Speakers Hive is now 17 weeks old. It is about a month and a half since we shared our last progress update. This blog post captures our goals, accomplishments, progress and challenges for Speakers Hive.
Key Accomplishments:
1. We kick started our official membership enrollment towards the end of Oct (30th Oct, to be precise). We have 43 registered members as of today.
2. We have developed a program curriculum that provides "real-world" communication and leadership skills for both professionals and students. It's a structured program that provides nearly 3 years of continuous/self-paced learning path for our members.
3. We managed to complete the development of manuals for the Leadership Mastery Beginner Level.
4. Speakers Hive Interest - our official Whatsapp group for guests and members have reached a total count of 264, as of today. Our growth momentum is continuing.
5. A number of volunteers are continuously stepping up to own tasks - to organize weekly meetings, to prepare promotional materials, to recognize role players, to prepare agenda for the meeting, to organize regular educational workshops etc.,
6. We conducted 2 educational workshops during this period - How to handle Impromptu Speaking (by Sidharth) and How to include Voice Modulation (by Thomas Abraham). We also conducted a live IMPROV workshop, where speakers learned to bring voice modulation and gestures effectively into their speeches.
7. Our website is revamped to capture the new program curriculum, hive chapters, volunteers etc., We also experimented moving our website from Google Sites to Github.
8. We periodically share updates regarding our meetings and member recognitions on these social media platforms - LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.
Goals / Future Plans
1. The process of setting up a bank account is still continuing. We realized that setting up a bank account for a Non-Profit Organization in India has become a very tiresome process that involves a lot of paperwork. (One of our trustees was travelling outside of the country, which was a key reason for the delay)
2. We are gearing up to setup our first offline chapter on Nov 16th in Hari OM Vidhyalaya, K.K Nagar. Lots of preparatory work is going on in full swing. We are quite excited about rolling out the offline chapter and learn from that experience.
3. We are still working on creating the advanced manuals for speech and leadership mastery programs. Hoping to complete this activity in the next 3 months.
4. We want to simplify the new members enrollment by integrating our members enrollment form with a payment gateway. We also have to streamline the communication with our new members.
5. We need to kick off new members orientation programs.
6. We are yet to officially roll out the "Leadership Mastery" program to our members. This will help us to develop leadership skills in our members.
Challenges
1. We are getting a lot of requests from colleges and other public institutions to set up a Speakers Hive chapter. However, we have to hold them - since we are building our volunteering muscle to support the growth.
