Last year’s edition of TechPlus, the brainchild of Connect Marketing Limited attracted approximately 6,500 participants, an impressive feat for a maiden outing. But this year the Chief Executive Officer is aiming higher, Tunji Adeyinka seeks to ensure TechPlus remains the largest conference and exhibition dedicated to all things technology in the country when stakeholders gather at the Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos from July 21st-23rd.
“We’ve seen more interest this year because the event is bigger,” he said. “This year we’re targeting 10,000 participants, 3,000-4,000 gamers, we have about 100 exhibitors and around 80 speakers and panellists, all from different tracks looking at different subsections.”
And it appears that TechPlus has come at just the right time to tap into the buzz around technology in the country. From Andela recently receiving $24 million in funding from Facebook, and the government’s commitment to the development of the ICT sector, to the rapid emergence of innovation hubs and incubators across the country, it is clear that technology is on the brink of revolutionising the country and Adeyinka views TechPlus as a key part of that dialogue.
“We see our platform as a catalyst which will bring together the entire ecosystem together,” he said. “When we started we were looking to create a platform that would allow companies, individuals and businesses in the tech space to bring together customers, clients and for them to be able to showcase their products and services. You’d find a lot of events before that were talk shops about the future, but this is meant to be a practical opportunity to talk about technology and feel the impact that technology has on different parts of life both from a business perspective and from a consumer perspective.”
The theme for this year’s event is ‘A Connected World “couldn’t be more timely as Cisco predicts there will be 20.8 billion connected devices by 2020. TechPlus seeks to highlight the increasingly connected nature of the world and to identify Nigeria’s role in this new global reality through a variety of different ‘tracks’ where Adeyinka believes there’s something for everyone, including a dedicated area for young people and a section for gamers who stand to win N1.5 million of prizes,
“We have a government track which will focus on how to deploy technology to make government function better, a marketing and media track which looks specifically at topics such as how global brands are using technology to further their brand objectives,” he said. “The women in technology track will be looking at women who are taking a very inclusive role in technology, the education track we look at deploying the smart school system in public schools.
There’s the start up and motivation track for entrepreneurs. Speakers are going to address the type of support you need in your business at different stages and how to get that support.”
Leading these tracks are industry experts and professionals from across the globe, including; Dr. Omobola Johnson, the Chairperson for the Alliance of Affordable Internet, Tony Scott, a CIO with the US government, Rodney Williams, the founder /CEO of LISNR, Alon Lits GM of Uber for sub Saharan Africa, Monique Woodard from 500 startups, Kamran Elahian the Chairman of BIT-AMENA.
In addition is the exclusive launch of the Jaguar F-Pace by Coscharis motors, and the launch of a hackathon in partnership with IBM, which will continue after the event. The hackathon is centred on another key area in Nigeria’s development—agriculture. In light of the ‘tomato ebola’ epidemic hackers will be trying to discover how technology can help improve agricultural output.
Perhaps, the most important element of the conference is that Adeyinka doesn’t want the conversation to end when the lights go off. “We’d like to be able to come up with some key learnings and White Papers from the conference, which we will integrate as learning points into professional associations and distribute,” he said. “We’d also be looking at having smaller events in another part of the year before the next TechPlus so the conversation is ongoing, so that whatever they take out from this event…it’s not just locked up in a cupboard until next year.”
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