Social Media Week Independent (SMWi) is a global platform that connects people, content, and conversation around emerging trends in social and mobile media. There are four editions of the conference happening globally in February, June, September and November.
Social Media Week Independent Nairobi kicked off at KICC yesterday, 12th September, and is expected to run till 26th September 2016. The events include Expo and Plenary Sessions that will take place at KICC while the workshops and master classes will be held at iLab Africa at Strathmore University. Other cities that are running SMWi simultaneously with Nairobi are London, Rome, Sao Paulo, Miami and Mumbai.
In its first year here in Kenya, the SMWi Nairobi looks to mobilize an audience made up of senior marketers, founders, entrepreneurs, influencers and digitally connected consumers across a range of industries including marketing, advertising, communications, media, publishing, education, banking, technology, politics, arts and entertainment. SMWi Nairobi is hosted by Go Gaga Experimental Limited. This is the second time it is happening in Africa, after Lagos.
They will be exploring the SMWi’s global unifying theme for 2016:
“The Invisible Hand: Hidden Forces of Technology (and How We Can Harness it for Good)”
“The Invisible Hand represents the intangible, under-valued processes driving our technology, and ultimately, our decisions, forward. As we become more efficient, dynamic, and diverse human-beings, we have the responsibility to understand the present and future potential of these hidden forces all around us.”
–Toby Daniels, Founder and Executive Director, Social Media Week
This one week conference will provide a central stage for keynotes and panels, multiple rooms for workshops, master classes and presentations, and an area dedicated to co-working, networking and interactive events. They will share insights into how social media and technology are changing business, society and culture around the world. Some key speakers from day one were Kiss FM radio presenters Adelle Onyango and Shaffie Weru.
The following are the four attributes of “the invisible hand” that they will be examining:
- Smart devices
Including mobile phones, connected devices and networks including Bluetooth, NFC, Wi-Fi, 4G, etc., that can operate to some extent interactively and autonomously
- Networked connectivity
The means by which these devices and networks are able to connect to each other through routers, switches and gateways
- Data
Including the capture, analysis, curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, and visualization of information
- Machine learning
The study and the construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data
Hash tag to follow the conversation on twitter: #SMWiNairobi
