From Scribbles to Success: My Journey with Unleashed Potentials
I experienced that thing with Yoruba people when they host a party. Until November 27th, I always questioned why the hosts were never seated on their party day. Oju won ma’an Di (their eyes must roam around).
Running into Daniel Egunjobi twice in the first two months of 2023 was enough validation I needed to connect with him. More baits for him as he runs an edtech company, and I have this crazy dream of building some big ed-tech. We met for the second time at the Lagos Tech Fest and kept in touch until I had the courage to pitch to him. Enough of the story, I told him I was a Project Manager, and he told me about this event he would like to host for students at Unilag later in Q3 or Q4.
I made it a thing at the beginning of the year to venture into Project Management, and this was going to be a great one for me in my early career. Fast forward to June 26th, I was added to a group chat of four persons in the course of running this event. It was the first week of the second-semester holiday for me, and I already admitted that would take a lump sum of my holiday. Apparently, things are easier said than done, not in the context you're thinking of but in the one of "I knew this event would take a lot of me, but I didn't know it'd be this much," and some mental health "shiii".
As a Project Manager, you might not have known, but you get to own the project, and that means every progress or retardation in that project takes a toll on you. Away from that, you get to sacrifice, praise the team but don't expect anyone to praise you. Nonetheless, it requires you to be that "hard guy" relationship people talk about. Keep supporting and energizing your team as everyone on that team would get tired at some point, but don't let it be you.
Maybe I braced up for it through the course of this project, I'd leave it an open question. My team was a great one and also started with the Director, Project manager, Graphics and Content lead, Finance, and sponsorship before expanding to some other roles. I wouldn't ask for another team during this course as they were just great for the event.
Sometimes in the early evening of October 5th, days after the postponement of the event, I moderated a physical meeting with the team. After seeing myself write out, Reports, Progress, Call to actions, and the backlogs, I was in euphoria. I just couldn't dance more when a team mate was like it was evident I have been doing that for long. I later uploaded a picture on my WhatsApp status right after the meeting, captioning it; "Write, build magic from scratch; that's just what I want to do."
Ever since the start of the project, I've exhausted more than a hundred A4 papers as that's where I document before digitizing. Trust me I'll still keep writing to build magic from scratch; it's never primitive. There are four phases of a Project Cycle; Initiation phase, Planning phase, Executing and monitoring phase, and Closure Phase. The initiation phase was one of the interesting parts as it started from the random scribbling of ideas for the event I got from the convener on A4 sized papers. In all of this, deliberation and communication with the team are necessary. Just to recall this event was the first version so we built from scratch. The scratch was as scratch as deliberating on the event theme, the brand color, drawing the logos, and the likes. After asking the right questions and getting the right answers, the team was able to get a clear picture of what we wanted for the whole event.
The second phase was the planning phase, as it was going to be the first project plan I'd be making. It took me about a week or more with some late nights to draw the right plan and relay with the team for approval. Great one to Chat Gpt as it also opened my eyes. Trust me; she's a Beast. I'll attribute the appreciation to an excerpt from a friend's discussion. He said, "Humans won't be replaced with AI but with Humans using AI."
Planning and execution are the real deal as it wasn't any short of an adventure during this project. It comes with the roller coaster, and you keep having to evaluate the projects by almost less than a week intervals, hold your teams to milestones and objectives, responding to and implementing changes with the teams. I wouldn't be giving any PM advice as I've not blown, but please get your deliverables up.
About a week prior to September 30th, The Unleashed Potentials event was postponed to November 27th due to issues of students not being on campus and the availability of speakers. But some few days to that week, I had my all-time low and even fell under the weather both physically and psychologically as our marketing was not turning the numbers we wanted. These days I was really carrying it on my head as I even got to dream about the event some of the night of those days; it was that wild. I got overwhelmed with my WhatsApp interactions, and just had to mute my WhatsApp notifications and took the bold step of switching my phone off for two straight days as my headache was intensifying at a glimpse of my phone's screen. It sure wasn't the best of decisions to make, but well, that was the only option I could afford, I think. The two days seemed great, disconnecting from the whole project and just doing some other random things. Just like our Gen Zs Gym Freaks Calendars, those were the only two off days in the months of the project.
Not giving too much expos, this is an appreciated journey of mine, and I'm more glad the event came out a success with about a thousand people in attendance impacted by our great lineup of speakers. It's a great one, great agenda, great feedbacks validation from attendees has been so powering. I sure won't miss out on talking about the blank in my head on the day of the events, starting by 5 am; I just didn't think of what to expect, and legends had it that I felt fulfilled just at the start of the event. The feeling can't be traded.
Remember that thing with Yoruba people in their parties; they wouldn't sit in one place, wouldn't be part of the parties actively as they are caught up in making sure the attendees find the party partying. That's the only pain in my heart as I was not able to actively be part of all the sessions, not even being part of one full time on the day but I'm glad the attendees got the full package.
Appreciation to Daniel Egunjobi for believing in me enough to jump on this. Special thanks to the Team; Daniel, Layi, Oluchi, Tosin, and also appreciation to Abdulsalam for leading the volunteers' team and one love to everyone that volunteered and worked on the day. The project was a success and also special appreciation to Fawaz for his support through this. Lastly, special thanks to those that turned out for this project and the Real MVPs that came out to support me. Lastly, my walking up and down is dedicated to my sister, my biggest fan; Faheedat, as she was looking forward to attending but just couldn't attend on the day.
I love y'all.
Ending this piece with my texts to my friend on the night before the Magical event; "It's how it starts."
