12 Months of Awesomeness: Lemons or Broccolis?
Winter is here, and I have no jackets. It’s that time when you say goodbye.
Exactly 365 days ago today, I got a mail, one that eventually changed my perspective about so many things and brought me closer to the world than I have ever been.
I won’t bore you by telling you what the DSC program is, or how to get in, a lot of my colleagues have done justice to that(I have added useful links at the end of this article). If you’re reading this, you most likely know what the DSC program is already. Instead, I would be talking about my failures, my little wins, and what I learned overall from them.
I’ve had my fair share of failures and successes, it wasn’t always a smooth ride. I’ll start with the bitter parts, the things I didn’t do well enough, and(or) failed at, then move to celebrate my little wins and finally bring it to an end by sharing what I learned from the whole ordeal.
NOTE: This is a bit lengthy(about 8mins read), but it would be worth the read.
The Broccolis
I was tasked with the responsibility of empowering students in every way I could, which is essentially what being a DSC lead is. This means I have to constantly organize workshops, events, webinars, and even mentor and encourage students.
The outcome of every event organized was mutually exclusive, hence easily predictable. For me, all events end up being either good or bad, but never average. What I needed to do to get either of both outcomes was always the problem. I had previously been involved in community building but I had never led one. This was me wearing the hat for the first time, I wore it hoping it would fit and everything would turn out great and fall into place, but hope wasn’t enough without a well-thought plan. I had a clear picture of what I wanted to achieve as a lead, what sorts of results I wanted to see, I had a vision!. If only my plans were as clear as my vision, I probably would be writing more successes than I currently am today. I had a vision with no clear plan towards achieving it.
Like anyone without a thoroughly thought out plan, I tried several things, some worked, some did not. This isn’t me ranting about my failures, this is me documenting them for you and my future self, so we could both learn.
I failed at building my dream team
On getting onboarded as a new lead, one of the first things I was tasked with was building a core organizing team and identifying a faculty advisor. Community building is not and will never be a “one persons” thing, I needed support, I needed helping hands. I had never done this before, and it seemed a bit difficult at first. I had questions as anyone would, who do I want on my team? how do I find them? who is the right faculty advisor? how do I convince him/her? My program manager Auwal MS sure did justice to these questions at our onboarding call, but still, it was tasking. I am an introvert who is still learning to communicate with people effectively, so yeah! reaching out was a big problem! I couldn’t look outwards, I spoke to a few friends who were also developers and a non-technical friend who is an illustrator/graphics designer and they all agreed to wear the hat with me. We formed a core team of 5, and of course with constant help from the previous lead Olatunbosun Egberinde and his core team. Unfortunately, all members of the previous core team were in their fourth year, it was the second semester and they were all on their Industrial Training, hence, they could only do little remotely.
The community handed over to me was fairly “large” with a diverse skillset/skill-level, I knew I couldn’t carry everyone along but we wanted to at least try. It seemed to be more than what 5 people could handle considering the fact that we had to hustle for venues, get facilitators for various workshops, and still keep up with school work. We needed more helping hands, so I decided to make it open to everyone. I created four teams;
- Logistics team — Responsible for securing venues and handling all event logistics i.e writing letters, securing power, sound system, etc.
- Communications team — Responsible for handling all our social media channels
- 10x Facilitators — Responsible for anchoring workshops and facilitating them
- Pixel Ninjas — They create the required flyers needed for events and take beautiful pictures at events
Together, we formed a team of about 20 — 25 people. Seemed like I had a perfect team yeah? I did, but we failed! I failed!
I’m not a master at delegating tasks
When expanding my core team, I made one assumption, I felt everyone would share my goals with me and put in a substantial amount of effort into making sure we achieve them. That was a mistake!
One other thing I failed to realize was that in order for people to help build a community, you have to properly guide them, in fact, you have to help them help you!! Each sub-team had a lead, we started out well, but eventually, the teams fell apart. When we started, I was always telling each person in the team what and what to do and when to do it, eventually, I figured out that everyone, including team leads, didn’t know what they were to do at any point in time unless I told them. It was exhausting having to oversee and delegate tasks to such a large team!
If I could go back in time, here is what I would have done instead;
After creating the teams and assigned team leads, I would have organized a small training for each team lead and his team, explaining what my expectations were, what is expected of them to do, and when exactly they are supposed to do it.
In my mind, I felt the team name gave enough contexts to their expected responsibilities and hence did just a basic introduction. It is hard to delegate tasks to people who don’t fully understand what they are supposed to do. Not so long, the ones that were active became less active(Including some of the main core team members), and some even left.
Opening the core team to anyone who expressed interest was risky because not everyone was genuinely interested, hence a lack of devotion. It worked to some extent for me(I screwed up), but It might just not work for you!
