Why It’s Time for a Hardware Conference in Nigeria
Introducing Datasheet, a conference on product development
Between the 4th and 6th of April this year, Hardware Lagos will host her first conference. For three days, there will be workshops and talks delivered by experts from across Africa and outside the continent.
But why now?
For close to three years, we have run meetup events in Lagos. From meeting with only 12 people sitting shoulder to shoulder in a small waiting room in Yaba to packed events at Capital Square with speakers calling in from abroad.
In those earlier meetups, the conversation focused on technical details. How could we make products or prototypes with the tools we had? Who had special tools? What resources were available in the community?
In the later meetups, the conversations have changed. Now, members of the community are concerned with manufacturing, developing relationships with overseas partners, market sizes and market research. There has also been some funding in the space, particularly in renewable energy/solar power.
There are other things that have shaped the conversation. We have seen members of the community get jobs and internships as a result of attending events and networking, and we have seen startups come to the event to attract talent. We have also seen would-be founders look for partners.
Bringing this together
When technology and business meet, great things happen. But these meetings do not happen by chance, they happen by deliberate effort and careful curation. This is the reason for Datasheet, our flagship conference with its first iteration in April.
By bringing together some of the best product developers from around the continent to deliver workshops and talks, we believe we can make these new connections. Attendees will hear about companies like Lumkani and Gearbox, Microscale Embedded and Rensource, and how they are doing great work.
But most importantly, we can see how far we have come in product development and how far we still have to go, we will share more of this during the State of Hardware Lagos session at the conference.
Register today at datasheet.hardwarelagos.com.
