2018 in Review: A year of more wins

Ezekiel Adeyinka
10 min readJan 1, 2019

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The year 2018 was super amazing for me with more wins and achievement and I have a couple of things am Grateful for. Just like in 2017, I have probably grown and achieved more myself and with the different set of amazing people I came in contact with.

In the year 2018, I learnt a lot more in business and tech understanding how both go hand in hand, worked with an amazing team in building a world-class product, learnt teamwork and collaboration, attended both local and International conferences, had the privilege to participate in different competitions, Hackathons and Product Exhibitions.

I’ll love to share a review of how my year went and the things I was involved in, to realize how far I have come and how much I need to contribute to making a difference.

Silicon Valley- Nigeria Economic Inc(SV-NED).

Establishing a strategic, bilateral Technology and economic relationship between Silicon Valley and Nigeria.

Early this year, I had the privilege to get in to participate in an Intensive 2nd immersion program training into Silicon Valley’s culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in areas of Artificial Intelligence, Business Intelligence, IoT, Block-chain, Start-Ups, Cloud Computing and much more. The training was hosted by SV-NED Inc and participating companies from Silicon Valley including Oracle Africa, IBM Nigeria, HP Africa and General Electric. Also, I was trained by a Stanford University Emeritus Professor( Dr. Sam Haddad), an Angel Investor from Mexico( Silicon Valley Miguel Casillas), An Advanced Cyber-security solution strategist from Cisco( Sam Washington), a Professor from New-York State University, top engineers and experts from IBM, Oracle, General Electric and HP.

Left: at IBM office receiving lectures. Right: Me and some other SV-NED participants.

The training and lectures lasted for days and I had the opportunity to visit IBM, Oracle, HP office and made use of their facilities.

Left: CISCO Cyber-security solution strategist explaining some principles while me am trying to practice them. Middle: Receiving lectures from Oracle Cloud engineer expert. Right: Answering some questions

After the rigorous training and exposures, I had my final Online technical examination at the GTI Nigerian stock exchange trading floor. The exam was marked and graded by Silicon Valley experts and after a couple of days the final result came out. To the glory of God, I came out first position with a perfect score of 100%. I was very happy I made such achievement and I give God all the glory.

I got an Award from HP Africa and From SV-NED Inc. Thanks to everyone that celebrated with me.

At the middle receiving an award from HP and SV-NEDI nc

After, I became part of the founding team of folks who started SV-NED Inc Lagos Incubator, Lekki and I served as Technical Director facilitating training and lectures for young talents, Entrepreneurs and start-up owners in current technologies. It was such an amazing opportunity and experience.

At the Incubator

After, I had the opportunity to participate various programs like SV-NED and HP Africa Got’s talent in Info-Tech challenge, IBM Africa Innovation challenge were I did very well in both and I came out top.

I was later awarded with a merit award certificate and golden medal by the CEO/Co-Founder of SV-NED Inc. Chief Temitope Ajayi. I sincerely want to thank her and appreciate her for given me such privilege, for her motherly love and care. Thanks to Our SV-NED president, Ms Dennis Williams and my Project Director, Maxwell.

I later appeared on the Nigeria Independence Newspaper featuring SV-NED Inc.

I give God all the Glory and i thank everyone involved for such opportunity and privilege.

InvenTech

Our mission is to empower people with the ability to do more with technology.

I joined an amazingly fast-growing startup company at the Obafemi Awolowo University, called InvenTech. We are a team of hardware, software and business engineers were we are building a web-based drag and drop platform that gives you a new way to program, control and monitor microcontrollers using IoT at its core and also we have a hardware product called InventOne board( a microcontroller that’s made in Nigeria by Nigerians). I bet you it’s better than other Micro-controllers out there.

We had a lot of achievements this year as a company. We got the opportunity to exhibit and showcase our products at Techpoint Inspired, the largest tech conference in West Africa in May, with close to over 1000 tech experts and enthusiasts coming to check out our platform. It was really overwhelming seeing how people came around to our stand loving what we’ve built. Later we go interviewed and featured by Techpoint crew because they also loved our products.

Weeks later, we got an invite by HP Africa courtesy SV-NED inc and we had the chance to pitch our platform to HP Africa Top executives.

We also had a training seminar at the Electrical and Electronics Department, OAU were Professors, Lecturers, and students came to learn more about our invention and learnt how to use it.

Months later we were invited to train students and lecturers of the Computer science department, Federal College of Animal Health and Production Technology, Ibadan on IoT using our Lab and InventOne board.

Left: at FCAHPT Ibadan with the students, HOD and Lecturers. Right: Students learning about IoT and InventOne

I got an Invite from Google to represent InvenTech at the Google Developers Agency program. The goal of the program is to help upskill and promote top Nigerian software development companies leveraging on Google’s Technologies. The program was a full day technical event with tech talks and product reviews.

My other family: InvenTech Team( From left to right: Victor, Tinuade, Toba, Me(Ezekiel), Johnson, Tobi and Ayomide)

Thanks to Victor Shoaga and Ayomide Bakare and other amazing InvenTech folks for us all working together to attain a Vision. More accomplishment and greater height for us in 2019.

