FUTCH
FUTCH is 10.8.8 Africa's free career event for student techies and creatives in Minna. Three editions in, it has moved from a garden on campus to Rehoboth Event Centre. I lead the team and oversee every part of it. In 2025 we brought speakers from Piggyvest, Google Developer Groups and Superteam Nigeria, and it became my playground for running a full campaign from first post to final countdown.
A free event, a hard date
FUTCH exists because there's a huge gap in career events for students, and a lot of them need one. It's free to attend and mostly funded out of our own pockets.
In 2025 we had to push the date back by a month. That put FUTCH after exams, when many students would already have gone home. The job: get people to stay for it, register, and actually show up.
Who we brought to Minna
For a free student event, mostly funded out of pocket, the 2025 line-up punched well above its weight: speakers from Piggyvest, Google Developer Groups and Superteam Nigeria, plus a tech storyteller with an audience of 90,000+.
I oversee the whole thing
I lead the FUTCH team. Marketing is mine personally; everything else runs through leads I manage and delegate to, with me overseeing it end to end.
How we filled the room
Paid reach, where students are
We ran Meta ads across Minna. Our main audience lives on Instagram, so that's where most of the budget went, with supporting content on TikTok.
Explain the value
Educational posts on what FUTCH is and what you walk away with. Tickets were free, so the job was showing why the day was worth it.
Save SEM
The campaign that worked best. More on it below.
Show up on campus
We went to the final-year sign-out at FUTMINNA, interviewed students and promoted FUTCH right there.
The FUTCH Awards
We launched awards to celebrate students for what they'd been doing all year, and to give people a reason to come and cheer.
Students nominated, we posted a reel for each category, and voting ran on the FUTCH site.
Speakers, countdown, community
An announcement for every speaker, a countdown to the day, and online game nights in our WhatsApp community to keep people warm. Then the last mile: a FUTCH bus from campus straight to the venue.
Save SEM
SEM is our culture lead. We told the internet her job was on the line: 500 registrations, or she was out. In her own reel she says she thought it was banter at first, "but it's real. We're way behind." People could "save" her by registering for FUTCH on its landing page.
It gave a free event a story people wanted to be part of, and it worked well.
Watch the reel ↗
Fewer sign-ups, fuller room
2025 had fewer registrations than the years before, after a late date and exams. But more of the people who registered actually came.
Scenes from FUTCH
More on @10.8.8events ↗
There's a huge gap in career events for students, and a lot of them need it. Even though we were mostly spending out of pocket, it was for a better cause: a lot of students have benefited career-wise from events like this, and it's nice to give back.
For me, FUTCH is also where I try new things and sharpen my marketing. It's where I got to run a campaign from beginning to end, and to reward people for what they'd been doing all year.