To the Wonderland and Back

As I write this, the buzz of NC is still echoing around me. The three days of NC in Bengaluru was like a wonderland experience for me. The entire process of being in touch with Bengaluru SHG throughout the planning and organizing of NC was a learning process for me. I will be sharing a few nuggets I gathered in this blog.

It all started when on a late wintery evening I got a call from Anupam with an idea- “How about Bengaluru hosting next NC?” And thus the seed of NC 2018 was sown. The quest for the venue began. Anupam along with Abhinav were on the lookout and visited several potential venues till they finally zeroed on to the CRI Brother’s Institute. The stage was set.

Now it was the team formation. The Bengaluru SHG members jumped in for volunteering to be in the organizing team. The teams were formed in no time, right from registration, to PR to finances and others. I was amazed by the team spirit and the self-starter nature of the members.

For quite some time, the registrations were not picking up. The event was just 50-60 days away and we had about 70 odd registrations. This was the time when the entire team came together, worked tirelessly, called each and every SHG coordinator, members, pitched the idea of NC, and lo and behold… we had a whopping 125+ registrations that was achieved never before.

I have said this several times, and I will mention it again- a lot of thought was put into agenda content. Giving in return a quality event and all participants would have a lot of takeaways was stressed upon. The events like mini-SHGs, Voice workshop, inviting guest speakers, online sessions. A lot of work has been happening in the background.

The three major takeaways for me as I returned from NC 2018 were-

1. I have always believed that fluency was not a measure of good communication. But I never would have imagined that much more can be done with our voice and that there are exercises specifically for voice. Animesh’s Voice workshop was amazing revelation.
2. The way Chandan Nagraj planned the Stranger Talk activity was amazing. This was the best example of exceeding the expectations and giving 110% to the work. Chandan was innovative to come up with tasks with various difficulty levels. But not just that, he even provided a sample conversation, tips and ground rules and some supporting information on Approach – Avoidance conflict that explains the situation a PWS goes through when doing stranger talk. Kudos to Chandan and team for this exemplary effort.
3. Ankit’s anchoring skills. I was surprised to hear that Ankit was in touch with the SHG since just 6 months. It’s amazing to see his confidence. He also had apt fillers in between events so that the flow of the event continued. Lesson learnt? When we break the imaginary clutches of stammering, we unlock the hidden talents that are already inculcated in us.

Finally, hats off to the team spirit of Bengaluru SHG. I was made to feel like home by everyone- Abhinav, Nishil, Dinesh, Jonali, Ankit, Chandan, Anupam, Shobit – sorry if I missed some names, but all of you were awesome. Your hospitality is superb. Shilpa and Aashima also did fantastic work even if they were remote volunteers. Thanks to them, that the online sessions (Pamela Mertz and Pooja Vijay) were possible. I returned home being richer. Thanks to all of you!