Actively engaging people was hard
Don’t be deceived, community building is hard! It is one thing to get people interested, it is another to keep them interested. Interest could mean a lot of things and can be expressed differently by people, but for my community, engaging the beginners was the hardest. It was easier to organize a talk session and get people to attend than technical workshops. We had weekly workshops where we teach android and web technologies, for normal events, the turn out rate was around 60–100 or even more! For technical workshops, we struggle to get 10 people at times for each track, for some reason, people weren’t consistent with the workshops and we failed to engage them! Perhaps there was something I was doing wrong, I do not know.
I lost hope
The pandemic hit us all at different spots, one of the spots it hit me was putting a halt to organizing events. This isn’t entirely my fault, but for some reason, online events just don’t work for my community. I’ve had online events with fewer than 6 attendees before, still cool yeah? I’ve had 2 online events with no attendees at all! Did we fail to make enough publicity? No!
Prior to those events, we had a 6-day extensive training on the web and android development. We have about 40–50 people who attended and about 50% of them stayed active till the end. It was during the holidays, so we decided to continue the training online. I sent out emails, sent BC’s to the Whatsapp groups, and made publicity, but no one showed up! We organized a make-up session for that class and guess what? No one showed up again!
Shortly afterward, lockdown started and we had no other choice but to organize online events. I had already lost hope in online events and hence put it to a halt. There was a beam of hope when recently we organized an event tagged “60 minutes of Regexp” and a few people showed up. I hope to find a way around this issue soon.
The Lemons
Enough about my failures, I did some amazing stuffs too!
Yeah! I made Impact! and I am super proud of myself!
Some of my achievements are community-focused and some are personal, I’ll share both!
I became an omnivert
When I became a lead, I was very introverted, as at then I was trying my best to communicate more with people and learn how to do so effectively.
My position as a lead aided the process and made it a smooth one, I had to constantly teach at workshops, anchor events, interact with a lot of students, meet with lecturers and staffs, etc. I became better at communication and relating with people. I didn’t strike a balance though as I am still learning, I became an Omnivert!
We got people started in various stacks
There were 3 events I organized that had the most impact.
- Explore ML
- Web & Android series of holiday Workshops
- Localhack Day by MLH
I have quite a lot of people who got started in Machine Learning as a result of the Explore ML workshops, in fact, the Explore ML workshops had the most turn out! For the beginner phase, we had roughly 100 to 120 people in attendance! That was massive for a technical workshop! We had partnered with AI+club and Mechatronics Engineering department and their involvement made it a breeze! Special thanks to Ogunbajo Adeyinka and his team. One person, I am super proud of is Chukwudi Marvis, she eventually joined the Data Science track of She Code Africa - Admin and graduated. Today, she leads the Data Science Team at She Code Africa Abeokuta and teaches, python, data analysis, and Machine Learning. I am super proud of her!
We organized a 6-day intensive training on Web and Android Development, the training was scheduled to commence right after our exams, I was very skeptical at first, will people wait for this training after the exam? Or just go home? We decided that if we only get 3 people to wait, they’d be serious-minded and wouldn’t just stay back to waste their time, so we did it anyway!
We began to see results right from the fifth day! Students who had no prior knowledge of HTML and CSS built a basic form Modal! Today, people who were attendees at that event are now frontend/android developers, they might not be experts yet, but they are far better than they used to be! I am super proud of them!
Our Localhack Day was a success as well, one thing I am super proud of is that we got a lot of people started with Open Source, Yes! We did it!
We had people make their first pull requests and even had members with no prior experience participate in last year's Hacktoberfest!
We slayed at Devfests
Quite a number of my community members had never been to a Devfest before, with enough support from Google and the GDG Ibadan team, I was able to get my members to attend 2 Devfests! Some even attended 3! Devefests Lagos, Devfest Ibadan, and Devfest Ajah! It was an eye-opener for most of them as they have never been to such a tech conference before. The jollof rice was on point and the talks were priceless!
I managed to get a permanent venue for events!
Now, this might not sound like much of an achievement, but it was for me!
Getting a venue for any event is a big problem in my school, the community is not recognized(yet) and we struggle each time to find a place to use for events.
While I was still a member, I do hear the previous lead, bosun, complain about venues and how difficult it was to get them, this didn’t seem like much of a problem to me until I became a lead myself. In fact, it got worse to the extent that I had to pay ₦2,500 naira for venues per event. Even the paid venues where hard to get and I literally need to know “people that matter” to get these venues.
Over time, I managed to convince the Lead Developer at the school's ICT department to be our faculty advisor, he was really supportive! He told me about a venue at the school's ICT building that we could make use of, but we need approval from the ICT director, another problem!. He was an extremely strict and diplomatic person, approaching him was scary. I made a research about the request process and wrote him a letter through my faculty advisor. Surprisingly, he approved it! Yaaaay! He approved that we use the venue every Saturday for events! The venue was just perfect! It had everything we needed; projectors, constant electricity, internet, sound systems, It was just what we needed!.
