One of the biggest struggles we all have from time to time, is how to accurately measure impact. Should it be quantified by the amount of money in one’s account or simply by influence or those new initiatives that are borne through your work?
I ask these questions because of how I have seen this humble column approaching its sixth year of existence, influencing policies and in some ways, adding value to lives. I recall that two years after this column kicked off, I nearly got fed up at some point, owing to the stress of thinking through on what to write on, week after week, plus some financial troubles at that time, but thankfully I kept at it.
The following year, precisely on the 11th of September, 2016, I wrote a piece on this column titled, ‘Digital transformation or wheelbarrow pushing’.
In that piece, I was angry that, the South-Eastern part of the country was not taking full advantage of technology the way it ought to. I concluded the piece with, “as brave and industrious people, the South-Easterners should turn around the zone for good, by leveraging technology as a way of reducing criminality among the youths, while encouraging entrepreneurship. Besides, the economies of the future will be built on technology.”
Please stay with me, I am headed somewhere. One of the people who read that piece was Patrick Okigbo III, Principal Partner at Nextier Advisory. Okadigbo informed me about a technology company doing a lot of great stuff and introduced me to Kingsley Eze, who doubles as the Founder, Tenece Professional Services and Genesys Tech Hub.
I quickly picked interest and made a trip to Enugu to see things for myself and boy, I was blown away by what I saw! Eze and I got talking and to cut the long story short, Genesys Ignite was born and the 2017 edition saw close to 1,000 people attend, with three startups getting a seed fund of N10,000 each.
That marked the beginning of what is now arguably one of the biggest technology gatherings in this part of the world. It gives me great joy to state that a simple piece written to express my thoughts led to some sort of collaboration, which has ultimately created a platform of transforming the lives of young people in particular.
The 2018 edition of Genesys Ignite was bigger than the previous edition, with more than 1,000 people, comprising of start-ups, academia, software developers, students, policy makers, tech enthusiasts, etc. in attendance.
It was obvious that many of the young folks that — Finish Reading on the Punch
