Speakers Hive Journey - Blog #2 - From Aim, Aim, Aim to Action

The year 2025 brought several changes into my life. I resumed my participation in Toastmasters meetings, after a gap of nearly 1 year.  I submitted my Ph.D Thesis in the month of April. That was a big relief to me. However, I had not taken any efforts towards starting the speakers forum. 

April got over, May got over, Jun got over... professional commitments became hectic... I thought I will do this once things calm down on the professional front. However, my professional calendar became even packed and I realized that I'm going to be busy till Sep 2025. I told myself that "Let me do this in Oct 2025". Whenever I spoke or met Kavitha Chidambaram, she always enquired "Sir! When are you going to start the forum?", "Sir! If you start it, you will find time to run it Sir... Don't hesitate ... Just start".

Around the same time, I was helping a friend of mine (from HCL days) Ram Swaminathan. He had enrolled in a coaching program and as part of that, he had to coach someone to achieve a goal. I went to him with a long term goal of mine (Suspense for now... not related to Speakers Hub!). He helped me make some progress... however, I hit a wall due to factors beyond my control/influence. He kept telling me... "Whatever you want to achieve in life, you'll have to start somewhere"... "Don't just keep thinking about it... and wishing for it... Just start ... the more actions you take.. the more progress you'll make... you'll move from the zone of unknown to the zone of clarity". While he was coaching me on another goal ... I decided to apply that persuasion... on "Speakers Hub". 

I kept hearing "Just Start... Just Start... " from both Ram and Kavitha.... It became hard for me to ignore the volume of those voices. 

I started floating the idea of Speakers Hub with my mentor from Toastmasters - Lalitha Giridhar. She came onboard and she said "Saro! Let's do it". While looking for a domain, I realized that Speakers Hub is already taken by someone and hence settled for "Speakers Hive" (which is more vibrant and energizing than Speakers Hub). I registered a domain, created a website and finally we launched Speakers Hive on the 11th of July. The arrival of Speakers Hive was communicated through a simple flyer in Facebook and LinkedIn. The response was overwhelming. 

The week that followed was one of the busiest weeks for me. The last time that I was "this" busy was when I was the Division Governor in Toastmasters for the whole of Tamilnadu  in 2011-12 period. After a long gap, I started dealing with a tsunami of volunteers and members who are interested to join the movement - back to back phone calls, Whatsapp getting bombarded with messages. In less than a week, we got 50+ members and 30+ volunteers. Kavitha Chidambaram, Lalitha Giridhar, Sudha Rajesh, Rajesh Natarajan, Rajeev Nambiar, Sidharth MP, Ra. Ma. Palaniappan and several other volunteers signed up to support the movement.

We started planning for our first online meeting on the 20th of July. I had created a Speech Manual with 10 basic speaking projects, a while ago using Gemini Gen AI Service. We decided to start the forum with that. We created role player templates/checklists, we identified a few role players... we trained them and did a dry run with them on 19th of July. I was in-fact traveling for work and was in a place near Mumbai on that day. I participated in the first meeting of Speakers Hive from a hotel room near Mumbai. We had 30+ participants attending our first meeting and it turned out to be a huge success. 

The journey has started... Speakers Hive has grown from a seed to a sapling, from just thoughts to actions. We kicked off Speakers Hive as a truly agile platform.. with the spirit of continuously learning, adapting and evolving. Most importantly, we will have to live up to the trust of the members and volunteers who have enrolled in the program. 

Speakers Hive Journey - Blog #1 - Dreamer or Doer?

A bunch of friends and I recently launched a new initiative called Speakers Hive, a non-profit forum for members to develop their communication and leadership skills. Our focus is to help students and professionals become better speakers and leaders. We intend to have chapters of Speakers Hive, set up in colleges, communities and corporates.

In a series of blog posts, I'm going to share my experiences and learnings from starting this new initiative. We are starting this from ground zero and from a clean slate. So, I am quite confident that we are going to learn a lot of leadership lessons in this journey. I thought it would be worthwhile to capture this journey in my blog - and use this opportunity to revive my blogging habit too. 

A group of friends and I from Toastmasters (Rajeev Nambiar, Sidharth M.P and I) decided to start a program for communications and leadership skills development in October 2020, to help young individuals to become confident speakers and leaders. Sidharth M.P had even taken a stab to come up with some 10 speech projects - to kick start the initiative. We approached an auditor and even submitted some documents for the trust registration with the name of "Speakers Hub". However, like a gushing 'Goli Soda' (a carbonated drink served in a bottle), the initial enthusiasm faded away in a few months. Partly, because I enrolled myself in a part-time Ph.D program and I couldn't allocate time for this initiative beyond work, family and studies. Subsequently, we told the auditor that we are not moving forward with this for now. The initiative went to shelf and got buried there for nearly 5 years. 

I got busy with my technical consulting career at Ginkos India and my Ph.D work. I couldn't think of anything beyond work, family and my Ph.D work for nearly 5 years. In fact, I even deprioritized my favorite Toastmasters program, due to the time needed to complete my Ph.D deliverables. The urge to revive Speakers Hub came in spurts a few times... however, the spirit vanished quickly like passing clouds. I was once invited by Kavitha Chidambaram (a friend of mine) in 2024 to attend one of her Toastmasters club meetings. At the end of the meeting, I told her... "Kavitha! We have a lot of young people in the community with a desperate need to develop their speaking skills. However, due to the high fees of the Toastmasters program, they are not able to get benefitted by the program. We should do something for this". She acknowledged "Yes Saro! We should do something". And, I got into my car and drove back home. The dream of starting a movement, continued to be a dream... and I didn't take any action after that.

Towards the beginning of 2025, when I inched closer to my Ph.D thesis submission... I told myself... this year we should do this for sure. I even wrote in my new year resolution that "Start a forum for communication and leadership skills development". However, I was yet hesitant to launch the forum. I had lots of questions going on in my mind "Will this work?", "Can I dedicate time for this?", "How are we going to develop the curriculum for this program?", "Will I get support from others..."... I kept postponing this initiative. 

In the mean time, Kavitha Chidambaram had gone ahead and launched several initiatives to help little children develop speaking skills in Tamil and English. With the help of volunteers, she was able to help several 100s of students to meet regularly and practise their speaking skills. 

Kavitha invited me for one such meeting happening in a mutual friend's house on a Sunday morning in Feb 2025. I was suprised to see nearly 2 dozen students with parents assembling in a house on a Sunday morning to practise their speakings skills... with lots of enthusiasm. While I went there as a Chief Guest, I felt ashamed that I was talking about a forum like this for years now.. but, have not taken any action. But, Kavitha Chidambaram is able to execute the plan in a few months - with lots of courage and confidence. While stepping out of the meeting, I told Kavitha "Kavitha ! For sure, I'm going to start something like this for adults this year... You can hold me accountable". 

While driving my car back home, I turned on my car radio to listen to some music. However, I could hear my inner voice louder than the radio and hence I couldn't ignore what it said. My inner voice told me "Saro! Actions speak louder than words. Enough of just dreaming, start doing. We have a lot of dreamers in this world. But, there are only a few doers. Do you want to be just a dreamer... or a doer?"