Teleios Consulting is organizing a Consumer Engagement workshop themed: “Harnessing the power of social media for brands”.

The workshop is structured to be highly engaging and seeks to bring together bloggers, internet marketers, social media and brand communication professionals to chart the course on how the internet is changing consumer habits, expectations and how business professionals and entrepreneurs can leverage on these mobile and digital platforms in meeting their business objectives.

As new media platforms are emerging, what better time for Nigerian brands to leverage on these platforms to bring their brands online.

Participants will benefit from the knowledge and experience of some of Nigeria’s finest social media strategists including:

Dayo Adefila – Chief Operating Officer at HotSauce

Yinka Olaito – Lead Consultant at Michael Sage Consulting

Franklin Ozekhome – Business Director at Insight Communications

Loy Okezie – Editor of TechLoy.com and Digital Content Producer at NEXT

Deola Kayode – Managing Partner at Teleios Consulting

The event holds this Thursday, July 21, 2011 at Korbis Building, 18/20 Kudirat Abiola Way, Oregun, Ikeja, Lagos. To register to attend this event, visit this link. Free, but limited spaces are available.

MobileMonday (MoMo), the global networking event that gathers mobile enthusiasts, developers and visionaries in the mobile space in different countries launched a Nigerian chapter, MoMo Nigeria in March 2011.

This May, the 2nd meetup of mobile enthusiasts and developers in Lagos, Nigeria have been organized by MoMo Nigeria.

The event details are as follows:

Date: Monday, May 23, 2011

Venue: Robert’s (Brown’s) Cafe, 16B Akin Olugbade Street Victoria Island, Lagos.

Time: 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM (GMT+1)

Theme: Government Policy & Mobile Business in Nigeria

AGENDA

5:00 – 5:29          Arrivals
5:30 – 5:35          Welcome
5:36 – 5:42          MoMo Nigeria Update
5:43 – 6:00          Theme Introduction
6:01 – 6:47          Moderated Discussion
6:48 – 7:09          Policy Proposals
7:10 – 7:50          Networking + Light snacks
7:51 – 8:00          Closing

Since 2000, MobileMonday chapters have been meeting offline at physical monthly events – around the world – to explore the many new and exciting opportunities of the mobile industry.

MoMo is a tool to help the mobile industry achieve benefits for everyone by spreading knowledge and encouraging people with good ideas to take action.

So join “mobile folks” in Lagos at MobileMonday this evening to examine how mobile tools and technologies can contribute to making our neighborhoods, our cities, our societies, and our lives better.

View photos from the 1st Mobile Monday event in Lagos here.

World famous hacking event, Garage48 started today May 6 in Lagos, Nigeria and ends on Sunday, May 8. Garage48 is an event for brave and active startup-minded people who want to develop their new idea into a product (or working prototype) within 48 hours.

Here are the ideas pitched at Garage48 Lagos:

MecaniClick – get a mechanic on-line, or via SMS. Somebody who has a good track reckord or is specialized on your type of the car. Web based system.

FTube (Facebook Youtube) - extract all the videos from Facebook and watch them as they would be on Youtube. Revenue share with the owners of the video, focus on the web app.

Extramil.es - making the “heling of other individuals” more effective. Extramiles will help you to sign up as an volunteer and donate your time for volunteer work. Referral based system. Monetized through enterprize service – corporates have to pay, advertisement and donations.

Parkbench - Meet people to share the interests. See who’s near you and what are their interests. Helps real-life introductions. Combines location, people, and interests in mobile and web.

Lecture Wall - an educational networking site and on-line educational community. Lecturers and students can meet. Lecturers can sell their lecture materials, students can get the materials and teachings.

City Explorer – Applications helping to explore your city and promotes local businesses. Improve the search results for the off-line businesses. On mobile and web. Helps to search for your places of interests.

MyCash - For people who track their expenses: people who need to budget (eg. students) can track and share their expenses. Through sharing others can also find good deals on the products and services or just the fact that the purchase was made. A mobile app.

TellMeTraffic – community driven trafic chattig app, to share the traffic information. Web based app accessible through mobile. People are very bored in 3 hour Lagos traffic jams.

