25th April 2009 was the day and Tom Associates Training Centre in Lagos Nigeria was the venue. Geeks, web entrepreneurs, and other like-minded people in the IT industry gathered to deliberate on Web 2.0, dot-com startups, web marketing strategies, mobile commerce etc, at the first BarCamp event in Nigeria.
Justin Hartman of AfriGator.com delivered the 1st keynote address where he shed-light on the incubation and growth process of Africa’s number 1 media aggregator. He also announced the launch of gatorpeeps.com (a new social-media platform) at the event. Victoria N’dee Uwadoka – Events & PR Manager of Microsoft Nigeria – delivered the 2nd keynote address. They were 2 break-out sessions that featured a wide variety of IT-related topics and they were also 2 panel discussions.
*Other people in attendance included Loy Okezie of StartUpsNigeria.com, Mutiu Okediran of mutiokediran.com, Rafiq Phillips of webaddict.co.za, Sheriff Shittu O. of webtrendsng.com, Gbenga Sesan of Paradigm Initiative Nigeria, Ken Orisanaiye of nuobjects.com, Edward Popoola of blueidentity.com, Tim Akinbo of TimbaObjects, Segun, Oluniyi David Ajao (yours truly ;)) of Web4Africa Ltd and many more.*
Not-s0-surprisingly, there were much more male than female participants. I must say I was very impressed at the organization of the event. That I had low expectations might have added to my “waoh”. The venue was funny. The building looks uninspiring on the outside, and breath-taking on the inside. This event also afforded me the opportunity to meet many people who I had known online for years, in person.
Too bad I could not take better photos since I could not get quality batteries to power my digital camera. My Nokia 5800 XpressMusic was a good substitute. Enjoy my BarCamp Nigeria 2009 photo album, and look-out for my videos soon.
*Most of the persons I listed have a web presence but I only linked to blog posts about BarCamp Nigeria 2009.
Leave a Reply