Co-creation Hub Nigeria in conjunction with Acuity Trainings (UK) presents a RIM-sponsored 4-day intensive training workshop for advanced BlackBerry developers in Nigeria.

This programme consists of two days classroom based hands-on training followed by a one day of additional labs and support from the trainer to work on trainees own projects.

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An afternoon of fun, barbeque, burgers, hotdogs, beer and cocktail over a breath-taking view of Lagos will hold at CCHUB’s Rooftop this April. Put away your coding gear at least for an afternoon and have some fun. Jisas Lemasagarai, InMobi Associate Manager Business Development, Africa will also talk to us about how to increase downloads, improve ranking and earn more cheddar while we soak in the music, relax and meet amazing people!

Come mingle, ask questions and most importantly have fabulous fun!!!

Venue: CcHUB’s RoofTop, 294, Herbert Macaulay Road, Sabo, Yaba, Lagos
Date: Saturday, 28^th April, 2012
Time: 2.00pm

Register Here: http://www.facebook.com/CcHUBNigeria/posts/274478069312823

It’s time for us to understand the numbers, mingle and have fun again – Yes, it’s April DevParapo.

The GSMA estimates the total number of active mobile lines in Africa at about 620m with Nigeria accounting for 100m according to a recent Financial Times article. One in 20 of these active SIM cards is further estimated to be in a smartphone. Industry experts reckon that BlackBerry® smartphones account for 20-40 per cent of these 5m smartphones in Nigeria (between 1 – 2m handsets).

BlackBerry is currently the top smartphone vendor in Nigeria (GfK January 2012), the fastest growing mobile market on the continent. Research In Motion (RIM), the company behind the BlackBerry® solution, haslargely been successful because BlackBerry has been able to meet demands for connectivity and collaboration. In addition to offering a wide range of smartphones to a diverse range of users, RIM continues to partner with carriers to give Nigerian customers more choice and flexibility with innovative data packages based on their needs.

With a robust ecosystem that harnesses the strength of the devices, partnerships with carriers, retailer networks and application developers to deliver value to the end users, RIM’s place in Nigeria is worth taking a closer look at. To this end, Lelany Sommers (Senior Business Development Manager) and Michael Weitzel (Senior Application Development Manager) from RIM will join the Nigerian tech community at the April edition of DevParapo to discuss the BlackBerry ecosystem, opportunities for Nigerian developers and the partnership with CcHUB to enhance developer relations.
This first of its kind exchange with RIM will provide a channel for local developers and tech entrepreneurs to garner insights on how to leverage the company’s ecosystem for value creation.

As is our custom, there will be plenty to eat and drink while networking with inspirational players in the Nigeria tech scene.

Date: 27th of April, 2012
Venue: CcHUB, 6th Floor, 294, Herbert Macaulay Way, Sabo, Yaba, Lagos
Time: 5:30 – 8:30pm

Register Here: https://www.facebook.com/CcHUBNigeria/posts/371850439524553

Developers Parapo is an event where Nigerian web and mobile application developers network, shareand gain knowledge required to start and grow viable businesses. We’ll bring industry experts from Nigeria and across the world to the events to share key insights that will grow the Nigerian application development ecosystem. Developer Parapo is an event of CcHub Nigeria (Nigeria’s first open living lab). www.cchubnigeria.com

The Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), an institution dedicated to the promotion and celebration of excellence in business leadership and entrepreneurship across Africa, is partnering with Co-Creation Hub Nigeria (CcHub), Nigeria’s first open living lab and pre-incubation space dedicated to catalysing creative social technology ventures, in an effort to encourage innovative ideas that could help transform the social technology space in Nigeria.

Through the partnership, TEF will contribute to the growth and development of Nigeria’s emerging tech industry from the “Silicon Lagoon” by providing managed seed funding to 20 technological ideas/ventures targeted at typical social challenges faced by the average Nigerian. The fund will support the novel use of technology in several key areas of the economy including healthcare, education, agriculture, governance, inclusive technology, small business development, and finance. By focusing on the early stages of high-impact, results-oriented ideas/ventures, the seed funding will support experimentation and prototype development in order to accelerate the adoption of the solutions.  Each technology venture will then have the potential to become a self-sustaining profitable social enterprise.

