Data Outsourcing comes to Jamaica via MobileWorks and Freelancer.com - Flexi-Work propelled by Crowdsourcing and MicroWorking Anaconda

It’s official folks!

We’re now wannabee Flexi-worker lovin’ Californians and Australians here in Jamaica in what I’d like to call the beginning of a Silicon Caribe, to steal the title from rival Blog, SiliconCaribe.

This is possibly going to be the most straightforward article I’ve ever penned for my personal blog. Basically it’s an expansion on the idea of Tele-working from home which is powered by Flexi-workers as surmised in my Geezam blog article entitled “Jamaica’s 100MBps Internet Silver Lining – Tele-commuting Workplace is coming”.

Sydney Australia based website Freelancer and San Francisco, California based MobileWorks are coming to Jamaica….why I haven’t a clue…maybe it’s the women and the Red Stripe Beer. Whatever the reason, these two (2) companies made their presence felt during the three-day Digital Jam Marketplace and Job Fair held at the Jamaica Conference Center in Downtown Kingston on Ocean Boulevard that ended Friday June 29^th 2012.

Freelancer and MobileWorks are however significant in that they are the next big push for another branch of the ICT Sector: Data Outsourcing as hinted in the article “Freelancer.com launches Jamaican website”, published Sunday July 8, 2012, The Jamaica Gleaner and “MobileWorks projects sourced from Government”, published July 8^th 2012, The Jamaica Gleaner.

Our Americans counterparts call Data Outsourcing by fancier names;  Crowdsourcing …or Micro working. Whatever other colourful terms Americans choose to call Data Outsourcing, it’s effectively the same thing; taking big projects and subdividing them up into smaller projects to be completed by a disparate skilled workforce for a faction of the cost. A form of Tele-working, it’ll be a boost to the idea of Flexi-working.

Flexi-working, where the standard forty hour (40) workweek is accumulated on any day on a week determined by the company, has long been the norm for the youthful Millennial (18-28) workers that populate the many Call Centers now dotting Jamaica ICT Sector landscape.

It however has been shunned and lobbied against by Bible chomping folks who dislike the notion of potential tithes ending up in the hands of Private Sector companies that practice Flexi-working as noted in my Geezam blog article entitled “Jamaica’s 100MBps Internet Silver Lining – Tele-commuting Workplace is coming”.

And the GOJ is yet to have an Official position on the implementation of Flexi-working due mainly to strong opposition from Religious and Church groups, who fear a fall out in their revenues earned from church-going young people, the real reason behind their claims of Flexi-working eroding family core values.

But for those in the Flexi-work “Systems” such as Call Centers, these arguments are farce compared to being at home and having no work to even contribute the titles the Churches and the Pastor so dearly want to line his pockets. The fact, plain and simple, is that by virtue of the six hundred (600) year old Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and Jamaicans having English our first language the unemployed can now finally become employed in non-discriminatory workplace on their own terms.

This, really though, is due to the laziness of the First World cousins as noted in my blog article entitled “Convergyns and Aegis Communications Call Centers Coming – FDI powered Call Center Renaissance in Jamaica thanks to our Good English”.

An irony, as it speaks to the greatness of the US and the British; Thanks to their “First World” status, it creates a lazy society that can’t be bothered to read, interpret and understand manuals. Thus, by this strange token, it creates work for those in the so-called Developed or Third World Countries skilled at interpreting the hieroglyphics and Engineering-speak encoded in the Operator Manuals while using the additional expertise of the Installer Manuals to which the customer has no access.

A source of heated debate during lunch hours at my workplace in Jamaica at ACCENT Marketing to be sure!

It also has a little bit of entrepreneurism on the same level of making your own Freemium Gaming Apps for smartphones and tablets as described in my Geezam blog article entitled “Smartphones and Apps – Freemium Games are No. 1” in for good measure with the option to make money via a variety of ways online.

Sydney Australia based website Freelancer Jamaican counterpart went live on Friday June 29^th 2012AD at the tail end of the three-day Digital Jam Marketplace and Job Fair held at the Jamaica Conference center in Downtown Kingston on Ocean Boulevard as stated in the article “Freelancer.com launches Jamaican website”, published Sunday July 8, 2012, The Jamaica Gleaner.

