Category: culture

The CNMG experience: How to crash T&T's Carnival Big Truck

February 16, 2010 by Edmund Gall

A few weeks ago, the T&T government decided to award sole rights to distribute coverage of major Carnival 2010 events to its own media house: the Caribbean New Media Group (CNMG).  On the face of it, this seemed sensible: award management of the distribution to a trusted partner.  However, though CNMG has been streaming its own programmes on the Internet for over a year at www.ctntworld.com, it proved to be completely unable to handle streaming of T&T Carnival.

First, we have to question whether the decision to manage radio, video and Internet coverage of Carnival 2010 was borne out of a wish by the government, through its Ministry of Culture, to really make the most of this tremendous marketing opportunity.  According to local photojournalist, Mark Lyndersay, it appears that the motivation was control rather than optimisation: see his extremely enlightening BitDepth article on the matter.

Second, the expected first step for CNMG would be re-licensing of other providers to share in the distribution of the events for a fee.  It did this with the radio feeds, since Internet users can listen to coverage of events via non-CNMG stations.  However, CNMG decided not to share Internet streaming with other distributors, as described in this When Steel Talks (WST) article on the exclusion of T&T culture media house WACK.  Given government's history of planned failure, folks involved in culture rightly became worried by this imposed single point of failure for video coverage. {Read more}

Etiquette Interruptus

February 2, 2010 by Taran Rampersad

I don't know exactly what it is about Trinbagonians and the concept of etiquette, but I've been dealt some interesting experiences from the deck of life recently - both happening while ordering food this week. Both happened in Gulf City's food court.

Scenario 1

A few days ago, I was about to order a gyro - I'd stood in line patiently, I'm at the regular cashier who pretty much knows my order by heart. A woman sticks some wares past me, peddling belts and other things at the cashier. The cashier looks at the wares as I look on, waiting to place my order. After carefully looking over the wares, the cashier decides she doesn't want anything being peddled and says.

I look at the woman hustling business at the cost of my hunger and ask, "Is it OK with you if I order now?"

"Yes, you can go ahead now."

'Boldfaced' immediately came to mind. Brazen. No sense of propriety. I shrugged her off, I'd made my point. The cashier made a funny face. I consciously decided not to ask her the same, made my order and left.

Scenario 2

Today, I dropped by Dominos and was in the process of ordering when a trio of young males - I disdain calling them men - were giving the cashier a hard time. One was standing behind me, trying to be cool by interrupting my order with double entendres where the first part were tastelessly silent.

I turned on him and braced him in front of his two friends, telling him that I was hungry and that if he didn't mind, I'd like to place my order without being interrupted. Basically, I was telling him in a humorous way to STFU - but he didn't get that. Instead, he decided to raise his voice to draw attention in an attempt to embarass me into silence.

Wrong person. {Read more}