On its part, the Lagos-based CcHub will act as an incubator designed to accelerate the successful development of the funded social technology ventures through an array of business support resources and services developed and orchestrated by the hub’s management. In addition, the group will lead co-creation initiatives and facilitate multiple stakeholders to work together to create novel technologically-driven solutions for the myriad of social challenges that Nigerians face.

Dr. Wiebe Boer, CEO of The Tony Elumelu Foundation, said: “The partnership is part of our broader effort to develop an integrated venture pipeline development process in Nigeria.  The Co-Creation Hub is doing work that is at the sweet spot of who we are as a Foundation –equipping emerging entrepreneurs with a passion for transformative social and economic wealth creation in Nigeria in particular, and Africa in general.  TEF is pleased to support something on this level which has not previously been formally done in Nigeria.”

He added: “It is my belief that our collaboration with CcHub will help provide job creation opportunities across a broader geography than CcHub currently operates, and ultimately improve the impact investing space in Nigeria.”

Mrs. Omobola Johnson, the Honourable Minister of Communications Technology, said: “This is a great initiative on the part of The Tony Elumelu Foundation. The team at Co-Creation Hub are doing a great job, and they need all the support they can get.  The Ministry also recognises Nigeria’s emergence as an ICT innovation centre and are partnering with the private sector to establish technology incubators across the country.  This is, indeed, a step in the right direction.”

TEF has already identified and selected the following three social technology ventures being incubated by CcHub, who will be the first recipients of the business development grants:

* Efiko is a product of a social tech start-up targeted at improving the pass rate for Nigeria’s secondary students in national exams.  The solution is a mobile testing platform tied to school curricula and designed to provide access to assessment and learning resources for secondary school students.

* OfficeMotion is a software company that develops software products for small and medium-sized businesses.  They are currently developing a product called Traclist, a web platform that allows micro and small retailers to showcase their inventory over the Internet, thereby giving consumers access to their inventory from web browsers and mobile devices.

* Varsoft is a product of Varsoft Technologies Ltd. It is an inclusive ICT product targeted at congregational type audiences, i.e. libraries, churches, seminars, libraries etc. The solution enables content delivery without the use of the Internet.

Bosun Tijani, the CEO of Co-Creation Hub Nigeria, said: “This partnership with The Tony Elumelu Foundation is exciting to us for many reasons. It is not every day that you see an African philanthropic organisation that is not just looking to throw grants at charity cases but is more interested in supporting causes that have the potential to create thousands of economic and social opportunities for Nigerian people. As young entrepreneurs in what the two organisations are now calling Lagos’s ‘Silicon Lagoon’, TEF’s interest and involvement in promoting social technology is an inspiration and forces us to set the bar high.”

The Tony Elumelu Foundation
The Tony Elumelu Foundation is an Africa-based and African-funded not-for-profit institution dedicated to the promotion and celebration of excellence in business leadership and entrepreneurship across Africa. As a 21st century catalytic philanthropy, the Foundation is committed to the economic transformation of Africa by enhancing the competitiveness and growth of the African private sector. Founded in 2010 by Tony O. Elumelu, MFR, the Foundation identifies and addresses systemic challenges that inhibit African entrepreneurs. For more information on The Tony Elumelu Foundation, visit www.tonyelumelufoundation.org.

Co-Creation Hub Nigeria
Co-Creation Hub Nigeria is a social innovation centre dedicated to accelerating the application of social capital and technology for economic prosperity. The innovation hub is Africa’s premier living lab designed as a space where work to catalyse creative social tech ventures takes place. For more information about CcHub, visit www.cchubnigeria.com.

March’s edition of Developers Parapo is set to potentially transform the realm of possibilities of what we know as customer experiences via mobile. CcHub presents Qualcomm (a world leader in next generation mobile technologies) whose ideas and inventions are driving wireless growth and helping to connect people to information, entertainment and one another.

Alex Dadson, Qualcomm’s Managing Director West Africa will be joining us to talk about the firm’s plans to stimulate growth of the mobile market through the development of technologies and services for 3G devices. He will also highlight recent work that Qualcomm has done in Augumented Reality and illustrate with cool demos. You dont want to miss this!!!!

