Introducing KnowTnT.com

October 18, 2009 by Taran Rampersad

Welcome to KnowTnT.com, a bit of an experiment of mine whose successes and failures depend on the community. To celebrate, I'm having another cup of coffee.

Well, What Is It?

That's a good question, and the answer is that it is planned to be an ever evolving unauthorized biography of Trinidad and Tobago. There are many possibilities for it, and there are plenty of things that will be implemented over time that I hope will be of worth.

Over the years, close friends and distant enemies have criticized my criticisms by asking whether I had done anything about it or whether I could do it better. It was a valid criticism, and as you can tell it's been constructive. How constructive has yet to be determined. Will it succeed? Will it fail? There's no telling, but the effort and commitment are and will continue to be apparent.

On Saturday morning, I woke up, registered the domain name, set up the hosting and got started.

The general ideas, which have been brewing over the last 9 years, are rather simple:

• To allow more people and businesses within Trinidad and Tobago to have a presence and voice.
• To remove some of the ignorance within Trinidad and Tobago regarding social media and to diminish the ability of others to profit from that ignorance while maintaining or increasing the ignorance.
• To find a home for my posts on Trinidad and Tobago which always seem a bit out of place to me on the front page of KnowProSE.com given that sites evolving nature over the last 9 years. KnowProSE.com posts on Trinidad and Tobago are here.

That's all pretty straightforward. At worst, this becomes another personal blog. At best, this site becomes a thriving silicon metropolis of ideas that are valued by Trinbagonians and people outside of Trinidad and Tobago.

To be clear, this isn't a business. People who decide to write here will get their own revenue; you can read more about that here.  Businesses won't be charged for their pages; you can read about that here.

At this time - with the launch as it is - the site is a proof of concept that, if all works well, will evolve into a non-profit. I'm approaching it as a hobby because that's effectively what it is. It's my money, it's my time and it's my energy.  I write and play with technology all the time; this is a simple evolution of that. I'd like to see it become a non-profit because then it would have a budget other than my own to move forward. It may happen, it may not - but I think this is better than drinking puncheon and griping about how, 'ting bad', 'Dis is Trinidad', and so on.

But more importantly, I'd like to see the site change things in Trinidad and Tobago - by prose, by ideas and by challenging the status quo by showing what is possible with people working together, separately, through the conduits technology continues to make available.

To kick things off, over the course of the next week I'll be focusing on how social media can be used by people within Trinidad and Tobago to make their voices be heard instead of echoing within the walls of the dual island republic. It's time to tear down some of those walls and, at worst, renegotiate new ones. It's time for the social media revolution to really kick into full swing for Trinidad and Tobago. The media has a role - and so does social media. In fact, they both can feed off of each other and make each other better.

It has to start somewhere. Here's where I take what I know and continue to learn and move forward. This is where I start. And if you want, it can be where you start, too.

I expect that there are plenty of ideas out there that can make things better. Having those ideas comes with a responsibility: using them or allowing others to do so. I'll do that. I ask you to do the same, be it here or on another site.

You're Crazy.

Yes, maybe I am. But maybe we need some lunatics to help run the asylum. We do have a distinctive point of view!

Consider this: Trinidad and Tobago has the Sou Sou, where people invest together and each gets their own share. This is not different from what can be done on the Internet - it just happens faster or at the same time. There's really no need for us to profit off of one each other by assuring that others remain below us. We can all raise ourselves up while raising each other up.

Is, "Together We Aspire, Together We Achieve" so alien? 

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