From URL to IRL: How We Brought Our Digital Community to Life
Hello dear reader, you may have wondered where I’ve been.
Well, over the past few weeks, I’ve been knee-deep in event marketing and coordination for a physical event hosted by .
Today, I’m breaking down exactly what we did, what worked, what flopped, and the key lessons we learnt. Let’s go!
How it Started
After building online for over three years and reaching 15,000+ people globally, we decided it was time to go from URL to IRL.
Initially, we planned campus tours across 12 Nigerian universities to drive digital skills awareness and deepen our community reach.
Sounds great, right?
Wrong.
The grant didn’t come through. The plan stalled.
Then, one Friday in February — while at a crusade ground in Opobo — the Holy Spirit dropped the idea for a new event in my heart.
You can see the picture proof below, check the time and date:
From this idea, I got a clear vision, a clear strategy and a new path forward.
So, how did we brush this idea up?
Well, we Started From the Top
Most event planners start from the bottom:
- How much do we have?
- What can it afford?
- How can we promote?
We did the opposite. We asked ourselves:
- How do we want people to feel after the event? Excited. Inspired. Clear.
- What activities will create that feeling? Engaging panels. Real-time consultations. A vibrant atmosphere.
- How do we raise the funds to support that? Sponsors. Personal funds. In-kind support.
Might not be the best approach for every event planner, but it’s what we did.
We found that if we got really granular on what we wanted the experience to be like, we could create a solid roadmap of must-haves and areas of compromise.
And so it begins.
The Experience: We Designed the Emotion
Typical Nigerian tech events focus on speakers and refreshments. We wanted to build an experience.
Our theme, Skills & Sourcing, delivered a high-energy mix of digital skills education, free on-ground consultations, and resume reviews.
We invested in people to drive that experience, especially our volunteers, who were grouped into six teams:
- Experience Managers
- Volunteer Heads
- Media & Content
- Event Coordination
- Technical
- Security & Safety
P.S.: .
Experience Managers, led by me, were key.
They ensured the registration flow made sense, partners added value, and the entire attendee journey felt seamless.
Each volunteer head created a six-week roadmap for their teams, detailing weekly deliverables.
Check to see the and the .
We scheduled weekly calls for all volunteers and the different teams we led.
This structure turned out to be one of our biggest wins.
It was in one of those calls that the experience managers suggested an avatar for attendees’ publicity and daily notifications via (our event calendar) to registered attendees.
Through this, we also guided our ushers to write and print catchphrases that will be handed out at the entrance on the event day to make the event fun and keep the audience lively.
The feedback was amazing.
It was small, memorable, and wildly effective.
Organization: The Backbone of a Great Event
We housed all creative assets — flyers, logos, videos — in a shared Google Drive.
This saved us a ton of back and forth and misinformation. I highly recommend it.
We also used a Google spreadsheet to keep track of pre-event activities, budget, speakers and partners and materials created.
Standards & Choices: Staying Aligned With Our Mission
For every decision — venue, sponsors, partnerships — we asked: Does this align with our core goal of providing value?
- Venue: We chose a space that matched our vibe and had ready-to-use rooms for resume reviews, consultations, and exhibitions.
- Sponsors: We were selective. No crypto exchanges. No vanity projects. Only brands solving real problems across tech, Web3, and recruiting.
We know getting sponsors is where many event organizers compromise.
Your event is aimed at doing this, but your sponsors are probably doing that.
However, we remained firm and only reached out to sponsors who align with our goals.
Our mission was to broaden the definition of digital skills (not confine it to just coding or crypto, as is the norm).
There’s also media, money markets, hardware, and the future of work, and this allso informed our activities.
Activities: Content That Delivered
We hosted six panels and five keynote sessions built around career development and real-world relevance.
Panels included:
- Creaitz Impact Panel: This panel spotlighted the journey of some of our community members; why they joined us, why they stayed, and what they’ve enjoyed as a result of being in the community.
- : This panel focused on how to build a career in the money markets, including Defi, Crypto, and Forex.
- : This panel explored how to become a content creator in today’s world and the strategies to balance it with other life activities.
- : This panel explored the role of local infrastructure (tech hubs and hardware) in building with global competence.
- : This panel dove deep into how one can build a career in the media industry and basic steps to get started.
