NECLive… Organisers unveil new two-day format for 2020

After seven years of stimulating the intellectual side of the country’s showbiz industry, ID Africa, owners of theNETng and producers of Nigerian Entertainment Conference (NECLive) has announced a new format for the 8th edition of the long running conference to be held on Wednesday, April 22, 2020.

NECLive, which is the premier and largest gathering of entertainment industry professionals in Nigeria, will be expanding its format to accommodate new activities, events and programmes in order to deepen its impact and shore up its contributions to Nigeria’s entertainment and creative industry. 

For the past seven years, the conference has run as an intensive full day, nine-hour event featuring powerful panel sessions, insights from industry leaders and critically innovative conversations. Past editions of NECLive have seen over 12,000 attendees, reached over 60 million viewers online and via live TV, and hosted over 450 industry experts as speakers and panelists, including MI Abaga, 2Baba, Omotola Jalade-Ekeinde, Simi, Davido, Bayo Adekanmbi, D’Banj, among others. 

Come Wednesday, April 22, 2020, the NECLive8 programme will be expanded into a two-day event featuring keynote speeches, panel discussions, training workshops and masterclasses, product exhibitions, an awards show, performances and multiple satellite events holding in venues around Lagos. 

The theme for the event, Building The Future, explores various ways of maximizing the potential and impact of recent strides in distribution, cinemas, events, promotions, exhibitions, productions and festivals, and how stakeholders can erect the infrastructure necessary to build the desired future for Nigeria’s creative and entertainment industry.

With this new approach, the conference hopes to broach tougher conversations and nudge stakeholders towards extracting more value from the ecosystem than is currently obtainable. The expansion also allows for opportunities to introduce more experiential consumer activations and activities, which will offer more value to attendees, creatives and brand partners.

The two-day programme will now incorporate the standard elements of NECLive, alongside new elements such as an awards dinner designed to celebrate the best of Nigerian entertainment, and a concert which will feature performances from across the spectrum of Nigeria’s entertainment industry. 

“Since the 2019 edition of NECLive, we have been working hard behind the scenes to redesign the entire NECLive experience. Our goal is to offer more value to all attendees, our brand partners, entertainment industry professionals, performers and creatives in Nigeria, and we believe the 2020 edition will deliver this objective,” says Femi Falodun, ID Africa CEO.

Ayeni Adekunle, Founder and Convener of NECLive, also said, “We set up NECLive eight years ago as an intervention to rally everyone towards building the industry of our dreams. Eight years on, we are glad to witness and facilitate the transformation of our home entertainment, our music and our media. And we are calling on the government, practitioners, fans and investors to come to the party.”