Qmash – a data mashup, which allows its users to search for pictures, video, and music, later to download on the PC. Helps with format problems, since this is done on-line.

Evrica Events – event management system for Africa. Helps creating events and searching the events. Event publicity, registration and participation. A social booking system.

Nigerian Food Recipe Web and Mobile Solution – web app with recepies and guidelines (even videos) to make Nigerian food.

TalentME - system for Nigerians who like to express themselves helping to share their talents (singing, dancing) leading to profitable ends. Place to show-case yourself. Source of leads for talent hunters.

Tagwire – Location based search engine / social network facilitating contacts between individuals (helps finding a new girlfriend who plays chess). Money: premium accounts.

VeriPORT - On-line stock verification, stockbroker verification, news and events. To verify stock details in Nigeria takes 3-4 weeks.

iGetSkills - Bring people together with different skill set, help them collaborate, start up ideas and give a platform to sell their services.

Flippii - for Nigerian developers – share ideas and get feedback. Interested developers can join the project.

thisRoad - help people to present traffic solutions for their routes, influence the authorities. On web and mobile.

Banner Exchange Network – digitizing the print banners, and broadcast it on the Facebook through the network of broadcasters – through tagging their friends on the add photos.

isThis – is this a good food, nice place, a bad person etc. Take a picture and ask the question – an app for simple feedback for stuff you see and can take pictures of. Money – advertising.

One Word per Day – Getting local languages into and out of the Google Translator. A simple translation service. Helps to spread the language into the world with adding a language to google translate. Web and mobile app.

Me and my Celeb – allows to hang out with your celeb and interact with them.

Customer Service Aggregation Agency – customer service is terrible in Nigeria. A service for companies to employ students to be used as call center agents. People can sign up as potential call center workers have a training (learning about the company and the product) – makes the call service available for smaller businesses.

iDemocracy – follow politics/elections with your mobile. Put politics on-line, create a track reckord for politicians.

Yarn something - Piggeon English dictionary – help others to understand how people are talking in Nigeria.

Social E-Learning - Social network for e-learning on web and mobile.

Out of these 25 ideas, only 9 ideas (in bold green) found a team to develop it further. The other ideas were closed. Participants were allowed to choose their favourite ideas and form teams.

Garage48 continues tomorrow with teams developing on these 9 ideas. Garage48 started out in Estonia and has been successful in Europe. The next Garage48 event in Africa holds in Ghana on May 13 – 15.

Tech Open Day, an event that would provide an opportunity for Nigeria’s internet entrepreneurs to pitch their products and services to TechCrunch’s Sarah Lacy, is being organised by Co-Creation Hub and NigIntEnt.

Tech Open Day is an opportunity for Nigerian Internet Entrepreneurs and supporters of entrepreneurship to present their products and services to internationally acclaimed technology and entrepreneurship Journalist and Author, Sarah Lacy and other carefully selected stakeholders.

Some startups that will demo on the day include:

Bloovue helps advertisers connect with their audiences by providing simple and affordable online advertising on the largest online publishers in Nigeria.

Pagatech, an innovative, open, secure, and interoperable mobile payments platform that allows any person who has a mobile phone to transact electronically – thus turning the mobile phone into an electronic wallet.

Precurio, an open-source intranet solution designed for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs).

CashEnvoy, a web payment platform that caters fully to the need of merchants and customers.

Jobberman, a highly intuitive job search engine for Nigeria.

Skoola, an online platform for students, graduates and professionals to learn, research and test their knowledge.

Traffic Nigeria, a traffic monitoring application that allows road users to track traffic situation in Lagos and report same if they choose to.

ConnectNigeria, an information portal for Nigeria.

Dealfish, a free classifieds site where you can find ads from your neighbourhood. (Sponsors Demo)

The event will hold at Quez’ ville, Eko Gym and Spa Complex, 9b Akarigbere Close, Off Idejo Street, Off Adeola Odeku, Victoria Island, Lagos on Thursday May 5, 2011 at 4pm.

It’ll be a great opportunity for Lacy to meet with some of Nigeria’s tech entrepreneurs, and perhaps she could discover a local product or service worth mentioning in her next book or even on TechCrunch.

It will also be an opportunity to network with other active members of the Nigerian startup community.

