Esther's Chat with Social Media Week Lagos Host, Africa Twenty One Media.

The Social Media Week Lagos has come and gone.  But it was a very interesting and educative event for most of us.  It was a weeklong event full of insights and vital info on social media marketing from experts to ardent learners and users of social media tools and platforms.

According to Crowdcentric, the overall organizers of the global brand/event 'Social Media Week', over 1000 events took place in 7 cities with more than 25,000 people attending events and hundreds of thousands connecting online and through their mobile app.

Indeed it was a week to remember.

I had a chat with the organizers of the Social Media Week Lagos, Africa Twenty One. We talked about the 2015 event and what results to be expected after the one week enlightening event.

ED/Esther: What are your expectations for participants after this one week program? What improvements do you hope to see in the social media marketing sphere? What were your goals and objectives for SMW Lagos 2015?

SMW Lagos/Ndada: For us, we hope to be a place that sparks change.  To be a place where people meet each other and connect.  To be a place where people get jobs, opportunities and start businesses.  For the past couple of years we have been that meeting place for people.

It’s hard to predict what happens but we hope social media week becomes a place for collaboration, skill building and a place where people who are new to technology or the social climate start thinking about careers in social.  Particularly, the young people who are not sure what they want will come here and have an interest in a career in social media and new ideas open up to them.

ED/Esther: Comparing the SMW Lagos 2015 event with the others you’ve had, what would you say has changed? Do point out the obvious improvements.

SMWLagos/Ndada: I think our programming has gotten tremendously stronger.  At first people didn’t really know who we were and they didn’t really know what we were going to talk about.  Last year was very good as well but this year, the quality of our programming has stepped up tremendously.  Not only do the larger organizations and companies get what SMW Lagos is about, they understand how social media and technology is changing lives.   They are being involved in a more useful way. Also, the smaller organizations and community programs do really get it.  Since they are still underground, they are using it to either grow their companies or promote their brands.  People get it now much more than before, and that makes our programming stronger.  This year, we had 144events on our schedule and 249 submissions from the public.

ED/Esther:  Tell us about the organization behind SMW Lagos?

SMWLagos/Ndada: Social Media Week is produced by Africa Twenty One, run by Ngozi and myself. We have been producing SMW Lagos for the last three years.  Africa Twenty One is an events, production and media agency.  We create events around Africa. We started doing events around Africa in the United States.  We did ‘South by South West Wusic Conference’, ‘Social Media Week New York City: about how Africans are connecting through technology’, amongst others.  We did that for a while and decided to bring it back home.  That was when we partnered with Enterprise Creative (Nkiru and Obi Asika).

Obi (Enterprise creative) resigned from the social media week Lagos but still supports the project.  Now, the SMW is fully produced by AfricaTwenty One.

ED/Esther: Is SMW Lagos running concurrently with the social media week in other cities?

SMWLagos/Ndada: Yes it is.  It’s happening in 7 cities amongst which are Bangalore, Barcelona, Copahagen, Lagos, New York, and Turkey.

All of the Social Media Week events are fee based programs but for Lagos, it’s majorly free. This is because we wanted SMW Lagos because we wanted it to be a place where it’s democratic and open for all.  We tried to reformat our model this way. We do have a VIP section for those who really want that kind of experience but majority of our program is and will remain free, if we can help it. This has been made possible with the support of our sponsors.   

We try to keep it less about sponsorship and more about learning.

Esther/ED:How can an organization participate or get a slot to run a session in the Social Media Week?

SMWLagos/Ndada : We do a call for submissions every October. 95percent of our programs are submitted by the community.  Submission holds from October to December and our review process is December to January.

The Team:

 

Director of Communications, SMW Lagos

Executive Director, SMW Lagos

See full profile and the rest of the SMW Lagos host team here