Story Telling in Photography

Today I had a great day, training IECE staff on how to make photos that have lasting memories, we call this STORY TELLING IN PHOTOGRAPHY Mercy Mukeni HeartBits Nairobits Trust

Here are some of the photos as captured during the lectures with my colleague Geoffrey Otieno. ‪#‎KeyTakeAway‬ To be great you have to prepare and practice.

AITEC East Africa ICT Summit Feb 2016

It was a great pleasure to have attended this year's East Africa summit under the slogan Inspire and innovate at Oshwal centre in Nairobi.

To my surprise it was amazing to see multidisciplinary organizations using ICT hosted in one space to spark that awareness through their branded exhibition booths to a well integrated presentation at different intervals at the theater, workshop and the auditorium space.

I would like to share some of my experiences during the ICT summit, when I attend this kind of conventions I always go for the usual and the unusual in terms of flow, theme,  planning, timing, content, context etc. So the question is did the summit inspire me to continue or start innovating? Were my expectations met? How was the planning?  What about the delivery during the session?;

sing the principle 80/20 the event was a great success with 80% of my expectations met and 20% key takeaways to reflect upon and think about how it could have been made better, especially on inviting many people in the related sector especially schools that trains in ICT and different stakeholders from the private and government.

Key takeaways for further reading;

1.  How to work on virtual space ( Virtual Office)
2. Track intelligence in the e-commerce sphere
3. Social re-engineering
4. Cyber security
5. Content Marketing and Story Making Vs. Story Telling

My top three best presentations during the event;

1.  Presentation skills - Derek Bbanga;
2. Digital content and distribution forum
3. Digital Content on demand by What’s Good Studio Ltd 
4. Cyber Security by Africa Hackon

Presentation skills key takeaways from Derek Bbanga;

A great presentation should be;

1. Simple
2. Credible
3. Unexpected
4. Emotional
5. Sticky / Viral

Overall, it was a wonderful event, I learned a lot on brand visibility, especially from the booths and on the contrary, some of the presenters "killed it" with some boring PowerPoint presentation full of text to the point the presenters were reading all the words, this isn't to say there no great one which I won’t mention.
I look forward to attending more of the events because such event like AITEC ICT summit brings the great wealth of networking with different people in the eco-system that I operate as a visual Communication Designer ( Web, Motion, Print and Photography).

One thing for sure, no matter what gadget I have, I can't miss to take some photos. I'm not that a selfie ‘guru’ but I hope these photos will bring the great memories of the event which might also trigger something in you.

 From my photo diary! For more of my photographic journey please visit…
 https://www.flickr.com/photos/30155647@N08/albums

Skills2Grow Event @ Yusudi

Yusudi is a social enterprise, their vision is to have a prosperous society through enabling holistic, creative education unique to every individual. For more about Yusudi http://www.yusudi.co

Kusudi is a Kiswahili word that means intention, today I took the great intention to learn new insights about career growth and also learn from my peers by attending the Skills2Grow. It was amazing to see the room fully packed with young people, this confirms the statement of Kenya being a youthful nation. I had a great time and I would love to share with you some of my key take ways while also sharing some few pictures as captured. #throughMyLense

Here we go!

Key Take Aways: Event Planning

1.  Communication: I really love how the communication was administered especially using the electronic media which also came with timely feedback.
2. Price: Spending my Kes 500 for the ticket matched the value for the money. The packages came with delicious lunch, tea / coffee, Uber taxi offer , session and cinema ticket.
3. Panelist: Very experienced panel who really motivated us through their journey and how they applied  different principles towards their success.
4.  Creativity: I love how we were intentionally made to interact and even mingled at different stages
5.  Connectivity: I like the walls created for example the resource wall, opportunity wall, democracy wall etc.

Keys take always: During the session

• Network Intelligence; My take is, as much as you would like to connect with almost everyone during an event, always be strategic and don’t distribute your cards anyhow, but share your inspirational pitch that would create interest for someone to want to hear more of what you do and later request your business cards. Through this approach many people who receive your business card would definitely search you on Google, email you or send a request for connections from different social media.
• Forming teams with common interest. Creating a great team is the most challenging, it is like searching someone for marriage.
• At least ask a question, either during big session or during the small groups and at one on one level.
• Plan your journey and be aware about yourself !
• Find a mentor, the process can take any agreed steps with your mentor and mentee.
• Everyone of us starts from somewhere...
• Instead of thinking failure, think set back and use those moments  to lean back and find grounding for the next take off,
• It is hard to change the attitude of someone than to uplift their aptitude.
• Apply lateral thinking!
• The world is evolving at a high speed you need to be multidimensional in whatever you choose to do!

Here are some of the pictures as captured; Picture speaks louder! I love Photography #throughMyLense