Workshops to Strengthen Digital Capabilities in Guatemala

30/08/2018

This month, LACNIC and Google organized workshops on Interconnection and Digital Entrepreneurship in Guatemala City with the local support of the Guatemalan Superintendence of Telecommunications (SIT). These workshops were held within the framework of a project through which the two organizations seek to strengthen digital markets in Central American and Caribbean countries.

Closes to 100 persons from different areas participated in two days of intense activities with the experts from LACNIC and Google at the Westin Camino Real hotel on August 8 and 9.

This joint project by LACNIC and Google seeks to strengthen both the ecosystem for entrepreneurs and local connectivity.

Interconnection. Guillermo Cicileo of LACNIC and Arturo Servín of Google provided one and a half days of technical training to 58 technicians and professionals working in the IP operations and engineering departments of Guatemalan companies, universities and government agencies. The training addressed management issues such as traffic optimization strategies, the benefits of local traffic and business models, as well as trust-building. Topics covered by the course also included IPv6, BGP, RPKI, routing best practices, open standards and root servers.

This interconnection workshop allowed sharing and analyzing the specific connectivity difficulties found in Guatemala. Discussions were very active and enriching and allowed participants themselves to find solutions to some of their problems. In addition, the community that was created among those who participated in this workshop led to the creation of a Network Operators Group (NOG), a group of Guatemalan network operators who will work together to improve the Internet and interconnection in Guatemala.

Workshop participants expressed a high level of satisfaction with the activity and noted that the workshop had allowed them to acquire new knowledge on interconnection, peering, route servers and routing security.  

The participation of LACNIC CEO Oscar Robles during the workshops’ opening ceremony allowed advancing the dialogue with local authorities on the possibility of creating an Internet exchange point (IXP) in Guatemala. This topic was also analyzed at the Interconnection workshop, where strategies for optimizing IP traffic were discussed.

Guatemalan entrepreneurs. Two of Google’s education specialists were responsible for presenting the Entrepreneurship and Digital Marketing workshop. César Rodrigo and María José Güitrón trained almost 50 Guatemalan entrepreneurs on the use of Google’s digital marketing tools.

This workshop was aimed at local entrepreneurs and members of the local start-up ecosystem. Participants highlighted how useful the training had been and expressed their intention to start using the marketing strategies they had learned at the workshop.

This partnership between LACNIC and Google seeks to strengthen digital capabilities in the region and will be extended to the Dominican Republic and Trinidad and Tobago, where they will work with local partners that are part of the Internet ecosystem.