When I walked into the hallway of Eko Hotels and Suites, venue of the much talked about Tech+ conference, I was impressed with the billboards, signage and other Tech+ paraphernalia on display. But when I got to what they called their registration desk, I knew right away that no matter how much they package and hype a local event, you will definitely see evidences of locality – even if it is powered by MTN.
Organisers went for self registration option and they made some touchscreen devices available for users although manual method would have made things much quicker considering very few number of devices available and the long queues and frustration on the faces of those that attended. To give you an idea of how clumsy the process was, I don’t think those devices were more than 5 in number yet we had thousands of people in attendance. I also wondered why they asked us to register online in the first place since we had to do the registration all over again by entering the same details we submitted online into the machine which then used it to produce our name tags.
The good thing about Tech+ was the fact that people turned up in large number. However, the shabby nature of organization proved that those that were in charge of putting the event together compromised on a number of critical issues including participants’ satisfaction and simple logistics.
Let me give you an instance.
The Friday conference sessions were massively attended to the extent that there were no chairs – there weren’t even spaces for extra legs. However, the ‘balcony’ could still accommodate more people but attendees were not allowed to go there because there was a Tech+ banner up there and organizers wanted it to be appearing in the video shots.
People around me, especially those of us that regularly attend international tech events in Lagos and at the same venue were pissed off when some guy and lady that wore Tech+ t-shirts approached us and attempted to order us to one end of the hall.
“They had the money but not the capacity to stage a world class event,” someone said beside me.
But there were really cool stuffs such as the unveiling of new Jaguar luxury cars, impressive panelists although the noise and grumbles made it extremely difficult for me to hear what they were saying. I couldn’t even make notes cos the last time I was in a jam-packed place was when was trying to make my way into the Lekan Salami Stadium in Adamasingba to watch a football match.
I also shook my head when I saw where organisers wanted the press briefings to be held. Imagine putting a makeshift structure with no ‘roof’ placed right in the middle of the exhibition ground and opposite where game freaks were screamingly playing games. It was very noisy and we had people going up and down. I didn’t even know they were holding press briefings there until I walked in and I saw some of the speakers who were on previous panels and they were interacting with my media colleagues, most of whom were just looking around – maybe hoping to see a button to press to turn the noise down.
Don’t let me even say anything on the refreshments, awful PR – you know PR is awful when there are grammatical blunders from auto-responses you get from ‘Susan’ and you don’t any response to your emails. On Monday, I was with some foreign tech guys who were in Lagos but couldn’t attend because the organisers did not reply their emails nor decided to send any form of communication after the conference.
“Is this the way things are in Nigeria?” one of them asked me and I couldn’t help but cover my face on behalf of other Nigerians who have an idea of what the ideal process looks like.
I can’t even forget the unhappy ushers (didn’t they pay them handsomely?) who were just frowning their faces when I approached them to make few inquiries.
Some of the exhibitors didn’t even show up on day one, probably on the second day also. One of them is the Co-Creation Hub, Nigeria’s foremost tech incubator. They did not show up at all even though they had an exhibition stand, 2 chairs and one table supplied by the organisers.
Radio stations too got stands and I could see that some of them were even transmitting live from the hall.
But I must admit that the strategy deployed to lure people to the event worked perfectly well, thanks to MTN that decided to invite all of its subscribers in Lagos. It was an over-potent crowd puller only that I’m not sure it could be a money spinner for exhibitors since most of those that came weren’t tech enthusiasts nor could afford the cars on display. But are happily filling forms and are getting gift items in return from the exhibitors. There were also ‘big boys’ in attendance, so I guess those ones could buy cool stuffs.
I however believe that Nigeria’s tech scene is in dire need of events such as Tech+ that would get everyone, apart from the tech geeks, to be interested in tech. It must be properly done because it is necessary for the industry – even much more for the tech companies including startups which I believe ought to have been showcased more.
Being the first edition, I have to cut the organisers some slack, yet we can’t shy away from the fact that people only take specialised events seriously and any attempt to do everything, no matter who is sponsoring you, is just an open letter to failure. With so much going on – conferences, exhibition, games, cars and lots more, the entropy level in the hall was very high and it was difficult to find a common thread that connected all the activities.
Add that to the very low ratio of security officials to conference participants and you will understand why as an attendee, you would be focusing more on keeping your head safe, not losing any properties or scratching any of the multimillion naira expensive cars you could only afford, for now, in your dreams.