The first Half of 2013 was an eventful one with 4 monthly Events organized and two quarterly events.

We covered different topics which include Big Data and Problems faced by e-commerce companies in Nigeria. The speakers were respected people within the Nigerias technology Ecosystem. We had also the first MoMo hackathon (sponsored by VConnect) and another event on Augmented Reality application development sponsored by Qualcomm.

1st Half 2013 Report

Mobile Monday Nigeria

Contact: Info@momonigeria.org

Mobile Monday Nigeria

1st Half 2013 Report

Events
January 2013

The first event of the year focused on the Technology Outlook for Nigeria in 2013 and it took place on the 28th of January, 2013 at Bogobiri House, Ikoyi. Ope Adeoye (Interswitch), Shina Badaru (Technology Times Nigeria), Yomi Adegboye (Mobility Blog), Ade Atobatele (Nigeria.com) and Nubi Kayode (OTEKBITS) were the speakers at the event. The attendance was about 60 people. The key points discussed were: Increasing trend of Smartphone adoption in Nigeria, Impact and relevance of Social Media to the success of a startup, funding as it affects Nigerian startups and how public policy affects the technology sector in Nigeria as a whole.
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According to Nubi Kayode, social media is starting to be a key factor in determining how successful a startup will be due to the fact that social media is proving to be a way of spreading the word about a product / services over the internet. He mentioned that due to the rise in traditional advertising costs in Nigeria, more organizations such as GTBank, Pepsi and others are beginning to turn towards focusing a large part of their advertising effort on the social media. Also he shared how new startups are able to educate their users using this tool and at the same time solve problems for their customers using tools such as Twitter and Facebook. Ope Adeoye then shared on how the electronic payments industry in Nigeria has evolved over the years and how Interswitch has been trying to change the way Nigerians think about / embrace e-commerce by providing mechanisms to safeguard online financial transactions. Yomi Adegboye spoke about how smartphones are starting to drop in price as a result of manufacturers streamlining their processes. He also talked about how smartphone chipset manufacturers like Qualcomm and Samsung have been able to develop manufacturing methods that drastically reduce the cost and time required to bring new products to market. The last two speakers - Shina Badaru and Ade Atobatele - discussed how policy affects the technology industry in Nigeria and influx of foreign funded startups is impacting the local startup ecosystem in Nigeria. The Event ended with a networking session at about 8:45pm

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1st Half 2013 Report

February 2013
The event focused on Overcoming the Problems of E-Commerce Business in Nigeria and it took place on 25th February 2013 at Bogobiri House Ikoyi. We had 80 people in attendance and two speakers - Dika Oha (EOS Limited) and Lukas Zels (Kaymu). The different problems relating to setting up an e-commerce business in Nigeria were discussed especially issues of payment, logistics and accounting. Also, the methods that can be employed by a customer centric ecommerce business to improve revenue (free shipping, low prices etc.) were also discussed. Both speakers shared their experience in setting up their e-commerce business in Nigeria.

March 2013
The March event was an opportunity for the MoMo Nigeria team to share the vision of the organization with the participants. The event took place on 25th March 2013 at Bogobiri House, Ikoyi. Members of the team (comprising Tomi Davies, Lanre Folarin, Mayowa Owolabi, Akinbobola Akinola and Oladipo Olasemo) were in attendance and spoke about what MoMo is trying to do, the reason for monthly Mobile Monday meet-ups, the history of Mobile Monday Nigeria & Mobile Monday as a whole and benefits of Mobile Monday Nigeria to its members.

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1st Half 2013 Report

April 2013

This was one of the two major events in 1st half and it was sponsored by Qualcomm. The April event held at the Avenue Suites on 29th April 2013, and started at 6:30pm. About 130 Attendees were present at the event. All attendees were checked in and the event started with a presentation by Alex Dadson of Qualcomm on how the company is adding to the mobile ecosystem through its unique value creation process. Afterwards, Tomi Davies of Mobile Monday Nigeria and TechnoVision Communications spoke about the history of Mobile Monday and how it started in Nigeria. He then spoke about the benefits of membership and then announced that all the attendees have one year free membership which they could then renew afterwards. A representative from
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Spinlet also spoke about how the company is shaping the music industry in Nigeria. The event ended at about 9:00pm. 25 developers from the attendees were selected to attend the Mobile Web West Africa (MWWA) 2013 event and also the app developer day which took place after the final day of MWWA 2013. The developers were trained on how to develop augmented reality applications using the Qualcomm Vuforia Platform. At the end of the training, most of the developers were able to create basic augmented reality applications which could interact with images that were preselected by the trainers.