Perhaps the most memorable royal wedding to date is that between Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer who got married on the 29^th of July, 1981 at St Paul’s Catheral before an invited audience of 3,500 and an estimated global TV audience of 750 million.

Fast-forward to 2011, about 30 years later and we are about to witness the first social media royal wedding between Prince William & Catherine Middleton, which could become the most memorable royal wedding of all time. William is second in line to the throne and marrying Middleton will make her the next Queen.

Apart from news coverage that could attract viewership from more than 1 billion people around the world, it is expected that people all over the world will be tweeting, facebooking and blogging on the day of the Royal Wedding.

Already, discussions about the Royal Wedding have taken over social media. According to Greenlight, a London-based independent search marketing specialist and technology firm, new research shows that in the past seven days the royal nuptials are getting one new mention every 10 seconds.

About 12 years ago, the world witnessed a Royal Wedding between Prince Edward Windsor and Sophie Rhys-Jones on the 19th of June 1999, but without the help of social media. Even the last Royal Wedding between Peter Phillips, the Queen’s eldest grandson and Autumn Kelly on 17 May 2008 (in the age of social media) couldn’t produce the world’s first social media royal wedding.

But on the 29^th of April, 2011, the world, yeah I mean even the worldwide web and the social web will witness the first ‘Royal Wedding’ of the digital age between Prince William & Catherine Middleton.

The Official Royal Wedding website for Prince William and Catherine Middleton’s wedding was launched on 2nd March and has received 9.5 million page views as at 19th April. The website features news and information about the royal wedding which holds at Westminster Abbey, London at 10 am (GMT +1).

The site, powered by the Google Apps Engine, provides details about the service, the procession and the reception. It also features exclusive photos and videos, including links to official Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Youtube accounts as well as a virtual tour of Buckingham Palace.

For such a significant and historic event, social media has cemented its place in our lives and it’ll be interesting to see what impact this event would have on social media usage for future weddings.

Will the royal wedding help increase people’s hunger for social media weddings? Will you use social media for your wedding? If you’re already married, do you wish you used social media?

World famous “sleepless hacking weekend” Garage48 is coming to Lagos, Nigeria during the weekend of May 6-8, 2011.

Garage48 is an event for brave and active startup-minded people who want to develop their new idea into a product (or working prototype) within 48 hours.

Garage48 events which started out in Estonia have been successful in Europe, and the organizers are now looking to bring it to Africa with the goal of connecting the startup & tech communities in Nigeria/Africa.

Garage48 Lagos would gather about 100 participants with various roles, including Graphic Designers & User Interaction gurus, Web Front-end Developers (HTML, CSS, JS, Ajax), Programmers and Backend Developers (PHP, Java, Python, Ruby, etc), Mobile Application Developers (J2ME, Android, Qt, iPhone), Marketing Wizards, Visionary entrepreneurs and Project managers.

If you want to try out your skills and see how ideas can become reality within 48 hours, then sign up for the event here.

Do you like this post? Subscribe to this blog’s feed at http://loyokezie.com/feed and share the post.

Sarah Lacy, one of TechCrunch’s senior editors is planning a visit to Nigeria in May 2011. She announced this recently on her Twitter page.

The internationally acclaimed technology entrepreneurship journalist and author travelled around emerging markets such as China, Isreal, Brazil, India, Rwanda and Indonesia looking for the best entrepreneurs that Silicon Valley (and perhaps the world) had never heard of and researching for her second book about tech entrepreneurship in the emerging world.

Last year, Lacy wrote a post likening emerging markets to dating, saying that she has “a raging crush on Kenya” and hoped to visit there early this year. I’m not sure if she has visited Kenya yet, but it seems Nigeria would be her third African visit to date.

While in Nigeria, Lacy would be attending the Tech Open Day with Sarah Lacy, an event that would provide an opportunity for Nigeria’s internet entrepreneurs to pitch their products and services to Lacy.

The event will hold at Quez’ ville, Eko Gym and Spa Complex, 9b Akarigbere Close, Off Idejo Street, Off Adeola Odeku, Victoria Island, Lagos on Thursday May 5, 2011 at 4pm.

It’ll be a great opportunity for her to meet with some of Nigeria’s tech entrepreneurs. And maybe she could discover a local product or service worth mentioning in her next book or even on TechCrunch.