Qualcomm has had physical presence in Nigeria since Sept 2010 and aims to expand the 3G ecosystem and create more opportunities for use of 3G-enabled devices in Nigeria. Qualcomm works with all the major OEMs (Nokia, Samsung, Blackberry) and some lesser known ones too, about 170 in all. Qualcomm is currently shipping over a million chipsets per day which end up in CDMA, 3G (UMTS) and LTE devices of various form factors (feature phones, smartphones, tablets, e-readers etc). Qualcomm’s integrated, single-chip solutions are enabling its partners to offer internet-capable 3G devices that support different tiers of market needs from high-end smart phones to low-cost handsets.

Qualcomm is interested in providing assistance to the Nigerian tech community on how to develop applications that increase 3G uptake. Qualcomm periodically puts out SDKs and most recently released an SDK around augmented reality.

Date: 30th March 2012
Time: 5.30pm – 8.30pm
Venue: Co-Creation Hub, 6th Floor, 294 Herbert Macaulay Way, Sabo, Yaba
Register here. https://www.facebook.com/CcHUBNigeria/posts/353739804668950

Developers Parapo is an event where Nigerian web and mobile application developers network, shareand gain knowledge required to start and grow viable businesses. We’ll bring industry experts from Nigeria and across the world to the events to share key insights that will grow the Nigerian application development ecosystem. Developer Parapo is an event of CcHub Nigeria (Nigeria’s first open living lab). www.cchubnigeria.com

Unit Tests: The Foundation of Software Quality - Patrick Turley, Lead Technical Consultant at ThoughtWorks South Africa

CcHUB invites software developers and entrepreneurs to join ThoughtWorks for a discussion and demonstration of how to build a codebase that will stand the test of time. Learn how to build a reliable suite of Unit Tests that will allow you to add features your customers want with the confidence that you have not broken everything else. Learn how this allows you to continue rapid development as your codebase grows. Learn how to use your Unit Tests in a Continuous Integration and Delivery Pipeline that will help you deploy new versions of your product on a regular basis. We will also discuss Source Control, Pairing, Refactoring, Hosting Solutions and Database selection.

“ThoughtWorks is a software company. We’re also an amazing collection of humans, hired for our passion, integrity and special powers. The company was founded as a social experiment – what happens when you hire really smart, passionate people and set them loose on really tough problems? 19 years on, this collection of people has helped shape the IT industry. The problem we set ourselves now is to use software to improve humanity – becoming a role model for 21st century socially responsible companies.

ThoughtWorks Africa is our latest dream. We have done some work in Sub-Saharan Africa for DataWinners and OpenMRS as part of our Social Impact Program, but our idea is to build a business providing technology consulting services to the local market, based out of Johannesburg.  We welcome a Pan-African spirit and amazing human beings to help build our presence while expanding our consciousness.”

Date: Wednesday 28th of March, 2012
Time: 5:30 – 8:30pm
Venue: Co-creation Hub, 6th Floor, Herbert Macaulay Way, Sabo Yaba

Register here. http://unittests-estw.eventbrite.com/

The workshop is part of an ongoing series initiated in Lagos in 2011. Called ‘j-hub.cc – common content’, the workshop series takes as its point of departure the current transformation of journalistic practice through online / mobile media. While these developments challenge established forms of organizing news production, their business models and audience assumptions, they also give rise to new media actors with little professional training that ‘do journalism’ without any relationship to the traditions and ethics of journalistic practice.

In today’s media and news environments, journalists are expected to incorporate a wide range of professional skills into their daily work. J-Hub partners offer a week-long workshop that introduces participants to both key trends in online and mobile journalism and provides practical introductory skills in the areas of online  research, multimedia editing, photo journalism, and use of  real-time/social media tools. Workshop activities include brief lectures/tutorials, individual and collaborative exercises, field research, and reflexive processing sessions in a game-based format.

Ambitious in scope, it is designed to enable participants from a wide range of professional backgrounds to effectively employ digital media tools  in their work. Experienced facilitators take participants through all stages of digital media production and cover the entire journalistic workflow.

The workshop provides every participant with a comprehensive reader including all texts and worksheets used throughout the workshop. Featuring current research and policy perspectives on key approaches to eco-journalism, the reader is also made available in an online version.

