My Experience at Techpoint 2019

June 1st 2019, I had the opportunity to attend Techpoint — the Largest Conference in West Africa filled with tons of interesting tech talks, workshops, panel sessions, individual’s talks, exhibitions and some digital displays. Experts from various field were invited starting from Funke Opeke of Mainoneservice, Maziar Nekovee a professor of Telecoms and Mobile service, Seni Sulyman the vice president of Mobile Operation at Andela, Francesca Uriri from Uber and so many other amazing speakers.

I arrived when the third speaker was on stage, she was already at the middle of her talk, so I could not get most of her talk as I was trying to get settled. I began to enjoy the talk when Seni Sulyman of Andela started his talk, Seni was able to persuade the audience to think about a pressing issue in the education system of Nigeria- The model for educating Africa’s future. One of my take home messages from his talk even as a student and teacher was when he said: “As a teacher, you need to realize that each day you stepped into the classroom, you are determining the future of Africa through your actions.” His session was informing, motivating, and entertaining to the audience.

I also enjoyed Ngozi Aderibigbe session, where she exposed the audience to the future of AI and Intellectual Property. She showed us great artistic works done by robots, for the first time, I heard about Sophia(I call her the human Robot, lol). The argument was whether the innovative works done by machines/ Robots should be recognized as the Machines or Human, Ngozi explained to us that presently the Law only recognize human as the inventor.

Other amazing sessions also followed that I really enjoyed. We also had a short break for networking.

Here is a common saying: “Your network is your net worth”. Hence networking is one of the activities I look out for in conferences like this.

According to John Obidi, a speaker I really admire in Nigeria, the four factors that blossom his career in Lagos are People, Places, Events and Culture. I also posted on my twitter @OkunadeAbiodun2 that: Staying back home and reading might make some information look theoretical but going to conferences remind us that we are not alone. We also get exposed to latest skills, new ideas and opportunities for networking.

With all these said, I made new friends who are into programming, real estate, business, baking and education.

I also conneced with my friends from my school, LAUTECH who also travelled down to Lagos for this beautiful event.

***Back from the short break***

I made my way to the second row seats at the front so was able to see the speakers well and had a clear view of the presentations. This session was divided into two and I signed up for The Future of Work session. All the talks, including the panel discussions were mind blowing. During the panel session on “Technology and the 21st century Work Culture”, panelists exposed us to the qualities employers seek for recruitment- Attitude, Competence, Confident etc.

Also a young programmer, 9-year old, Joshua Agboola gave a talk. His session was inspiring. I had the opportunity to meet one of my online mentors in person, Toyosi Akerele.

Lastly, it was a fantastic experience and a brilliant tech conference and I look forward to the next one I will attend!

~Abiodun Olasunmbo Okunade