Freelancer is straightforward enough; simply sign up using your email and select a strong password or use your Facebook credentials to become a member. Then rove the “work available” section and bid on several of the various small projects as a Freelancer employee in your spare time, once you qualify yourself for one of the following IT-esque skills sets:

1.      Website scripting or design

2.      Article rewriting or writing

3.      Graphic Design

4.      Programming

5.      Social Media Marketing

6.      SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Ditto too for employers, who are also looking to pay for the above skills as low as US$20 to US$200 per completed project. What’s not to love, especially the Article writing, which is just up my alley!

Freelancer statements on their website with regards to their services now available to Jamaicans should bring peals of joy to those above-mentioned, quote: “The platform connects over three million employers and freelancers globally from over 234 countries and regions. Through its website, employers can hire freelancers to do work in areas such as software, writing, data entry and design right through to engineering and the sciences, sales and marketing, and accounting and legal services”.

Meanwhile Start-up, San Francisco, California based MobileWorks, has also launched their crowdsourcing services here in Jamaica in partnership with the GOJ (Government of Jamaica) as stated in the article “MobileWorks projects sourced from Government”, published July 8^th 2012, The Jamaica Gleaner.

According to MobileWorks CEO KulKarni, MobileWorks, which began in 2010AD, aims to effectively delegate large IT projects (Jamaican call that contracts!!)  from clients in the US, EU and East Asia to IT and tech savvy folks who have long had computer programming and app design skills but were working frustrated working as Network Administrators and Computer Repair Technicians in a country that has no need for such skills – until now.

Effectively crowdsourcing, with the potential to create some one thousand (1,000) jobs within six (6) months time and ten (10) times that amount over a three (3) year period. Certainly explains the partnership with the GOJ, who are socialist to the core; anything that creates jobs they will support!

Salaries are also similar as well, with daily rates varying from as low as US$5 to US$20 per day. Albeit coming in a lot less than a Call Center for the same skills as mentioned above, it’s easy pickings for those wishing to make a little extra money on the side.

According to MobileWorks CEO KulKarni, the GOJ is apparently looking into outsourcing their backlog of work, quote: “We [established] contracts with governments. We have plans to index large sources of work. Our customer contracts are typically confidential, but they include search companies and financial service companies”.

In plain English, Freelancer and MobileWorks are both birds of the same feather and are another type of ICT Sector: Data Outsourcing. Operating a lot like Call Centers, they have accounts for both small and large clients.

Call Centers such as FullGram Solutions or ACCENT Marketing Limited as explained in my blog article entitled “Digicel cuts 120 Call Center Jobs - Fullgram Solutions to benefit as Antonio Graham speaks of an AEPP future by the Ocean” are our close cousins. Data Outsourcers such as Freelancer and MobileWorks typically take small jobs or large jobs and organize them via a Cloud-based platform to skilled workers via a Tele-working arrangements that marshals the skills of Internet connected individuals in other countries for lower salaries.

The only difference is that you do not need to answer calls with a headset all day, smiling at no one in particular during calls and dressed all fancy with no place to go. Instead, you just go to their website still dressed in your Pajamas (or no clothes at all), sign up and select a Project, follow the instructions and on completion, you get paid! You may initially on reading this far, dear reader, scoff at the lower salary, but if you’re already working, making and extra US$200 per fortnight does indeed help to pay those bills.

The reason for Data Outsourcing coming to Jamaica in such a big way is due to the same language, cultural and time zone factors influencing US based Call Centers locating themselves in Jamaica and the Caribbean as mentioned in my blog article entitled “Convergyns and Aegis Communications Call Centers Coming – FDI powered Call Center Renaissance in Jamaica thanks to our Good English”.

Already twenty six (26) Call Centers, which have the more official title of BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) are already in operation in Jamaica as noted in the article “BPO and Call Center companies operating in Jamaica”, viewed 05/12/2012, Nearshore Jamaica, with more on the way.

Truly this may be a renaissance for Programmers and App builders, as these developments not only herald the coming of the ratification of Flexi-work in Jamaica, already a reality, but also the rebirth of Data Outsourcing. An Anaconda sure to squeeze Jamaica forward into the 21^st Century!