Vision Group's Pakasa forum sets twitter record

By Taddeo Bwambale

Vision Group's inaugural Pakasa Forum became the highest trending discussion on Twitter in Uganda, breaking new ground in social media coverage in the region.

The event was also highly prominent on Facebook and Instagram platforms, generating engagement across the world.

The annual event held at Kampala Parents' School Auditorium on Saturday garnered over 2,035,990 impressions and reached 156,012 people just a few hours after it started.

A reach, in twitter language, refers to the total number of unique followers that a user has (unique people that a tweet could possibly get to). Impressions refer to the total number of possible times people are able to see posts from a user.

There were also 699 posts and 140 users on Twitter alone by the time the event ended, with over 1,000 people in attendance.

The Pakasa Forum was trending on Twitter through the '#Pakasa13' hashtag while the Facebook updates kept the group glued.  

The event which was streamed live enjoyed a commanding presence online, with the most feedback coming from Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, Canada and the US, a social media tracking report shows.

Vision Group CEO, Robert Kabushenga described the enormous social media coverage of the event as a breakthrough.

"We needed to take the 'Pakasa debate' to a bigger forum beyond just writing articles and talking about it; that we ought to engage in an activity that will force results and cause people to react, it was not immediately conceivable how much people would react."

The Pakasa Forum is an initiative of Vision Group to openly discuss opportunities for young people to earn a living. 

The panelists at this year's event were: Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi; NSSF Managing Director, Richard Byarugaba; MTN chief, Mazen Mroue; Stanbic Bank Uganda's chief, Phillip Odera and Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) executive director, Jennifer Musisi.

Others were Marino Pagril, the proprietor of Design Klinic and Bruce Robertson, the managing director of Plexus Cotton.

Kabushenga, who was the moderator of the event, said the large online media presence was the biggest indicator of the Forum's popularity.