Do we have IT seminars in Nigeria where IT specialist gather every month for the latest in IT?
We have many seminars in the UK like:

1. Java Group Seminar
2. Networking Groups (Cisco, Microsoft, Novell, Unix)
3. Web Designer

I have link to Uche Ogbuji, a Nigeria born living in the USA, he is a writer, colonist in About (about.com) and CEO of Fourthought, Inc.  He has written may open source application for Microsoft and other downloadable API for python on Uche Ogbuji.  Should we not solicit people like his calibre to come for one or two days talk in Nigeria if we have IT group seminars.

The world as reached a point in which you don't need to fly such people in your country to recieve seminars from them. You can just subscribe to their blogs. If you don't enjoy their blogs, you will probably not enjoy their seminars either!

There are many things internet cannot solve unfortunately seminar is one of them. It is not only about reading blogs and subscribing to a forum. It is all about meeting people discussing issues in real-time and one2one dialogue.

Not only does it attract IT professionals, it also attract academia and CEO’s if properly organised. Would you not be honoured to meet with Bill Gates?

I won't be particularly interested in meeting BillGates unless he's prepared to give a honest answer to every qustion he is asked, which is unlikely because of the risk of lawsuits when careless statements are made. However, I will feel very honoured to meet some of his money!

Their works (Uche and Dare Obasanjo (OBJ's son) etc) can hardly get recognition back here because what they do are hardcore stuffs that will definately sound strange to most of our so-called IT pros here.

We need to start from the grassroot first.

Like what Seun says it is easier to subscribe to their blogs,after all we have our IT pros here and they use to organise seminars and workshops from time to time.

Try Jidaw Computers, they use to organise seminars.

Please subscribe to there newsletter on www.Jidaw.com

I think it is your field that matters and what you are interested in. I am aware that the big mobile and communication companies in Nigeria send their staff out for training to Cisco, Intelsat, gilat, Redhat etc.

For us who are upcoming - we can rely on books and the Internet (I learnt most of the stuff I know from reading books i.e 90%). Also, google is an FBI tool that can help you alot. IN addition, if you can afford some specialised training, by all means go for it.

In africa, the afnog and afrinic organises seminars and training in so many areas. These training are held across most african countries. For afrinic www.afrinic.net, some of the courses are free but for afnog www.afnog.org - their seminars are not free.

Well, I'm organising a Linux/Hacker/Networking con. In lagos sometime soon, its taking awhile to start up, but it'll start eventually. For those of you interested, let me know. It'll be decent, I just need to get my finances sorted.

I learnt most of the things I knw thru personal reading and research. Sites like internet dot com and makeuseof dot com are good ones.