OOU holds first students’ tech conference

Students of the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State, on Friday took the race towards digital innovation a notch higher by organising the first digital tech conference in any higher institution in Nigeria.

Tagged ‘OOU Future Tech Conference’, with the theme ‘Building Africa’s Digital Future’, the incident provided a forum for ‘techpreneurs’, aspiring digital innovators and tech problem solvers to rub minds and exchange ideas.

One of the facilitators, Mr Ayomide Oduneye (aka Duke), a student of the institution, spoke on Web3, the prospects and the route to maximising it. He particularly shared his story of personal success and how others can take advantage of it as well.

Web3 is the next evolution of the Internet, leveraging blockchain technology to create a decentralised web where users own their data and digital assets rather than relying on centralised platforms.

It shifts control from large corporations to individuals, featuring decentralised finance (DeFi), cryptocurrencies, and non-fungible tokens.

Mr Oduneye particularly harped on the value of collaboration for anyone who aspires to succeed in it. He also spoke about the wisdom in starting with what is available.

He stressed also that a university degree is not a prerequisite to starting a Web3 journey; neither is it necessary to be a millionaire’s child to be successful at it.

Oduneye said: “I started my Web3 journey without a BSc. You don’t need to be Dangote’s son to start your Wb3 career. Start with that bad phone that you have; start broke, start hungry. It’s part of the process and the journey. I’m still building, but I’ve seen what is possible.

“A few years ago, I was using a Tecno 4Pro, 1Gig RAM, struggling to even stay online. I worked under the bridge at Sabo in Sagamu, selling SIM cards and registering NIN, teaching in schools for N15,000 monthly.

“Nothing about my environment suggested global opportunities, but Web3 changed my exposure – not overnight, not by luck, but by showing up, learning and being consistent.

“Today I’ve been able to support others; I’ve been able to build communities; I’ve been able to travel across countries and create opportunities.

“This Web3 space rewards people who start early and stay consistent. So, don’t just listen and go home. Start. Start small, start where you are; start with what you have. The future of the Internet is being built right now, and the question is: will you be a spectator, or will you be a part of the people building it?”

Another resource person, a 500-level law student and president of the Intellectual Property Doctors at OOU, David Agbolade, spoke on ‘Intellectual Properties and Tech Ecosystem’.

Agbolade established the fact that it is possible for others to take and monetise one’s intellectual property without one’s knowledge or authorisation if the necessary safety measures are not put in place to protect such intellectual property.

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He then proceeded to speak on how to protect innovations and one’s intellectual property.

“The product of your brain, what you can produce just by thinking – your creativity itself – is an asset,” he noted.

“Some of you develop apps, some of you design websites. Who owns your ideas? Can someone copy it? Are they protected? These are important questions that we should always ask ourselves.”

He went ahead to define basic concepts around intellectual property and how to protect it – including copyright, patents, trade secrets, trademark and branding.

“If you have something you want to create, you have an intellectual property, it’s very important for you to trademark it; it’s very important for you to protect it against (unathorised) use by other people – apps, logos, product identity.

“Without protection, you can lose your brand,” Agbolade warned.

“It’s not cheating. Yeah, you might have started something ten years ago, but because you didn’t have the necessary information, you failed to protect it, you didn’t register the trademark to protect it from use by others, somebody can wake up tomorrow morning and decide to use that same name, that same logo and he registers it. The patent automatically becomes his. It’s not cheating; that is what the law says.”

He also spoke on the need for express agreements between and among partners at the onset of partnerships or business relationships, so that in the future when the endeavour has achieved substantial success, there will not be conflicts as to who owns the greater share or proceeds, and so on.

Agbolade added: “Another mistake made by tech founders and innovators is the absence of non-disclosure agreements. This is very common. People go into ventures, pitch their ideas without providing non-disclosure agreements.

“Some people can actually take those ideas, find people that will do it without you, and you don’t have the right to challenge them because there was no non-disclosure agreement between both of you.

“You need to establish ownership over whatever you create.”

Another successful techpreneur and resource person at the event, Mr Paul Jatau, stressed that it is not necessary to have a degree in technology to provide tech solutions and make money from them.

Speaking on ‘From Complaints to Solutions’, Jatau enjoined aspiring youth innovators to “think solutions, not problems”.

To achieve this, in his PowerPoint presentation, Jatau gave a four-letter mnemonics CARE – which he explained as ‘Complaint, Ask, Resource, Execute’.

Breaking it further down, Under ‘COMPLAINT’, Jatau encouraged anyone starting off to “Name the problem” (that is to identify the problem, specifically and realistically); ASK how it (the problem) can be solved; under ‘RESOURCE’, he enjoined aspiring innovators to consider “What do you already have?” and under ‘EXECUTE’, he asked again: “What is the ONE action you can take before this week ends?

“You already have something you can start with,” he emphasised.

Mr Luther Lawoyin, CEO of Pricepally, another resource person, noted that people fail not because they are not smart, but that many people fail because they are not solving problems.

According to Lawoyin, to succeed, therefore, one needs to study and understand their environment, identify the needs and provide a unique solution to those problems.

He also gave some tips to guarantee success. These include:

“Understand your environment, manage your relationships, build something people use repeatedly, be resilient; don’t build for hype but rather build for usefulness,” he said.

In a post-conference interaction with the media, the vice chancellor, Professor Ayodeji Johnson Agboola, explained the rationale and motivation behind the landmark event.

He started by affirming the vision of his administration.

Professor Agboola said: “When we started, our vision was to have the 3’Es, and we believe that the 3’Es is what students of Nigerian universities actually need now. From history, we (Nigeria) had produced so many graduates that were looking for jobs that were not there. We then felt that there is no way you would be an employer of labour if you are not skillful; so you must be able to further your education. You must also be skillful and be employable. You must also be someone with a critical mind that can be an entrepreneur, because you need to identify problems and provide solutions.

“And that we started close to four years ago now, and we are taking stock of where we are. Are we actually making an impact? We encouraged these students; we started with a workshop a few years ago, and it was highly successful. Then we used it to apply for the NUC (National Universities Commission) grant, which was very competitive, and we showcased what these students were able to do in terms of creative thinking and digital skills.

“In order to buttress this, we brought the Minister for Digital Economy, Dr Bosun Tijani, in January during our convocation to speak in that direction. After that, the students came to me and said they wanted to organize a conference. We encouraged them. And I’m happy that right before my eyes, students are already having that mindset of converting problems to solutions.”

On what the institution would do to assist the students, he said:

“Council of this university actually approved that since the university is already moving in the direction of digitisation, instead of using radio waves to do all those things that we are doing, why can’t we have an optic fibre (Which is more reliable and faster) to every building on this campus? We started the process in September, and by the end of April, we will have the whole campus having optic fibre into every building.

“We are also partnering with Glo, taking the optic fibre right from where they terminate their own (which is Oru junction); we will take it from there down to this campus.”

The vice chancellor also promised that the university would put funds aside, and that “any student that comes up with a product, we’ll help that student to put it into a startup, and the university will fund it.”

He disclosed that OOU is partnering with some organisations that will assist such students in making sure that their dream projects are actualised.

His interest, in the aftermath of the conference, he said, “is that we would have created critical minds that would be able to look at the country’s problems and provide solutions to them.”