May 2013 The May 2013 Mobile Monday Nigeria event focused on Big Data and its benefits to Nigerian Businesses. The speakers were Chuka Ofili from OpenApps, Toba Obaniyi from Whogohost and Laolu Alabi from 47th Avenue. During his session, Chuka explained that OpenApps is an analytics tool which is aiming to help developers and business owners understand what platforms are being used the most in Nigeria. This will help many people to be able to target the right platforms when making their business decision for their products and / or services. Toba Obaniyi spoke about Whogohost, the products & services being offered by them and provided a discount code for people who were at the event which gave them 50% off their domain name purchases on Whogohost. Laolu Alabi was the last speaker and he spoke about 47th Avenue which is a mobile online store which allows people to buy and sell items on the internet. The event ended with closing

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1st Half 2013 Report

remarks from Tomi Davies and Lanre Folarin speaking about Mobile Monday Nigeria Membership.

June 2013

We had the first Mobile Monday Nigeria Hackathon in Nigeria and it was sponsored by the first VConnect. This was the first hackathon to be held on a Monday and also the first single day hackathon in Nigeria. It focused on the design of a Cinema Listing Web Application for VConnect which would help people to find their favorite movies at Cinemas near them. The participants were

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required to use ASP .NET or PHP as the programming platform and Microsoft SQL as the database component of the application. A total of 9 teams were formed at the venue to compete in the hackathon and each team spent 7 hours (10:00am to 5:00pm) developing their solutions. The name for each team was culled from the top 10 Movies of the year 2010 which coincidentally was the same year that VConnect was founded. Three winning teams were selected and an additional team was selected for having the best User Interface functionality score. Interviews were also conducted with the winning teams, judges and members of the Mobile Monday Nigeria team. The winners are expected to work with the VConnect product team to complete their applications over a 30 day period.

Mobile Monday Nigeria Membership

Mobile Monday Nigeria membership has three tiers: 1. Associate, 2. Professional and 3. Corporate. Each tier has its benefits as explained below. Associate: This is for students who want to be able to tap into the numerous opportunities within the ecosystem which includes access to our major events that take place during the year, access to training from our partners and holiday

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1st Half 2013 Report

job opportunities / internship opportunities at companies within the technology space in Nigeria Professional: This is for working professionals and entrepreneurs. It provides the opportunity to interact with our partners, access to job opportunities, access to our events / discounts to other events within the ecosystem. Corporate: This is corporate entities. This allows organization to register multiple members at once at reduced price thereby giving them cost savings. The staff of the organization benefit from the Mobile Monday Nigeria community. The organization also has advert slots in any of our events and / or in our newsletter.

Conclusion
In conclusion, the first half of the year has been a great and exciting time for Mobile Monday Nigeria. We are constantly working on our vision of providing a place where industry professionals, students, executives, developers and investors in the mobile technology space can all meet and get insights on trends, best practices and also experience new technologies while at the same time network and exchange new ideas within themselves. We will strive to continue in developing the Nigerian mobile ecosystem with our partners.

Special Thanks
We will like to thank all our members who have been in our events this year and especially for the levels of engagement they created through the questions that
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were asked after each speakers session. We also thank the Lagos State Innovation Council for their continued support and giving us access to use the Lagos State E-Learning Centre for our monthly events. We will also like to thank our two sponsors in 1st Half - Qualcomm Technologies Incorporated (QTI) for showing their interest in building mobile software development capacity in Nigeria and VConnect Global Services Limited for giving their support to the first Mobile Monday Nigeria Hackathon. For being our most consistent media partner, we will like to thank OTEKBITS team for all the online media coverage they have given us.