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Hackaday Hardware Lagos held her 3rd meetup on Saturday, the 29th of October, 2016. In attendance were two interesting speakers; Judith Okonkwo of Imisi3D and Opeyemi Babalola of Webber Engineering.
Judith, who is the CEO and founder of Imisi3D, spoke about her passion for VR, the state of Virtual Reality (VR) technology in the world and why Nigeria has to join the community early. She talked about one of her projects: creating a community of VR content creators and enthusiasts in Nigeria. Judith explained that the reluctance commonly expressed by people towards VR is due to the focus on the upper (and very expensive) end of the VR gadgets line like Facebook’s Oculus Rift or the HTC Vive.
She argued that people should focus more on the lower end which works with existing smartphone tech. Smartphone tech is accessible by local developers, content creators and potential end users. She also highlighted efforts by local enthusiasts to make cheap VR kits based on the open source Google Cardboard design. Her talk started with a fascinating 3D video of CERN ‘s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Further demos were held after the event using various VR kits like the Samsung Gear and the Google Cardboard. Attendees had the opportunity to see a 3D camera record a video. Also, some Google Cardboards were given out to interested attendees.
She announced that Imisi3D will be holding the first VR hackathon in Nigeria next month around educational and healthcare solutions and implored attendees to register. If you haven’t experienced VR, and you must, do visit Imisi3D at CCHub; they work out of the third floor.
Opeyemi Babalola of Webber Technologies spoke on Developing Niche (Hardware) Markets with a focus on Nigeria. Blessed with a wealth of experience on this subject, Opeyemi discussed the journey of how his passion for basketball led him to doing his final year project at the University of Ilorin on the construction of a basketball rim.
After a career in the oil sector, he left his job as a Subsea Engineer at a multinational and eventually starting up his fabrication company. At Webber Technologies, standard basketball equipment are built from ground up, shipped and installed. At present, his company is the only one in Nigeria that employs a Plasma CNC Machine for it’s operations. (View our list of Hardware Service Providers in Nigeria here).
Attendees were particularly interested in his talk. He had on display beautiful pictures of various basketball equipment built by his company including rims and backstops. He took questions continuously for over an hour after which we had a general discussion session among attendees and speakers.
The speakers' slides are up on Speaker Deck, as well as other talks from the previous event. The next edition is scheduled for February next year and it promises to be even more exciting. See you then!
