Organizing Info Session: Leads’ guide

Introduction

From the day you applied as a lead, to the day you got your thrill email🎉, up to the day you were finally onboarded, you have been excited about the unfolding amazing experience of being a lead. Like me, you would start wondering how to organize your Info Session which is the first mandatory event you must organize to introduce the club to your school irrespective of whether or not you are a first-time lead. Being a first-time lead is more challenging because you have no direct guide on how to reach out to students and plan things out well. You would start wondering how can I reach out, and how am I even going to pull up the audience. From my experience, too many ambiguities reside in your mind when organizing your first event. But hey, chill 🤗, I was just like you that’s why I am going to share with you some tips on how to organize your first event (Info session) as a first-time lead. If you aren’t a first-time lead, these tips and guides will also help you in planning a successful info session. I will share with you the major items to have on your checklist when planning the event, what specific things to do during the event, and finally, your checklist after the event, using examples where applicable.

Fun Fact😁: I was fortunate to have Awual MS(Developer Programs Lead, SSA) and Tabitha Kavyu(Google Crowdsource Community Manager, SSA) attending my info session in person which added a great sauce and morale for my event. Read to the end to have a portion of my blessings 😂

Pre-event Checklist

It isn’t a secret that failing to plan is planning to fail🤐. This is why, you should start planning your info session as soon as possible. You could start right after onboarding or even before it, once you have received your long-awaited ‘thrill email’.

A pre-event checklist is a list of actions or activities that need to be done before the event. Your list might look similar to the following:

1. Fliers and promotional materials preparation and review: Fliers and promotional materials preparation and review: You will need a graphic design team lead to spearhead this activity. If you don’t have a core team yet or need tips on organizing a very supportive core team, check this article out for help.
2. Publicity: For this, you should evaluate your school to know which medium of publicity works more effectively. It could be social media or physical publicity. For my school, physical publicity did the work even though it was somehow tedious but worth it. This involves, asking lecturers for a few minutes of their time to tell the class about GDSC and invite them to your info session. Make sure, you and your core team personally help some of your participants register because navigating the website for some of them may be challenging the first time since it is very new to them. This is why selecting the right core team is key.
3. Decide your event mode: Decide whether your event is going to be online, hybrid, or in-person. I would recommend you try as hard as possible to make your event physical or hybrid if you may have a remote speaker. This will help you to have a more engaging session.
4. Find and confirm speakers: Here, do your best to have very interesting and engaging speakers because it is your first event and you want to make sure you leave your audience with a remarkable experience. No need to worry about this a lot though, because the SSA program team always provides support by linking you with many great speakers. Another way to get speakers is to look within your personal network or do a LinkedIn search. The key point is to make sure your speaker is influential, engaging and have experience with GDSC or any other Google Developer Programs. As a final tip on this checklist, don’t be afraid to invite the CEO of Google to speak at your event if you have his contact😁. That is, feel free to invite the program manager or any prominent person, you never know what miracle could happen for you as it did for me.
5. Confirm the venue: Using your campus auditorium or any available room is my recommendation to avoid the challenges of students getting to your event. Make sure the venue is confirmed and everything you will need for the event is set up at least 3 to 4 days before the event.
6. Request for support: You could request support from your school or a partner if you have one. You will need the support to cover refreshments and swags. Truth be told, I had no financial support from my school or any partner, hence I had no refreshment but my info session was very successful and packed. Check out this article to learn more about how to get partners for your GDSC chapter.
7. Prepare your presentation: As the lead, you will have to prepare a presentation to deliver. Within your presentation, you will introduce GDSC to your audience, make them understand the purpose of the program, give them reasons why they must be a part of the community, highlight some success stories of the program with them, and most importantly, share with them your goals for the year and how you plan to achieve them.
8. Prepare the event agenda and delegate tasks among your core team and volunteers.

What to do during the event

After having all of the above-mentioned checklists checked, you are now set for your event. Below are tips to consider during the event:

1. Dedicate one of your core team members to check in participants as they arrive. For participants who may not be registered, make sure you make them join the community right there because your community is new and you need the numbers.
2. Engage with your audience: encourage your MC to be very engaging and to an extent funny. You could be the one playing this role like me.
3. Include some games and icebreakers during the event.
4. Remember to keep the event short especially if you won’t have refreshments like me😂. You don’t want your audiences’ brains shorting down while in session.
5. Make sure your presentation is engaging and covers most of the things mentioned above.
6. Inform your participants of where they can find further information about the club. Share with them the link to all of your social media platforms and communication channels.
7. Take photos during the event.

Post-event checklist

Now, at the end of your event, you have to do the following as a wrap-up:

1. The first and foremost that shouldn’t be forgotten is to report your event. Check out this short video to understand the event platform and how to report your event.
2. Post about the event on all of your social media platforms using hashtags mentioned in the branding guide.
3. Start planning other events and enjoy the fun😄

Conclusion

Organizing an info session for first-time leads can be challenging but with these guides, the process can be smooth. As a side tip, reach out to past leads and ask them for help in structuring things for you. This is one of the strategies I employed that helped me immensely as a first-time lead. I leverage LinkedIn and connected with as many ex-GDSC leads as possible. Thankfully, I got support and guidance from a lot of them especially Sumaiya Nalukwago and Faatimah-Iz-Zaahra Mujore. Make sure you place emphasis on this event because it is the first impression and it has the potential to spark or break things for you. I trust you can pull this up though. Congratulations on being a GDSC lead, you have opened a huge opportunity for self-growth, maximize it!