Competitions

Student Innovation Challenge 2018(SIC)

Around June, I and one my Colleague(from Team RTS) got selected for a Federal Government Competition called Student Innovation Challenge 2018. We represented Obafemi Awolowo University alongside with other universities and polytechnics across Nigeria. It was a platform to pitch the innovative project that we are working on to a panel of judges selected from different subsectors and industries across the country. What we are working on is a Robotics Gaming platform using AI and Computer Vision. We won at the South-West Regionals held at the University of Lagos. The competition is still ongoing at other regions of the country. Thanks to iQube Labs for giving such opportunity to learn and work on such an amazing project.

Team RTS from Obafemi Awolowo University on stage

I had the opportunity to meet with and take pictures with the Vice president of Nigeria, Prof.Yemi Osinbanjo and also had a Presidential Handshake. Later we got featured on the competition official website and on various social media platforms.

Student across Nigeria from different institutions.( That’s me close to the Vice president)

Tech Trainings and Facilitations

Code with me

Was an Intensive 3 weeks boot camp training I helped facilitated and organized for students new to programming at OAU. The areas of training include: Android development, Website developments and Hardware using C++. I was part of the tutor who trained students on Web Development- Front End. The students later built their personal portfolio website at the end of the training.

Google I/O Extended, OAU

I helped facilitated and organized the Google I/O Extended 2018 event with other students Organizers. The program is an annual developer conference held by GDG OAU that brings students, developers and Tech enthusiasts around Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife community for talks and Hands-on learning and technical code labs on flutter, machine learning, cloud and Android. The event is to recreate the experience at the last Google I/O 2018 held by Google in Mountain view.

Left: GDG OAU meetup. Middle: GDG OAU Speakers and Facilitators. Right: Developers and Techies

IEEE OAU

This year I was appointed as the Technical Director and Assistant PRO for the Student Body. I helped facilitated and Organized 2018 IEEE Xtreme Global programming competition. OAU came first across Nigeria this year again.

At 2018 IEEE Xtreme Global programming competition

Embedded AI by Intel OAU student community

I was part of the amazing team behind Embedded AI by Intel OAU. It was a one-day expository program on the Internet of Things(IoT) and Artificial Intelligence(AI) were exciting developments and tools around AI and IoT from Intel were discussed. There was a two training session, Exhibition and idea hackathon held on Intel technologies regarding IoT and AI respectively.

Embedded AI Intel organizers with Intel Innovator and IoT evangelist.

UTSSA HARDWARE HACKATHON (http://utssa.oauife.edu.ng/)

It was a one-week intensive Hardware training on Embedded system and Microcontrollers were students are to learning and come up with inventions that can solve problems in Nigeria. Students were judged based on how novel their invention is, Marketability, Market size, passion and probability of becoming a successful business.

Left: A Hardware engineer training the students. Middle: Group picture with the students. Right: Students building their ideas out.

VODACOM NIGERIA

Later this year, I had the privilege of facilitating and training some set of secondary schools in Lagos on Robotics building and programming with Artificial Intelligent and IoT concepts organized by VodaCom Nigeria alongside with my Team. The schools represented were Dansol High School, Ikeja; Edgefield College, Lekki; Fruitful Ville College International, Ikorodu; Halifield Schools, Maryland and Holy Child College, Ikoyi. The students in attendance, aged 12 to 15, were given a firsthand opportunity to immerse themselves in the complexities that surround the Internet of Things (IoT) and how this will affect their lives in the near future.

Left: I and my Team with the students exhibiting their robot. Middle: Group picture with the students and Vodacom staffs. Right: Training the student how to build and program robots

Click here to read more

https://nigeriacommunicationsweek.com.ng/vodacom-launches-annual-interschool-robotics-training/

Specially invited programs

STANDARD ORGANIZATION OF NIGERIA STAKEHOLDERS FORUM.

It was a privilege for me to be here alongside with major key stakeholder of SON in Nigeria.

With various key stakeholder in Nigeria.

SOUTHWEST YOUTH FOUNDATION SUMMIT.

TECH CONFERENCES

Facebook Developers/Startup summit

TechCrunch battlefield

Life

  • My Family: Dad, Mum and Siblings(am really grateful for having them) were all in good health in this year.
  • I enjoyed protection and provision.
  • I made new friends and partners
  • Built a couple of projects for some companies

I am extremely grateful for meeting extraordinary people were such an inspiration and motivation to me throughout the year. I want to also a very big thank you to my Tech Folks. I’m awesome because there are so many awesome people around me.

2019: What’s the Plan?

I’m excited for 2019. In short, I already tagged it a year of excellence, greater achievements and greater exploit in abundance of God’s Grace and Unmerited favours.

These are just a few of my world domination plan in the coming year:

  • Move more Closer to God and dwell more in his Word like never before.
  • Build more innovative solutions and solve more problems using different technologies and Build more products using AI + Software, Hardware and anything Technology.
  • I want to help others achieve greatness.
  • I want to travel wide and far!
  • Sharing with others the tools and skills they need to assist in the development of solutions to global problems and I’ll love to be actively part of this.

Cheers to an amazing 2019.

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Ezekiel Adeyinka

Solution driven| Lover of Technology and Innovation | Quick Learner.