Startup Weekend Lagos Is On

The hall is large, the teams are clustered in different parts of empty space quietly working on their products. The quietness belies the intensity with which the teams are working. You can’t really tell at first glance what is going on. No company brand banners litter the room. No customer t-shirts worn by the participants. Nothing really shows that out of this room, out of this weekend could come Nigeria’s next internet phenomenon. This is Startup Weekend Lagos .

Play!

Exactly one year ago, in the blog post "Pause", I went on a hiatus from my regular posting schedule of an article every week. Like Captain America, Digital Crossings remained on ice while the tech world moved on. Man, did it move on! RIM struggling in its traditional markets, while exploding in Nigeria? Google buying Motorola? Apotheker (NOT HP) giving up on hardware? An age ending as Steve Jobs takes a bow? And I wasn't on hand analysing what impact any of this might have on Naija? That's virtually a crime.

Well, the hiatus is officially over and I ask you to join me as I reboot this blog over the coming weeks.

PLAY!

Dejo Fabolude.

Elections 2011: Now that we have all this data, what do we do with it?

There is some serious data out there and we may be missing an opportunity to gather it, curate and use it to significantly transform the way the Nigerian nation functions.

Nigerians have taken to mobile technology like fish to water. Initially, it was just voice and SMS data. Information that is locked up in the data stores of the telcos. Over time, Nigerians began to adopt the mobile web and systems like Facebook, Twitter and the Blackberry with the eponymous blackberry messenger. The explosive adoption of this across the country was debated by many as a great opportunity for business, education and social change, while others sneered at social media in particular as having no real power to change the status quo – especially politically.