Thanks to @OoTheNigerian for the tip.

Do you like this post? Subscribe to this blog’s feed at http://loyokezie.com/feed and share the post.

Today, Nigeria’s first-ever youth -focused, youth-driven presidential debate spotlighting priority issues for young Nigerians will hold at the Shehu Musa Yar’adua Centre, Abuja.

The ‘WhatAboutUs?’ debate would be a direct conversation with the Nigerian youth, inviting presidential candidates to answer questions posed by young Nigerians, at home and abroad, via social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, SMS, email and video diaries.

It’s been said that young Nigerians represent 70% of Nigeria’s population, yet their concerns and issues are not present on the national agenda or current political campaigns.

Even last week’s presidential debate aired live on NN24 did little or nothing to address the most important concern of every young Nigerian – UNEMPLOYMENT.

At the moment, Mr. Nuhu Ribadu (ACN), Chief Dele Momodu (NCP), Professor Pat Utomi (SDMP), and Governor Ibrahim Shekarau (ANPP) have confirmed their participation, while Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (CPC), President Goodluck Jonathan (PDP), and Reverend Chris Okotie (FDP) have declined the invitation to attend the youth-focused debate.

The debate will be simulcast live at 7pm on local television station, Channels TV and also online on Youtube.

In addition, viewers everywhere will be asked to chime in using #whataboutus on Google Moderator, a unique platform which empowers communities to connect and share comments, questions, and analysis.

The debate will also be rebroadcast on the WhatAboutUs website following the event.

The “What About Us?” Campaign is a collaborative effort from Enough is Enough Nigeria, Vote or Quench, Sleeves Up, StandUP Naija and several other youth advocacy groups and activists.

Who in your opinion will win the WhatAboutUs debate?

The Co-Creation Hub Nigeria has announced the 6 shortlisted ideas for their Tech-in-Governance series this year.

In February, the organization called for entries of ideas for web/mobile based tools that can help transform citizen participation in Governance in Nigeria.

Here are the 6 shortlisted ideas for Tech-in-Governance:

Idea #1 – Project Watch

About 750 votes were counted and after an editorial judging process, the following winners emerged (based entirely on number of votes) as the best use of social media in Nigeria.

Here’s the full list of winners at Sowambe Awards (Nigerian Edition).

Best Social Aggregation Tool
Tweetdeck

Best Micro-Blogging Platform
Twitter

Best Social Networking Site
Facebook

Best Social Media Job Site
Jobberman

Best Social Media Thinker/Influencer
Adeola Kayode (www.adeolakayode.com) (Winner)

Dayo Adefila (1st Runner-up)

Abasiama Idaresit (2nd Runner-up)

Best Social Media TV/Radio Station
The Beat 99.9 FM

Best Social Media Activist
‘Gbenga Sesan

Best Social Media Site
Twitter

Best Social Media Newspaper
NEXT (www.234next.com)

Best Social Media Politician
Babatunde Fashola (Winner)

Nuhu Ribadu (1st runner-up)

Goodluck Jonathan (2nd runner-up)

Best Social Media Celebrity
Banky W (Winner)

D’banj (1st Runner-up)

MI (2nd Runner-up)

Best Social Media Personality
Nmachi Jidenma

Best Use of Facebook (Personal Brand)
Goodluck Jonathan

Best Use of Facebook (Corporate Brand)
Samsung Mobile

Best Use of Twitter (Personal Brand)
Eldee The Don – @eldeethedon

Best Use of Twitter (Corporate Brand)
Arik Air – @arikair (Winner)

UBA Group – @ubagroup (1st Runner-up)

GTBank – @gtbank (2nd Runner-up)

Best Use of Youtube (Corporate Brand)
Oceanic Bank

Best Ad Campaign on Facebook
The Experience 2010

Best Digital Media Agency
Wild Fusion (www.wildfusions.com)

Best Twitter Trend
#lightupnigeria

The winners have now qualified for the Sowambe Africa Awards 2011 which is scheduled to hold later this year.

Sowambe Awards will continue with the South African edition starting with nominations on Thursday, March 10, 2011.

Congratulations to all the winners!