HOW WE PLANNED A DISRUPTIVE DESIGN EVENT IN 4 DAYS

THE BUSINESS OF DESIGN
We were given the task to put together an event at startzone by our friends at re:write agency, This was our first ever event and from the moment I got the call from Femi the co-founder of re:write agency I knew this was an opportunity to disrupt the digital landscape in a significant way.
Femi gave me a call asking if I could handle the event as he had alot of stuff on his plate including the dribbble meetup scheduled to hold on Saturday October 14, 2017
And of course we took up the challenge, So what was the event going to be about? I came to the realization that every meaningful event should not be just about show and tell but it you be about impacting the community with information that would move it forward. So I came up with the theme
THE BUSINESS OF DESIGN
Inspired by TheFutur
The event was mained at impacting designers with the knowledge and information necessary for running design bussiness or being a successful freelancer.
GETTING SPEAKERS โ๏ธ
This was really a no brainer as I was aware and had somewhat of a relationship with most of the design authorities in the industry so I reached out to 6 of the 9 speakers, 3 other were added by the re:write team. I told the speaker were going to be addressing the problem designers in business face. Didn't really have a structure more than that.
MARKETING โ๏ธ
We have very limited amounts of time but the target audience for the event was very defined, They were designer looking to make and extra buck or two. So the marking was very deliberate. We put on the eventbrite link on major platform like
- Square by Dev center
- Tech cabal newsletter ( We are loyal Cabal )
- Hack growth by design newsletter.
- usable workplace ( which was quickly removed )
- Sharing in on social media and getting other designer to repost
This attracted 868 page view and 120 ticket purchased.
SPONSORS โ
Due to the short amounts of time, we were unable to get sponsor for the event although I did think of charging the attendee a fee of N500 per ticket but the idea never left my head. Although we did have a promising talk with Emmanuel Quartey from Them Paystack whom seems to be interesting in what we do next.
RESEARCH ON SPEAKERS โ๏ธ
I already stalked most of speakers because I see them as competition in a healthy way. But did a little more of a deep dive and took down notes, possible questions and also left space to put down more comments during the event about each speaker in the SENPAI Idea book.
EVENT DAY
Nigerians will be nigerians and a lot of people came late so with had to start behind schedule and we started at 5pm, I of course was not a speaker but instead wanted to moderate the event because I felt more in control of how good or bad the event went. I watched Youtube videos and read like 10 article on how to moderate a panelist discussion the morning of the event. As soon as we got started 3 hours flew right by, we were remind about that when we were told we had to leave the building, everyone smiling, the attendees didn't want to leave their seats and history being made.
What happened on Friday 18th August was the begging of a chain reaction for the betterment for the creative and design community and we were more that happy to be a part of it .
Ask anyone who attended and the response would be the same.
IT WAS AMAZING
What next ?
This was just the beginning, At senpai we are determined to create a community were creative people in tech can learn, grow and thrive together.
The biggest take away from this is
COLLABORATION IS KEY

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