- : This panel focuses on the advanced tech careers out there and the role they play in today’s digital economy.
Keynotes included:
- : We loved this particular session so much because it boldly addressed the problem many digital talents faced: How to get a job after learning a tech skill.
- : This session covered personal branding. Building a personal brand is very important today and comes with many benefits. This session explored it in detail.
- : Web3 offers more than just trading; many people do not know this. Through this session, we were able to explore all the additional benefits Web3 offers, e.g BitSave, a multichain savings protocol for everyday people.
- : This session was an insightful dive into the skills to avoid as AI adoption increases and how to ensure you remain relevant in today’s world.
We paired these with a Web3 Corner exhibition space where sponsors showcased tools, educated attendees, and onboarded users.
Money: The Necessary Evil
Ah yes — funding. We approached this creatively:
- Cash sponsors
- In-kind contributions (venues, drinks, media partnerships)
- Personal investments
We didn’t rely on cash sponsorships alone, we also accepted support in kind.
One project, for example, provided water and drinks in exchange for a one-minute speaking slot. These were shared with volunteers.
Some partners supported us with no expectations. We’re now doing post-event cross-marketing to appreciate them.
Instead of a paid recruitment sponsor, we had a partner who offered their time and expertise for the career consultations and résumé reviews.
We also funded a large part of the event ourselves, making us the biggest sponsors🙃.
That’s how we pulled off a quality event without compromising on experience.
Our Key Learnings
- Passion makes the impossible possible
We had no idea how things would turn out, but we cared enough to ensure every attendee left with a memorable experience. That intention shaped every part of our planning, publicity, and execution.
- Focus on what you have, not what you lack
Although this event has been rated 4.5 out of 5 by attendees, there were a few things we wanted to do but couldn’t.
For example, we wanted more merchandise- bandanas, monogrammed beanies, hoodies, socks, bucket hats, bottles, etc, but our resource could not afford that.
We could have let it weigh us down, but we didn’t.
We kept our gaze on what we could provide: the darndest looking merch you’ve ever seen!
We also gave out branded resin keyholders and face caps.
- Start early, seriously
We only had one month to plan.
My friend said to me when I asked her how to find sponsors: You’re already three months late.
Now, that didn’t add to my morale😅. But we remained undeterred.
There’s the general rule of thumb that if you want five persons, you better have 50 you’re following up.
I think it’s true.
So I kept pushing my team; If we want 500 people, we better have 2500 registered.
Again, we had started publicity late, just a one-month heads up.
But God crowned our efforts with success. We reached 429 registered participants (offline and online combined).
And on the event day, we had over 429+ people in the hall. Not one missing.
The event day itself started with a delay. We were 90 minutes behind schedule, and our speakers hadn’t arrived yet. Rather than start and pause midway, we chose to wait.
That decision paid off.
Once we kicked off, the flow was unstoppable; speaker after speaker delivered value back-to-back.
Looking back, I’m glad we waited.
It kept the energy uninterrupted.
- Community > Clout
Community, not flattery, will get you everywhere
We reached out to every tech community we could find in the city of Port Harcourt.
Four said yes to being our community partners.
Some said no. Some never said anything.
We focused on the few who partnered with us and maximized their support.
That made a real difference.
- Show people the vision
Visualization is the fastest way to build expectation/anticipation.
We learned that painting a clear picture of what we were building helped others get excited.
We did venue tours with volunteers, shared detailed briefs with sponsors and speakers, and focused more on value than hype.
It worked. One attendee said, “The energy was high till the end of the event.”
- Never underestimate food
We were so focused on impact that we overlooked one basic thing — refreshments.
Nine hours is a long time to stay without food.
And some feedback reflected that.
While the hall stayed full till the end, we heard the growls loud and clear.
We’ll do better next time, so people don’t leave because they’re hungry, but because the event has truly ended.
Conclusion
This event proved one thing: It’s possible to build meaningful, high-impact physical experiences without big budgets if you lead with purpose, structure, and community.
The Skills and Sourcing event is a recurring event across different cities within Nigeria and Africa.
And yes, it will happen again.
If you’ll like to be a part of it, whether as a speaker, sponsor or partner, feel free to email me at [email protected] or send me a direct message via my social handles below.
You can .
If you enjoyed this recap, you might also like my earlier post on How to do Web3 Marketing in a Bear Market.
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