PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago, Oct. 30, 2026. Most of us now work alongside someone we never directly talk to: the algorithm that schedules our shifts, ranks our proposals, or routes our messages. This week, researchers, founders and educators from three continents gathered in Port of Spain to give that relationship a name.
The first global Algorithmacy Conference runs Oct. 28 to 31, hosted by the Caribbean Emergence Institute with festival partner Animae Caribe. Organizers define algorithmacy as "the competency through which a worker coordinates with another human through an algorithmic third party," and call it "a new coordination form — named, and convened around, for the first time." If oracy is direct exchange and literacy is written exchange, the conference argues, algorithmacy is the skill of working with people through a system that, in the organizers' words, "pursues its own objectives."
Wednesday opened at the IMAX Cinema with keynotes from convenor Roger Hunt of Bentley University, who asked "How do people navigate dynamic interactions?"; Antonio Scala of Italy's CNR and Sapienza University of Rome, on how algorithmic systems "shape what counts as action, response, and responsibility"; and Antonio Mele of the London School of Economics on AI-enhanced learning. University of Iowa digital cultures researcher Sarah Witmer challenged the room with a pointed question: "What does critical cultural research miss when it treats the algorithm as a tool instead of a cultural actor?" She also chaired a panel on critical research, AI and animation, alongside Chevonnese Chevers Whyte of UWI Mona, who spoke on the ethical use of AI in character animation, and Simpsons veteran Eric T. Elder.
Thursday turned to business. HR Horizon founder Mellissa Lezama spoke on finding Caribbean opportunity in AI, and energy executive Ryan Roper chaired a panel on building organizations for the AI era, with Hunt, Lezama, Tobago AI consultant Jason Arthur and product designer Steve Witmer. One question hung over the day's program: "Can the Caribbean build native-AI firms that compete globally?"
Today the focus shifts to young people and hands-on work. A FutureTT panel chaired by Lorraine Villaroel traces the path from AI training to jobs and entrepreneurship, and Hunt leads a two-hour hackathon in which participants improve the conference's own website live, submitting changes that are reviewed and published on the spot. The conference practices what it studies: every paper submission and review is public, with each one's history open for anyone to read.
Saturday closes the week at La Brea's Pitch Lake, the world's largest natural asphalt deposit, followed by a celebration of 25 years of the Animae Caribe Festival with steelpan, DJs and Caribbean food.
For a field that didn't have a name until this week, Algorithmacy 2026 makes a persuasive case that it should have had one all along.