Speakers Hive - Progress Report - 04-Apr-2026

Time flys ! We are now 34 weeks old. It's almost 3 months since we shared our last progress update (on 6th Jan 2026). This blog post captures some of our key accomplishments, goals/future plans and challenges. 

1. Membership - We have 97 registered members as of today (yes! very close to the 100 members milestone). We added 10 new members to our offline chapter (bringing the offline membership count to 34) and 8 new members added to our online chapter (bringing the online membership count to 63) in the 3 months period. Our Speakers Hive Interest group (for guests) has about 299 members. (Note: Some of our registered members are also in this group)

2. Chapters

• Our online chapters are now able to function independently with the support of passionate Hive Officers. Right from planning, arranging the role players, coaching the role players and successfully conducting the weekly meetings - all activities are handled by the Hive Officers. 
• The Sunday Online Chapter is now called "Speakers Foundry" (yes! It's not anymore a number... we have a name for the Sunday chapter). 
• The Sunday and Saturday online chapters have successfully conducted 34 and 27 meetings, respectively. 
• Our offline chapter has completed 18 meetings so far. 
• Both the Saturday and Sunday chapters celebrated their 25th milestone meeting with great fan fare and fun. 

3. Educational Programs

• A number of educational workshops were conducted during this period. In Offline chapter - Sureeka Sundar (What's your Version 2.0) and Distinguished Toastmaster Guruprasad Padmanabhan (Laugh and Let Laugh). In Sunday Online chapter - Prathiba Sambasivan (Women in Leadership). In Saturday Online chapter - Janani Arumugam (The Art of Storytelling) & Sudha Rajesh (Mastering Peer-Reviews). We also had 3 fire side chat sessions with experts (2 in Sunday Online Chapter and 1 in Offline Chapter).

4. Curriculum - We brought some significant changes to the Level 1 curriculum, integrating 3 manuals into a single integrated manual. Also, we were able to complete 5 advanced manuals, so far. 10 more to go. 

5. Marketing & Promotion - We continue to share periodic updates regarding Speakers Hive in all the social media channels - LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. We keep sharing our offline meetup information in Meetup.com using their free subscription (2 listings a month).

7. Administration & IT - Now, automated notifications for new members/guests go to the respective Hive Officers. This enables them to have complete control over members/guests addition to the group and also engage with them closely. A sample design for the certificate was created with QR code authentication feature. This makes our Speakers Hive Level completion certificates tamper proof. We experimented with Zoho CRM and found it to be not suitable for now. It involves lots of overhead. Sudha Rajesh and Saro Velrajan has started a weekly sync-up meeting to review the goals, progress, challenges etc., This helps us to stay focused and make progress quickly.

Goals / Future Plans

1. Administration & IT - Start planning for membership renewals (pro-rated renewals require some customization of our Zoho forms). Explore options to copyright certain terms and materials. 

2. Curriculum - Complete the preparation of all the advanced manuals (10 more to go!)

3. Membership - Reach 40 offline members by Jun 2026 (Stretch target 50 members). 

4. Plan for starting a new club in Velachery area to attract people from Madipakkam, Medavakkam, OMR, Nanganallur, Velachery etc.,

5. Identify the Hive Officers for our Sunday Offline Chapter and start coaching them.

Challenges

1. At this point, we are facing 2 significant challenges - finding mentors for members; finding peer-reviewers to evaluate the performance of speakers. A handful of people are stepping up to fill this gap. As members make progress in their educational journey and achieve more proficiency, we expect the overhead to come down. (After the Mastering Peer-Reviews workshop, we were able to make new people do speech reviews. However, we still have to reach a stage where the chapters are able to meet their peer-reviewer needs without external support).

2. In our offline chapter, member attendance is a key challenge. On an average we get nearly 13 - 15 members (and 2 or 3 guests) attending the meeting every week. However, only a few members are "consistent". Increasing the "overall membership count" and finding more "self-driven" members is the solution for this. So, instead of targeting for 40 members, we should aim for 50 members by June 2026. This challenge is also delaying the process of identifying the Hive Officers (We were able to identify the Hive Officers in online chapter in 4 months)