A Bold New Caribbean

The Authentic Avatar

The Bits and Bytes for the Authentic Avatar

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The Authentic Avatar is seeking out deep immersive experiences in rootical spaces on island/in country where culture and consciousness converge. She sees herself as a citizen of the World, engaging her global bredrin and sistren in a Bob Marleyan one love, one heart, one world, kind of vibzing. Alone or with her tribe, Authentic Avatars travel to diverse places and spaces and stay long enough to indulge in and savour an enriching and deeply satisfying experience of the people and their practices, their food, folklore, and festivities, and other cultural manifestations from music to art, to religion. For the Authentic Avatar, the next vacation trip is re- ally a pilgrimage in fulfilment of a mystical journey of unity in diversity. A rubric for product ideation for this consumer type is Community-based Experience Tourism. To build a sustainable, broad-based, and diverse ‘Experience Products’ movement, we would start with docu- menting and curating the tangible and intangible resources at the community level in each country that may have touristic/curiosity value in general. This includes landscapes, biodiversity, historical sites, heritage sites, recreational spaces, festivities, indig- enous practices, special interest groups, amongst others. Parting from this well-documented mosaic of possibilities, we would then create the structure to bring the right representatives of the community to- gether to design and prototype experience products that appeal to the Authentic Avatar’s desire for dis- covery, shared community, and universal purpose, without betraying the authentic and legitimate expressions of these indigenous realities within their native context. For each product prototype that is defined, we would create powerful narratives that appeals to the values of the Authentic and communicate these through the most appropriate media and channels. To ensure a learning-by-doing iterative process, aimed at product improvement, we need to create the mechanisms for capturing feedback and con- verting this into actionable insights. Product Development for the Authentic Avatar

By bits and bytes, I mean the digital architecture and infrastructure to support the entire product development and delivery value chain, from con- ception to consumption, to feedback, to iteration. In this case, each community would establish the structure and protocols to curate and publish an annual online calendar of events with products of sufficient variety and diversity that allows tour operators to mix, match and package, safe and satisfying experiences for this type of visi- tor. These community-level calendars can then be aggregated in a national calendar of events. Each product would have a standardised unique hashtag. This is critical to consistent communication, mar- keting, and promotion, and provides a basis for data analytics on the consumption pattern of each product. When users show off their experi- ences on social media using the unique hashtags, the data analysis value is greatly multiplied. This combined with location-based data create a rich supply of metadata for deeper data analytics to provide actionable insights for synergies, new product development and interventions from the community to national strategic and policy planning levels. With the right technology up- grades, including artificial intelligence (AI), the online calendar can be converted into a veritable Experience Marketplace with recommender sys- tems that allow potential Avatars to design and/ or curate their own authentic experiences based on their data-driven profiles.

The Core Idea/Vision

Before we go on to look at the Digital Dweller, allow me to briefly articulate the thinking or vision behind this piece. I am confident that emerging consum- er and technology trends, combined with digital platforms and social networks provide a powerful combination of resources for new product devel- opment to drive and sustain economic diversifica- tion and growth in the Caribbean.