The state-of-the-art electronic publishing platform provided by J-Hub core partner Sourcefabric facilitates the editing and remixing of this content to support the production of follow-up materials for distribution/use in the media and news organizations of workshop participants. A representative from Sourcefabric will be present throughout the workshop to incorporate concrete suggestions on how to a) upgrade newsrooms in terms of online and mobile journalism and b) optimize newsroom workflows to improve eco-journalistic coverage. Sourcefabric provides free software tools and platforms and has extensive experience in working with a wide variety of media organizations.

Date : Tuesday 13th –  16th March, 2012
Time: 9:00am – 6:00pm
Venue: Co-creation Hub, 6th Floor, Herbert Macaulay Way, Sabo Yaba

Hello Nigerian developers! After the successful Hackathons in South Africa and Kenya which saw some amazing applications built, we want to continue spreading the love!

There will be a Google+ Hackathon with the support of the Google Technology User Group (GTUG) in Lagos. If you are ready to wow us with your application, please apply for the event using this form: Lagos for the event on the March 17 at the CCHub Nigeria.

Remember to start today on getting those creative juices flowing! Familiarize yourself with the API and review these resources. Begin gathering ideas and coding a little. Use the Hackathon to perfect your application and win one of the multiple prizes we will be awarding – including a ticket for the overall winning application to Google’s premiere developer event, Google I/O!

Any updates relating to these Hackathons and the Hangout will be posted on Google+ (of course!) using the hashtag #hackgplus. Stay tuned!

Date : Saturday 17th of March, 2012
Time: 9:00am – 6:00pm
Venue: Co-creation Hub, 6th Floor, Herbert Macaulay Way, Sabo Yaba

British Council in conjunction with Co-Creation Hub is inviting members of the community (technology developers, designers, branding and marketing professionals, and business analysts) to apply to participate in the Culture Shift project, themed ‘ICT for Festivals Development.’

About the project

• Culture Shift is a partnership-led, British Council-managed competitive innovation fund.
• It will provide an opportunity for emerging creatives to bypass what are often the most inhibiting factors in the progression of good ideas – access to seed funding and expert mentorship.
• Selected festival managers will work in collaboration with technology developers and designers, and business experts to create web and mobile solutions for use in festivals, and then compete for seed finance to realise the projects.
• Winning idea will receive Naira Equivalent of £5,000 and two others £1,500 each.

 For whom:

• Software developers, designers (graphic, web and user-experience), branding and marketing professionals, and business analysts.

When:
The project will take place in three phases:
1.   Stage 1b: 3-day ‘Hackathon’: 17^th, 18^th and 19^th March
2.   Pitching for seed funding: 19^th March 2012
3.   Mentoring and Fruition: April – September 2012

Venue:
Co-Creation Hub (CcHub), 6th Floor, 294 Herbert Macaulay Way, Sabo, Yaba, Lagos

Applications:
Software Developers | Graphic Designers | Business Analysts | Branding and Marketing professionals
 Interested persons should download the application form here and email completed forms to cep.nigeria@ng.britishcouncil.org on or before Monday 05 March 2012

Applicants must:
1. Have a history of and familiarity with technology tools development
2. Be willing to commit a few hours a week to the Culture Shift project, expected to last between 8 – 12 months. Applicants selected to receive the seed fund will be required to develop the final product from prototype stage.

Eskimi’s penetration in Nigeria still stuns most observers with 2.4+m of its global 5+m registered users based in Nigeria.

The mobile networking platform currently boast of adding 10,000+ new users daily in Nigeria with 130,000+ unique Nigerians accessing the site on average per day. This success story highlights the potential size of the mobile social networking market in Nigeria.

In a first of its kind engagement with the Nigerian Tech Community, CcHUB will be hosting Vytas Paukstys; the CEO of Eskimi on Wednesday 7th of March, 2012. Vytas will present Eskimi’s plan for the Nigerian market while enlightening local developers on how to leverage the platform’s API, invaluable marketing tools and support for their apps.

His presentation will be followed by an open Q&A session.

Join us for this opportunity to gain rare insight into the immense Nigerian social networking market!!!

Date: Wednesday 7th of March, 2012
Time: 5:30 – 8:30pm
Venue: Co-creation Hub, 6th Floor, Herbert Macaulay Way, Sabo Yaba

Register here. http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2791333955