distinguishing current generations from their predecessors. Expanded connectivity will fuel growth and progress in the region and should be a top priority for governments, private businesses, and civil society throughout Latin America.

In her opening remarks, Colombia’s National Telecommunications and Information Technology Plan Director Victoria Kairuz Márquez highlighted the progress that Colombia has made in recent years to greatly expand access to mobile phone technologies and the Internet. She noted, however, that despite significant progress, thousands of public schools in Colombia still lack Internet connections. This shortcoming, which is due in part to both financial limitations and infrastructure obstacles, threatens to widen the digital divide between young people who are connected and those who are not. According to Kairuz, the program she directs is a long-term effort to both ensure the highest level of connectivity possible and to develop a strategy to expand connectivity in the coming decade.

IP Protection

The Davos-style panel presented a diverse set of views from the private sector, academia, and young entrepreneurs about the opportunities that greater connectivity has brought to young people in Colombia. It was also clear, however, that a number of challenges have arisen. One of the starkest challenges is intellectual property (IP).

According to Puntoaparte Editores’ Andrés Barragán and Colombian technology entrepreneur Pablo Arrieta, the country’s young people—like those in other parts of the world—have a great desire to consume digital media, software, and other online content for a variety of purposes, including education, recreation, and entrepreneurship. But little incentive exists for them to access such content through formal channels that offer full copyright and IP protections. Barragán and Arrieta shared the view that software and digital content providers need to reevaluate their business models to reflect this reality.

Microsoft’s Angela Camacho and CA Technologies’ Eduardo Schvinger acknowledged that there are, in fact, insufficient incentives to compel young people to respect IP rights in Colombia, and elsewhere in the region. The private-sector representatives stressed that finding new ways to deliver digital content and protect IP rights is the responsibility not only of major content suppliers, but also of young artists and entrepreneurs themselves. Camacho argued that failed efforts to overcome IP challenges could stifle creativity and reduce incentives for young people everywhere to undertake creative endeavors.

For the Universidad de los Andes’ Martha Rodríguez, concurred with other the other speakers. The key, she stressed, is to educate young people about the importance of IP protections and build a twenty-first century code of ethics that encourages students, entrepreneurs, and large businesses to work together to address shared challenges.