Archive for March, 2009

With 33 days left until the first ever BarCamp Nigeria, we can’t help being excited to see this finally approaching. So while you’re packing your bags getting ready to come for the event, we thought we’ll let you in on some of the latest updates.

First and foremost, one of our readers hinted us about the date the event has been scheduled to hold as being one of those environmental sanitation days - the implication being that we would not be able to start early in the morning. Hence, we’ve had to restructure the program and condense it as much as we can so that we don’t end up going home late at night. To that effect, we’re planning on having no more than two or three keynote speakers at the event. I must say, it was a difficult decision to take since we had already postponed the date of the event before and didn’t want to start messing with the schedules of our participants again. We’ll most likely be cutting down on a number of other possible things we could have done but we still promise to make it a memorable day.

Lots of really good news in the house. We’ve sealed deals to get souvenirs that will be made available during the event: T-shirts, stationery and so on. Also we’ve gotten a number of interests for keynote speeches and we’re still brainstorming on the last one of two keynote speakers. Like was mentioned in our earlier post, Justin Hartman of Afrigator has been confirmed as one of our keynote speakers for the event.

We’ve secured the venue we’ll be using for the event and it’s the Tom Associates Management Development Centre located at 5/7, Alade Lawal Street, Opposite Anthony Police Station, Lagos, Nigeria. It’s got six conference, lecture and meeting rooms and will be perfect for holding a BarCamp. In order to make it easy for you to locate the venue, you’ll find a map below of the area. From Maryland, (which is where you can see OAS Helicopters and Planet One) you can easily trace the location. A more descriptive text on how to locate the venue will be posted soon.

Map directions for Tom Associates Management Development Centre

We’ve been getting a lot of support from individuals and companies alike and not too surprising, one of the most commonest questions we’ve been asked is “I want to volunteer, how can I help?” So we’re working on some sort of FAQ on this so you know precisely how you can help. Watch this space for a post on that soon.

We’re calling on all Nigerians and lovers of Nigerians to help promote this event through their blogs, tweets and other social media. Help get the word out. We might not be able to accomodate everyone, but everyone will be able to at the very least, participate online. Our Facebook events page is buzzing with activity; lots of people signing up to attend and giving encouraging comments. We believe this event is going to make a huge impact in the Nigerian IT industry and we are really excited just thinking about it. You have a role to play in making this a huge success. We enjoin you to ask questions, make comments and we’ll be glad to respond to all of them.

Great news people! We’ve created an event on Facebook for BarCamp Nigeria ‘09. Please visit the page and RSVP. Also, we just confirmed one of our keynote speakers for BarCamp Nigeria ‘09. He is the person of Justin Hartman.

Justin Hartman is the MD and co-founder of Afrigator - Africa’s largest social media aggregator and blog directory. Afrigator is a startup he co-founded in April 2007. It grew steadily to a point where a stake was sold to MIH Print Africa.

Before moving to Cape Town (Afrigator’s home town), he was the Digital Innovation Manager of Avusa’s online and mobile excellence unit. There, he managed a team of web 2.0 gurus. Avusa was formerly known as Johncom.

Justin Hartman has really cut his teeth in web 2.0 having run a web development and hosting company for just over three years, he has also been involved in a number of Internet and media companies which include Media24, CareerJunction, True Love and FinWeek.

It’s a great honor to have Justin on board.

Hello and welcome to this maiden edition of the BarCamp Nigeria update. A lot has happened in the past and a lot is still happening.

First of all, we’ll really like to apologise for not being able to hold BarCamp Nigeria on our previously announced date - February 13th, 2009. We were unable to hold the event on this date mainly due to problems we had with our logistics. We’ve done away with most of the issues we had and have scheduled a new date.

The new date is Saturday April 25th, 2009. The venue has been tentatively fixed at the Tom Associates Training Center and Conference Hall (pending confirmation on availability) and the theme of this year’s Barcamp is “Web 2.0 opportunities and role in driving innovation.”

For those n00bs out there who don’t know a thing about BarCamps, A BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering of people to share and learn from each other in an open environment. Because of it’s nature, it’s hardly strictly formal. There’s only one rule every BarCamp participant needs to abide by - contribute! It’s that simple.

So what to expect?
You’ll get to listen to keynote presentations by seasoned experts in the tech industry, discussions, networking sessions and my favorite - breakout sessions. If you’ve attended any seminar or conference, all these activities should be well known, probably except for breakout sessions.

In breakout sessions, participants volunteer to lead a discussion on a certain topic. Depending on the number of topics and rooms available, some sessions may be merged or not taken at all. During the breakout sessions, other participants get to choose which breakout session they’ll be interested in attending. It’s really during the breakout sessions that you get to discuss a particular technology, topic, method or whatever as the case may be with others. You can read up more about BarCamps at the BarCamp website.

So what do you do?
Soon enough, when we’ve tidied a number of aspects concerning the event, we’ll be opening up registrations for the event. Please bear in mind that the facility we have can only take so many people so we have limited spaces available.

In the meantime however, you can tell your friends, colleagues and acquaintances about the event. It’s really going to be big and we are having talks with interesting personalities that will be coming for the event (updates will be published on our Twitter profile and on this blog).

If you will like to sponsor or volunteer, we welcome your input and can contact us by writing to barcampnigeria@gmail.com.