HumanIPO spoke to Lami Idakwo, 360di Limited’s head of operations and strategy, on what the conference is all about, expected participants and what else is important for SMEs to know apart from social media.
HumanIPO: What led to the organisation of the conference?
Lami Idakwo: We realised that the people that are actually aware of how to use technology are usually tech people most times. There are also the people that have very good business ideas, but they can’t take it beyond their immediate environment. We understand and believe also that technology is what will help them to take it from their immediate environment to outside their environment. For example, here in Lagos, you can actually be attending to your customers in Abuja. It’s only through technology that you can do that. So that was why we decided to come up with that.
What is the target audience?
The audience is actually entrepreneurs, people with small businesses, because most times they have limited budget and they don’t know how to do any expansion whatsoever. But also, we’ve invited financial companies as well, especially the ones that offer financial services to SMEs. Because these companies have various products for the SMEs but they don’t know how to meet them as well. The conference will bring about that bridge and at the end of the day they will start networking as well.
What’s the total number of participating SMEs registered to participate?
We have about 90 people so far, we are targeting about 100 but right now we have 90 confirmed besides the speakers and other guests and people exhibiting their products.
At the just concluded Social Media Week in Lagos the focus was on companies operating only in Lagos. What of other cities, do you have anything planned for them as well?
We are starting with Lagos for now but we want to do it for other states, so it’s not limited. In fact we are working with SMEDAN right now to make sure that other cities like Abuja are covered. Because Abuja has a thriving business community yet a lot of noise is not being made about it. We are using Lagos as a starting point for other states of the federation.
What do you think is still lacking in terms of maximising social media?
We are focusing on technology and well-being rather than just social media because you can have a Facebook account and can’t use it. It’s not all about just marketing; we need to also focus on customer and partnership management using IT tools. They need information on how to apply IT in their day-to-day jobs apart from social media. There is Google Cloud that you can use to manage your information on the cloud and several other IT tools that SMEs need to key into apart from social media, which is just one of the numerous tools.
Who are the lead speakers expected at the event?
We have a speaker from the Enterprise Development Centre of the pan-African University, Mr Peter Bankole. He pioneered the Enterprise Development Centre (EDC) of the Pan-African University in January 2003, a model which has been replicated in six institutions in four African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda). He currently leads the Goldman Sachs 10,000 women initiative in Nigeria and Liberia and a number of other partnerships in Nigeria.
Another speaker is Lola Talabi-Oni, who has more than 10 years work experience with companies such as IBM Canada, LTC-JWT Lagos, Cadbury Nigeria, and Goodwin Procter LLC, USA.
Ezekiel Solesi, a prolific author, insightful speaker and serial entrepreneur will also be speaking at the conference; and Nkemdilim Uwaje who has been the CEO/Managing Director of Future Software Resources Nigeria Limited since 2008.
