If you were not at First Bank Lecture Theatre, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife on the 24th of September between the hours of 11:00 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. you missed a once in a lifetime opportunity.
You may ask 'What did I miss?'...well you missed AIMES 2011.
Don't fidget I'll tell you what AIMES is. It is the AIESEC in Ife Management and Entrepreneurship Seminar. An annual event by AIESEC in Ife aimed at educating the Nigerian youth about the realities of entrepreneurship in Nigeria today and provides practical steps for practising entrepreneurship in the Nigeria of today.
Trust me it's not just another "Believe in yourself, work hard" seminar...it's the kind of seminar that touches you for the rest of your life.
The theme for AIMES 2011 was 'Entrepreneurs as Value Creators: The Drive for Social Innovation'.
There were three speakers all of whom are alumni of AIESEC Ife.
The first talk was from Mr. Emmanuel Tosin speaking on 'Start from where you are'
He hit the nail on the head with a simple and true session. He said the most important aspect of entrepreneurship is starting something where you are with whatever you have. He made a point of saying that as students and as youth generally what we have on our side is time, time to experiment, time to make mistakes and time to learn. He also said that a factor that discourages a great deal of people is capital and he pointed out that everyone has a means of getting one or two things with which they can commence their business...he wrapped up his session by answering some questions and received a loud applause from the audience.
To keep the momentum going, Mr. Femi Ogundoro came on to talk about "Entrepreneurs as Value Creators". With his powerful passionate powerful voice and his rich store of experience he was more than capable of getting his message across. With the input of the audience "an entrepreneur" was defined as a risk taker, a decision maker amongst other things, "Value" was described as "something you treasure and consider worth protecting" and a "Creator" as "someone that makes something of nothing". With an energy level that seemed to never go down, he made a point of saying that the choice of success or failure is in the hand of each and every individual.
The last but definitely not least session was from Mr. Simeon Mukoro who spoke about "Social Innovation by non-entrepreneurs". He kicked off his "quite technical" talk by making it clear that not everybody can be an entrepreneur. He defined "Social Value" as "The creation of benefits of reductions of costs for society through efforts to address societal needs of problems in ways that go beyond the private gains and general benefits of market activity". He also made mention of the fact that to actually constitute change we have to go through the stage of actually transforming our ideas into physical realities.
I am sure if you're reading this you're wishing you were there...don't worry there's always next year...don't miss it.
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN