Tales from Social Media Week Lagos 2018 and so on
One of my favourite things is documenting my own experiences and pushing for change, where necessary. The average person would complain vocally, or internally. A number of people channel this through vague or crowd-obscured mumbles.
I stopped that quite some time ago. What I do today sort of falls under the thematic area called, “Autoethnography”. You can read a little about that, here.
Side Note 1: I have both an organisational and personal experience of Social Media Week, Lagos 2018 (#SMWLagos). I will attempt to keep them separate where possible, but, as is the way of things, expect blurred lines, abeg.
Side Note 2: I have been writing this in some shape or form since my interaction with #SMWLagos began. It’s been two months in coming.
I spent most of yesterday with Social Media Week Lagos, 2018, in various capacities. From the pre-conference commute, to moderation, session-hopping, a user dispute with a food provider and a question and answer session at an off-campus site, I had my hands full.
But no story is complete without a detailed historical retelling. My first experience with Social Media Week Lagos dates back to two years ago. A number of strategically positioned social media banners (at this point I’m thinking around re-titling “Social Media”, as it appears too often in this piece) and raving friends brought it to my notice. However, the 2018 edition was the first time I would have a regulated role and subsequently, be attending the event.
I work with a not-for-profit, and we had applied for a speakeasy session when applications were publicised. We got in, with the news arriving sometime mid-December through email correspondence. Joy! We would be bonding with an audience to drive home our messaging, sharing and learning from experiences.
We put together speaker selections and reached out to quite a number of people, remembering to keep our wider audience abreast of our preparations. The next hurdle to scale was registration.
I am sorely tempted to capitalise this word, simply for emphasis: REGISTRATION.
The Registration Experience
Now, for a bit of background, the “campus” refers to the Landmark Centre, at Water Corporation Road, the location of the five day conference. There were a number of off-campus activities scheduled all over Lagos, as well. Activities ranged from panel sessions to masterclasses, speakeasy sessions, gaming getaways, pitch stands, vendor stalls and more. Sched is an event programming service platform, used by various events all over the world.
I followed the link to a scheduling platform for the Social Media Week on and off campus activities. They built an event system on Sched. Here, you would sign up for the conference, book seating for sessions of interest and facilitate payments.
My levels of joy began depreciating here. The site is tough to navigate. For all that Sched facilitates scheduling and booking, ticketing is handled by Eventbrite. It’s a popular ticketing platform for events in many countries.
So, if you attempt to “sign up” on Sched, you would be inadvertently directed to Eventbrite, externally, to generate ticket registrations. If you do not have an Eventbrite account, you would be required to create one. Upon the completion of this, you would return to Sched to “sign up” with this profile. Your tickets would then appear in your inbox, and you would proceed to complete the Sched registration, and begin to navigate the event schedule.
I’m glad I can summarise this is in five lines. To complete this on my mobile device took over a week of multiple abandoned attempts, with the final attempt completed somewhere between 12 am and 1am. I’m not one to wiggle influence, but I’d tried to finagle my way out of it. I would be moderating and really hoped there was a more direct way out for conference speakers.
No such luck! EVERYONE had to register this way. Lmao.
I’m not laughing.
I was so troubled by this experience that I became disinterested in navigating to register for other sessions. I completed this a few weeks later, signing up for Mentally Aware Nigeria’s off-campus session, themed, “Reducing Suicide One Post at a Time”. Totally worth it, btw.
The Stage Manager Experience
When we scheduled our session, we were assigned a Stage Manager (SM), who would address venue set up and inquiry. We spent the six week planning period distant from this person, as they picked not one phone call, nor responded to a single text message. We reached out about this via email as well, with the SM copied in, to no response from them. This tidbit will become important later in this retelling. File it appropriately.
We relied on skeletal FAQs and speaking with other groups who had sessions planned to address broader concerns, as it were. This worked, largely.
The D-Day Gan Gan Experience
We planned to arrive the venue an hour ahead of our session. Lagos traffic and other factors ensured we all arrived at different times.
I was the first from our team to arrive the campus at 8.17am. The commute was long and bothersome, but I was relieved by the quiet drive in, and the green lopsided embankment with the 3D lettering of “SMWLAGOS” seated in glorious green and white. Entirely coincidental was my green-themed outfit which managed to blend into most of the decor.
I walked in, greeted by cordoned off guest lines. The lobby was largely empty, with two receivers seated behind an elaborate SMWLagos themed desk. One of them was polishing off what looked like a breakfast pastry, hurriedly put away when I walked in. No, she didn’t offer me a bite, and I didn’t ask, either.
I was quickly greeted with the news that their registration scanning tools were unavailable. Until I was scanned in, I would not be able to navigate the campus to scout our room and any issues with it. I asked if I could spend the time speaking with our Stage Manager instead and they told me they would be unable to cross-reference the person’s name and contact details without their scanning software.
Predictably, my next question was, “when would the scanning tools be available?” They admitted that they did not know this, and asked me to wait around the lobby. I asked if someone could locate the elusive Stage Manager, and someone offered to, hurrying away. I then removed myself to an empty vendor space to wait, mindfully.
Tick-tock went the clock.
Eventually, our Stage Manager, “Wai”*, arrived. And no, she was neither apologetic, nor explanatory. She simply asked for my full name and the name of our session speakers. Tbh her entire energy was off, but I was more interested in solving the problems at the time.
We returned to the registration desk and were handed to another SMW Lagos reception desk member, a nice young man who was full of apologies and asked to see my ticket. Another update came, the Speaker badges were unavailable for some reason, and we were handed these instead:
“Wai”* returned and led us to our venue.
It was a fair-sized room, I’d estimate 30 by 15 feet, air-conditioned and styled in the fashion of the rest of the campus. Wooden schooldesk-esque furniture, large cushioned colored wooden seating crates, and a projector screen. Speakers got to perch on covered ankara baby ottomans.
“Wai”* handed us over to two nice people at the venue, our new handlers. “En”* and “Es”* were efficient and super nice too. The newest hurdle was getting the multimedia set up-the VGA versus HDMI battle suffered by many presentations. At some point they brought in an Event Engineer to work around things (including a missing cable on their end) but we settled for hurriedly moving files to an alternative computer we had thought to bring along.
12 minutes behind schedule, we started (finally!). In all, I’d say the program was alright. We are still reviewing feedback to understand what our audience really thought of it.
Next came pictures. Pictures, pictures, pictures!
Bravely navigating Sched, I signed up for a few more sessions:
- Going Offline with Yoga
- Closer to the North East
This second, because I returned to a lobby full of people dressed in Northern garb. They looked very excited, and quite a few of them walked up to me to hand me a program banner.
Sponsored by USAID, NERI and governmental partners, there would be four sessions in all, spread across campus locations and time slots. I was pleasantly surprised. Why had this not received sufficient coverage on social media? Some of these people traveled from distress areas in Yobe and Borno States to spread their story with the rest of Nigeria.
The Proud Journey Yoga Experience
I kicked off my heels at 12pm to sit in on a Yoga/Meditation session. Located in a beachfront marquee, appropriately themed, “the Garden Lounge”, it was 30 minutes long and glorious. Away from conference noise and device buzzing, I centered myself and gathered a lot of insights, and some of them helped shaped this post. Special shout out to @ProudJourneyYoga.
I had planned to sit in on another session at 1pm, a longer one this time, but my next experience distorted this in more ways than one.
The Jumia Food and North-Eastern Nigeria Experience
Food is important.
Centred and restful, I stepped out of the Yoga marquee with a rumbling belly. I made a beeline for the Jumia Food vendor stand. I figured that orders would take about thirty minutes to arrive, between booking and delivery. The SMW campus is centred on the island, and most of the Jumia Food vendors are located in this axis. I thought wrong.
I met a happy-looking young woman, “Tee”*, who offered to take my order and said it would take 40 minutes to arrive. I had conducted a scouting mission of the hall earlier, and there didn’t seem to be any other food sources within the campus. Much too late, I would later discover that there was a annex just outside with more direct food offerings. Sigh.
To keep this short and sweet, my meal took an hour and thirty minutes to arrive. In that time, I won a food voucher at the Jumia Wheel Spin, had a nice chat with a Jumia media lady and quite a number of people from the e-commerce company.
I was perched at their vendor booth, too listless to navigate the conference floor, I think that people began to look like grilled chicken at some point. Their face paint and ankara-themed garb reminded me of a bed of vegetable salad with ranch dressing.
I saw walking, seasoned chicken on beds of tasty salad. Haha. I jest. Partly.
They were super apologetic and super nice though. I finished it just in time to get in for my session at 3pm. On the panel was the Honourable Commissioner for Reconstruction, Rehabilitation and Resettlement, Yobe State, as well as the Head of Da’awah, Yobe State Committee for Religious Affairs. I didn’t get the name and office of the moderator, sadly. But, I got a lot of moderation insights from the interaction.
Tired-looking but well spoken men, they were. I understood that the Honourable Commissioner (an academic, too) worked with engineering concerns for the State, and the religious leader had close ties to all the communities in the region. They took us through historical aspects of the grouping of Boko Haram, the path of the group across the North-Eastern landscape, as well as honest insights into the security and cultural status of the displaced peoples. I will not dwell on this, as it is such a sensitive and saddening subject, but I felt more Nigerian in that one hour session than I have in such a long time.
I got a really cool goody bag too! I’m going to find a reason to wear the tee, soon.
The MANI Experience
On the hour, I whirled into a car to arrive my next session with Mentally Aware Nigeria (MANI), at Yaba. Lagos traffic got in the way though. I arrived ten minutes past 5pm. This one I had been looking forward to. I hadn’t missed much, as they started a little late.
The venue was Leadspace Hub, at Yaba, a large co-working space. The room seemed full of people, but I got the sense that quite a few of them were there independent of MANI. It was my first encounter with such a session setting. It was slightly distracting at first. How do you know where to sit? How do you avoid sitting between two team members wrangling code?
I navigated to a front seat, my heels clacking on the floor, super loudly, in my hearing, partly because nearly everyone had on jeans and sneakers, I suppose.
As an aside, I now realize that heels will hamper a top-secret mission. How do female spies execute their tasks flawlessly in movies?
The MANI session was a good way to wind down an eventful day. We moved from global stats (y’all know just how I feel about data) on mental illness, to the nature and number of responses on their helpline, collaboration exercises and points of advocacy.
I *sort of* appeared in their pictures when I shared, and asked a couple of questions. The MANI team is doing exciting things, and I will them love and light and support this year.
I checked out of the venue shortly after it ended. Yes, I was tired, and yes, I had had a couple of unplanned experiences, but guess who practiced mindfulness most of yesterday?
I intend to share this with the SMWLagos event committee, as I hope that some of these kinks will be a huge part of the learning curve.
*-names have been slightly modified.
Did you attend #SMWLagos2018? How was it for you? Feel free to drop a line below!
Love and Light,
‘Ria
