We got invited back to NIBM this time to talk, not to
compete
A while back we were at NIBM to receive an award. This time we came back for a different
reason: to stand in front of their students and talk about where this industry is actually heading.
The topic we were given was broad the importance of technology and digital marketing, and
how both are transforming business and everyday life. Broad topics are dangerous. It’s very
easy to fill an hour with words that sound impressive and teach nobody anything.
So we decided early on that we weren’t going to do that.
We threw out the corporate deck
Here’s the thing about presenting to students: they can tell within about two minutes whether
you’re speaking to them or at them.
We’ve sat through enough industry presentations to know exactly what that feels like from the
other side. Grey slides. Bullet points nobody reads. A speaker reading the bullet points out loud
anyway.
So we built the deck differently. We used memes.
Not as decoration as the actual explanation. If students already speak in memes every day, that’s
a language you can teach in. A concept that would take three paragraphs of formal explanation
lands in about four seconds if the format is one they already read fluently.
It worked. The room was awake, people laughed, and more importantly they were arguing with
us and asking questions instead of copying slides. That’s the whole point of a session like this.
If your audience is already fluent in a language, teach in that language. Don’t make them translate you.
— Webtezza
“Digital marketing” isn’t a marketing option anymore
This was the first real point we made, and it’s the one we’d want any business owner to take away
too.
There was a time when digital marketing sat on a list of choices. Print, radio, billboards, digital
pick a few, split the budget. That era is over. Today, if a business doesn’t exist online, it
effectively doesn’t exist in its industry. Not “it’s at a disadvantage.” It isn’t in the conversation at
all.
Customers check before they buy. They search, they compare, they look at whether a company’s
website loads properly and whether anyone has bothered to update it since 2019. That check
happens before you ever hear from them which means most businesses lose customers they never
knew they had.
We’ve written more about that side of things in our post on how digital marketing
helps businesses grow faster, and it’s the same argument we made in the hall: showing up online isn’t
marketing spend anymore. It’s the cost of being visible.
The AI question and why the fear is aimed at the wrong thing
This was the part the students cared about most, and understandably so. Nearly every question in
the room eventually circled back to it: is AI going to take our jobs?
Our answer was honest rather than comforting.
AI is going to replace work. That part is real, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anyone. But
the thing that replaces you isn’t the AI it’s the person who learned to use it while you were
waiting to see how it played out.
The job market is not going to reward people who do one thing narrowly and manually. It’s
going to reward people who are multi-skilled, who understand what these tools can and can’t do,
and who can direct them well. That’s a learnable skill. It’s learnable right now, while you’re still a
student, for free, in your own time.
So the useful version of the question isn’t “will AI take my job?” It’s “what can I do with AI that I
couldn’t do alone last year?” Everything we build on the AI development side of our work starts
from that same premise the tool amplifies a person who knows what they’re doing. It doesn’t
replace one.
ERP, CRM and why systems beat spreadsheets
The last stretch of the session was about the unglamorous stuff that actually transforms
companies.
We talked about management systems ERP, CRM, FinTech platforms and what they genuinely
do for a business. Not in abstract terms. In terms of:
- Effort: work that took three people manually now runs in the background
- Time: reporting that took days becomes something you look at on a screen
- Staff cost: growth stops meaning “hire more people to type things in”
- Errors: one source of truth instead of five spreadsheets that disagree with each other
Most businesses don’t stall because the market stopped. They stall because the system
underneath them stopped being able to carry the weight. That’s exactly the problem our business
management systems work is built around, and you can see what it looks like in practice across
our project portfolio.
For students, the takeaway was slightly different: these systems are what a huge share of the
local and international job market is being built on. Understanding them is not optional either.
The questions were better than the lecture
We closed the final day with a Q&A, and it ran long which is always a good sign.
The questions were sharp. Career questions, technical questions, a few genuinely difficult ones
about where the industry is going. We answered every one of them properly, including the ones
where the honest answer was less reassuring than the students might have hoped for.
That session was worth more than the slides. Anyone can present. Standing there and taking
unfiltered questions from a room of people who are about to enter this industry is a much better
use of everyone’s hour.
The part we didn’t expect
At the end, the lecturers of NIBM from the IT and Management departments presented our team
with a small award to recognise the session.
We weren’t expecting it and we hadn’t gone there for it. We went to give the students something
useful. Being recognised by the academic staff at the end, in the same institute several of us
studied in, meant a lot.
And we received it the way we do everything: as a team. This wasn’t one person on a stage. The
session was prepared together, delivered together, and the award was collected together. The
people who built the deck, shaped the examples and handled the room are the same people who
ship our client work every day you can meet all of them on our About Us page.
If you’re a student reading this
Two things:
First: start now. Not after you graduate. The gap between students who touched real tools during
their studies and students who only read about them is enormous, and it shows up in the first
interview.
Second:
we hire. If what we talked about in that hall sounded like the kind of work you want to
be doing, our careers page is open, and we’d rather hear from someone curious than someone
with a perfect transcript.
And if you’re a business owner who read this and recognised your own company in the
spreadsheet part that conversation is free.
Frequently asked questions
What was the session at NIBM about?
The topic was the importance of technology and digital marketing, and how both are
transforming business and everyday life. The session covered digital presence, artificial
intelligence and the role of management systems like ERP and CRM.
Why did Webtezza use memes in an academic presentation?
Because the audience was students, and the goal was for the ideas to actually land rather than just
be delivered. Explaining industry shifts in a format the audience already reads fluently made the
concepts stick and it turned the session into a conversation instead of a lecture.
What did Webtezza say about AI replacing jobs?
That AI will replace certain work, but the real risk isn’t AI itself it’s being outpaced by people
who learned to work with it. The recommendation was to become multi-skilled and to learn to
direct these tools rather than avoid them.
Was Webtezza recognised at the event?
Yes. At the end of the session, NIBM lecturers from the IT and Management departments
presented the Webtezza team with an award recognising the session and the company’s
contribution.
Does Webtezza do sessions like this for other institutes or companies?
Yes. If you’d like us to speak to your students or team about technology, digital marketing, AI or
business systems, get in touch.
