Speakers Hive Progress Report - Oct 2026

Speakers Hive is now 14 months old. It's almost 4 months since we shared our last progress update (on 12th June 2026). This blog post captures some of our key accomplishments, goals/future plans and challenges. 

1. Membership 

244 members have registered till date in Speakers Hive (out of which 200+ are still with Active / Renewed Membership). 

We added 122 members in the last 3 months due to two significant reasons - 1) Promotions done for our 1st Annual Conference 2) Chartered 3 new Hive Chapters. We almost doubled our total membership in the last 3 months.

(Note: There may be a very small margin of error in this graph, as we are yet to streamline dual membership / re-registration of members whose membership have elapsed)

We conducted a membership renewal drive in June 2026 for Speakers Foundry, Speakers Odyssey and Chennai Speakers Hive. 69 members renewed their membership and 41 members did not renew their membership (out of 110 registered members) by June 2026. A few renewed after the cut off time and a few re-registered after their membership expiry. Speakers Foundry is the only chapter that achieved the target of 75% membership renewal completion. We congratulate Vijay Prasaad (CHO), Anjaneyulu (MSM), Shanthini (LDM) and Ganesh Kumar (HGM) for this spectacular achievement.

2. Chapters

• We added 3 new chapters in August - Mangalore Speakers Hive, Velachery Speakers Hive and Speakers Odyssey - Online.
• Speakers Foundry and Speakers Alchemy completed their 50th meeting milestones. 
• Our Mangalore Speakers Hive reached its 50th member milestone in just a month's time frame.
• We achieved a historic milestone of starting a new Hive Chapter (Speakers Odyssey) with Officers on Day 1.
• All of our online and offline chapters have started operationalizing MO / PM and RM roles. This has helped us reduce the workload of the Hive Officers.
• All of our Hive Officers are going above and beyond - to conduct high quality meetings week on week, enabling members to have a wonderful learning experience and providing the best guest experience both online and offline.
• We conducted Officers Training Program (OTP) for Speakers Odyssey and Mangalore Speakers Hive officers in Sep 2026.

3. Educational Program & Milestones 

We conducted our 1st Annual Conference on 26th July 2026 at IIT Madras Research Park, Chennai. Balaguru (Speakers Alchemy) was our Conference Chair. It was attended by nearly 140 members and guests. One of our members (Madhan) helped us to get 25+ registrations. Nearly 50% of the participants were guests from outside of Speakers Hive community. You can get a glimpse of our conference here. 42 members from Speakers Hive helped in organizing this event and made it a grand success.

As of 26th July 2026, 4 members have completed their Speech and Leadership Mastery Beginner Level 1 Certification. They were awarded at the Annual Conference held on 26th July 2026. The first 5 members who completed their educational milestones were Vijay Prasaad, Shanthini AJ, Rajalakshmi Ganesan and Mitra Saravanan.

In Sep 2026, we revised the curriculum to incorporate the feedback of our members. We trimmed down the number of projects to complete to achieve Speech and Leadership Mastery Beginner Level 1 Certification from 39 projects to 25 projects. This will enable a new joinee to complete their Level 1 certification in 6 months time frame. 

4. Promotions and Marketing

Our established Hive chapters have started their own social media channels to post regular updates. The HQ's social media channels are continuing to post updates regarding key events, regular meetings of budding chapters. 

Speakers Hive had three press coverages during this term - one for Chennai Speakers Hive's 25th milestone meeting, another for our 1st Annual conference and another for our Mangalore Speakers Hive Inaugural meeting. 

5. Finance, Administration & IT

We have upgraded our IT infrastructure / configuration to provide real-time updates to our Hive Officers - whenever a new member / guest registers in the community. We also have created a new internal portal to support our Hive Officers with critical insights, metrics and references to effectively perform their role.

We published our first-ever "Annual Financial Report" in Aug 2026.

6. Challenges, Goals and Future Plans

• Administrative - Explore options to copyright certain terms and materials. Continue to streamline the online platforms (membership renewals, educational awards submissions etc.,)
• Contests - Complete the Inspiring Speech & Peer-Review Contests by Nov 2026
• Peer-Reviewers - We need to develop more peer-reviewers and mentors in the community. Speakers Foundry and Speakers Alchemy are able to mobilise peer-reviewers for their weekly meetings. Chennai Speakers Hive is able to manage it, most of the times. Mangalore Speakers Hive has experienced members who can handle peer-reviews. We need to build Peer-Reviewers in Speakers Odyssey and Velachery Speakers Hive. Also, we need to train more mentors in the community. 
• Chapters: Strengthen the newly chartered chapters - especially Speakers Odyssey and Velachery Speakers Hive. (Target: 25 members in Odyssey and 30 members in VSH by Dec 2025)
• Officers: Identify Hive Officers for Velachery Speakers Hive. Plan for succession for other chapters.
• Curriculum: Plan / Strengthen / Fine-Tune the Curriculum for both Speech Mastery and Leadership Mastery tracks