Sadly, we haven’t used it still, the approval came towards our exams, Covid-19 came afterward, but still, we have it to ourselves! No more submitting multiple letters to various places just for an event, no more hustling for paid venues!
I met amazing people
This article would be so incomplete if I don’t mention this! One very good parts of being a DSC lead is the network of brilliant minds you get exposed to! DSC leads from SSA! We became more than people brought together by a community, we became friends, we became a family!
I had the privilege of meeting some of them physically at our DSC SSA summit that took place in Accra, ghana. That was my first time out of the country, so it’s a big plus as well. I’ve learned so much, technically, emotionally, and socially from interacting with leads from various countries and backgrounds! It has been simply amazing!
I got an invite to attend Google IO!
This was a sad part, but I am excited and super grateful that it happened.
I was randomly checking my emails when I saw an email with the title Google I/O 2020 — Expression of Interest. I had to clean my eyes multiple times to be sure I wasn’t dreaming, I was sleep-deprived at that time, so I could as well be hallucinating lol.
It has always been my dream to attend Google IO, but I never thought it would be so soon, I was freaking excited!
This was around the time that Covid-19 was spreading like wildfire, unfortunately, GoogleIO’20 was canceled! It was so sad, Covid-19, why this year?! But we move 🚀🚀🔥🔥
Making lemonades out of broccolis(Broccolades)
I failed! I succeeded!! Most importantly, I learned!!!
What is worse than failing? Failing and refusing to learn from it!
I had moments that tastes just like broccoli, bitter or bland! Just like broccoli tastes, some wouldn’t consider some of my failures as failures, some would consider them as just being normal.
For me, my broccoli was bitter and I managed to make lemonades out of it!
So yeah, Here’s what I learned, sit, and have a sip of my broccolades!
Leadership isn’t just about getting people to help, you have to help them help you.
Being a leader means you need a team to help out, it took me time to realize that it is one thing to have a team, and it is another to sensitize and adequately communicate their responsibilities to them. You need to teach them, so they could know how best to help you. Help them in helping you!
Surround your self with people who share your goals
Building a team is hard, and you can fail if you don’t do it right. I previously mentioned that I built a team of about 25, what I failed to do was making sure they all share similar goals. Its easier to get people who share similar goals to get things done! Make sure anyone joining your organizing team shares the same goal as you do. If your goals no longer aligns, don’t hesitate to kick them out!
Don’t ever feel you can’t do it, you’re good enough, you’re just not bold enough
Imposter syndrome is real and experienced on different levels, for me, it was the “You’re not good enough” feeling. I’ve had this feeling right from when I applied to lead a DSC, I always felt I’m not the perfect candidate. This, in turn, encouraged pessimism. It took me a while to realize that this feeling was more disastrous than I thought, luckily, I was able to overcome it to some extent, these days, I am more optimistic than I have ever been!
Reach out to people, they won’t bite
I used to be scared to approach people, I was an introvert, so that's absolutely normal! But this wasn’t good for the community, I have to constantly meet with lecturers, write letters to request for a venue and invite speakers to events. I used to be scared about being turned down, I hate failing, but that was my ignorance. It’s not bad if people say no, you just move on to other people who might be willing or available to help. Always reach out regardless of who it is! The worst you would get is a no!
Failure should be embraced
It might be a bit evident by now that I chose to embrace my failures rather than frown at them, growth is a process, a process that involves failing and succeeding, but how you respond to failures can greatly impact how you eventually succeed. Embrace failing by learning from it!
Focus on impact
The most satisfying feeling I’ve had as a DSC lead is seeing someone grow and knowing fully well that I fostered that growth! It’s a fulfilling and super rewarding feeling! By helping someone grow, you’re helping your present if not your future self, it might not be immediately obvious, but you’re growing as well from doing so.
Creating Impacts is like throwing a boomerang, when you throw it at someone, it hits them and comes right back at you! Throw good things at people today!
Special thanks
If you’re still reading this by now, you’re the real MVP! I’m sure you’ve learned one or two things from my experience, I would love to know your thoughts! Drop them in the comments section and feel free to reach out to me on twitter @gbahdeyboh .
I would like to specifically thank those who made it an amazing experience for me;
Olatunbosun Egberinde For giving me the opportunity
Auwal MS For his never-ending and relentless support
Aniedi Udo-Obong for always keeping us on our toes and making sure we challenge ourselves to become better each time.
AJIBOLA AKELEBE For the amazing flyers and Graphics he creates always.
Seyi Ipaye, AZEEZ LAWAL, and everyone else on my core team for being amazing tutors, colleagues and organizers.
All my fellow DSC leads for their constant support and advice
It’s been an amazing 12 months indeed and I didn’t just make lemonades out of lemons! I made Broccolades too!
Here are some useful links to learn more about the DSC program.
What is Developer Student Club
How to apply for Developer Student Club Student-Lead
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