Seeing Opportunity in Importunity?

I had car trouble yesterday, and had to hitch a ride with a friend home. We were stuck on 3rd Mainland for almost an hour, and he asked me 'Don't you think there is something we can do, some kind of business opportunity, seeing as more than 3 million or so cars are stuck in traffic in Lagos everyday? You've a creative guy, that's what you do, think!' And I burst out laughing.

You see, for many years, I used to think like this my friend. And basically, that's how the average Nigerian living in Nigeria thinks. When we were in primary school, there was this Yoruba poem we learnt, titled 'Ire ti o wa ninu ibi', meaning, the Good in Evil. The poem basically said look at doctors, grave diggers, casket makers, lawyers, executioners, etc. They make money from someone else's misfortune. So therefore, there must be a good thing to be derived from someone else's misfortune?

But let's look at this critically. Is it really a good thing to profit from someone else's misfortune? Find opportunity in importunity? I've thought about it of late, and made a personal conclusion, which is what influenced the answer I gave my friend.

I told him 'Look, there is no solution. Government should just do what they should do, build more roads, repair bad ones, create new routes. After all we pay them taxes, and we have oil money. What else should we do?'

I guess what he was expecting was for me to propose some kind of telecoms solution that enables commuters to maybe get MMSs of gridlock spots, or some kind of traffic alerts. For what? So they can sit in Sue bar for hours waiting for traffic to subside? It's not like the information will change anything. Today is Thursday, and everyday since Monday I have spent 2 hours between Ikoyi, where I work, and Ikeja, where I live.

I think we all need to stop deceiving our selves that we have found any solutions. Those solutions are not individual solutions. Government should solve the major problems with the nation: food, clothing, shelter, infrastructure, public transportation, etc. Once they do that, they can watch and see how things will fall in place.

Your thoughts?

eMarketing

The actual reason why I started actively to blog is partly because of a course I am currently doing, relating to eMarketing. After like a decade plus of work, partly as a software engineer, and partly as a product designer, I decided it was time to learn something new. So I stumbled on this course online in eMarketing, and decided to try it out.

The course basically runs you through the rudiments of digital marketing, online and mobile marketing, proximity marketing, and so on. At the initial I was like...duh, is it not website designing? I program ASP and JSP web apps already! I started it kind of slow, but now I am picking up a lot of interest, and am even considering adding the knowledge to my repetoire of consulting skills.I'm already more than halfway through the course, and should be rounding up in a couple of weeks. It actually has a final project, an exam, and a pass to write the certification exam for the Certified eMarketer credential, from the eMarketing Association. That plus the PMP I did in September makes it two credentials I've earned this year!

One thing that strikes me most about the course is how much fun it can be to learn new things. Since I started, I look at every website differently, I see what could have been done to optimize the site for SEO,rather than just a coder slapping graphics around. It's been exciting really. The really catchy one is that so many businesses in Naija are not even taking advantage of the web to do their business! Obviously there is a major goldmine in Web business and marketing, and we should all tap into it.

Today I sat on an interview panel with some of my other colleagues in Tech.
We had three candidates, one of which was internal, and likely to be picked, cos he already knew his onions, but the manager still had to follow through.

Usually when I'm not the hiring manager, I generally ask one question: Tell me what you understand by the job you are here to interview for. Nine times out of ten, the candidate doesn't even know, or can't explain. Once you don't know, interview ends for me. I still do that for my own hires, but I still try to ask a few dud questions, just to appear transparent and fair. I mean...you came for an interview and you didn't understand the role? Total waste of my time.

Today was no different. The first candidate was totally terrible, next one failed my 'Cooper Test', but was still an interesting prospect for a more junior role,. The third one (did I hear you say yeah right, the internal one) was the only one who came out to bat. And he definitely did not bunt.

Moral of the story is...interview slots these days are few and far between. Why should you go and be wasting people's precious time? If you don't understand a job role, you won't get the job, period. Except of course you know the hiring manager, possibly even in the Biblical sense.

So all of y'all, be on the lookout for skeptics and haterz like me in your next job interview...which may be soon!

First Real Post

This is my first real post. And I thought I should start by describing myself. I'm in my mid-thirties,married with a kid to a wonderful woman who takes my breath away everytime, living and working in Nigeria.

I'm into anything wired, basically. Gadgets, widgets, what have you. That's even what I do for a living. I create products and services, and evaluate other people's ideas, for a wireless network operator in Nigeria. Earlier in my career, I was a nuts and bolts kinda guy, wrote software for a living. Now I write only for fun...truth be told I haven't written anything in over a year! More like i design and someone else writes.

I would not be revealing my identity at this time, cos this isn't really a professional blog, but I will focus a lot on professional issues. I'm very much settled in my personal life, so you won't see much about that in this blog. I will be touching mostly on my daily experiences in Lagos, blog about places I've been to (can't post any pictures of me, sorry), talk about workplace experiences, and generally share stuff about the vagaries of being a working professional in Nigeria.

Therein goes my first post. Ta!