How I made a community for education entrepreneurs from scratch and hosted the education giants? | HM #6
One of the biggest community that I ever ran
I think, when you want to develop a community, the intent is everything.
When you have intent, you do not have the fear of failure, you do not have the fear of perception by people and you also do not have the apprehension in learning the new.
From Scratch to building a community in Educational Innovations and hosting education giants
Anyone, who had run a real OPEN SOURCE TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVE to make a change for the masses will testimony my frustration that I was going through during December 2014, the times when I started building this community.
(From left to right | Anupam Kaushik, Sandeep Kumar, Kuldeep Singh Dhaka)
We were working on Mad Resistor (an open-source technology initiative to provide affordable, energy-efficient credit card sized tools & technology that along with your mobile and various sensors works as a laboratory to explore science and technology - also been awarded by HackaDay as a top 10 product innovation out of the worldwide 1400+ product entries).
Despite such achievements, the project was in the doldrums at that point in time and I was at an all-time low, not sure, where to go.
I was feeling as if I am the only fool around, who believes that he can change the world through education.
In a quest to check, whether I am the only one around, I started a meetup.
That meetup gradually turned into a community that we called by various names
Beginning with a Failure
The quest started with the name 'Education for Tomorrow' and I launched it on meetup.com here in Delhi.
Meetup.com proved to be a good platform for me and merely in a week's time, it was having 25 people on board.
My happiness knew no bounds, I was excited in a true sense and launched my first Ice Breaking meetup,
Pat came, the reply from the almighty when at the CCD Lounge, the venue for that first Ice Breaking meetup, on that cold Sunday morning at Connaught Place, New Delhi, I could see only three people apart from me turned up for that meetup, namely Navin, Ranjana, and Jestine.
Navin was working with an Online Education Company, Ranjana happened to be a Soft Skills Trainer and Jestine was a Body Language Expert.
The turnaround
I was sad, very sad by observing so low attendance, but I will always be thankful to these three wonderful people, coz they really gave me a new hope by admiring my ideas towards improving education and making a community.
Believe me, admiration motivates you phenomenally.
That day I went back and restructured the entire concept of my meetup group, rewrote the entire content, and even my own entire online presence.
Within a month's time, there were more than 150 people on board and I hosted my second event.
But this time, I decided to screen people. It was not open to everybody.
A new restaurant named Inniciio got recently opened in the center of the city and I was able to crack a very good deal for this really beautiful place.
On one side it had a stage with all musical instruments like a Guitar, Drum, Synthesizer and many others with a small stage with around 30-40 beanbags to sit for the audience along with a Food serving counter and on the other side was a conference kind of sitting, all in the open air.
This time I had the chance to host a Harvard Graduate, a private University owner, a Policymaker, school principals, NGOs, expatriates, and many many entrepreneurs in education.
Mind it, it was a contributory event and everybody paid their bill INR 150, the negotiated deal per person for Tea/Coffee/sandwiches and Cookies (and I paid mine).
And I got the opportunity to share my ideas with 23 amazing people in merely 150 bucks. It was incredible
But in many ways, this event was a defining milestone for what this community is all about today.
It was my first opportunity to really understand the community,
I learned that it is not only about my ideas, it is rather about the collaboration of various ideas. The learning did not come easy, rather came the hard way.
After we finished this event, I realized, no one was really interested to talk to me. They were all getting business opportunities in each other and I was the last one they were willing to talk to.
That day, I was sad again.
I thought "Oh my god, I have created this wonderful platform for these people and they should have thanked me, praised me, or if need be; worship me as I have given them this phenomenal platform, but here they are, not even considering me worth talking".
In frustration, I was about to close this initiative, not because my event did not go well, rather because it went so well that the people forgot me.
But I was lucky to have an amazing friend in Ms Kalpana Kadiyan, who actually helped me realize, that this is a success, this is exactly what I wanted to accomplish and I really admire her for that timely guidance.
The Power of Social
The number of members in the community was growing, I kept hosting events (FREE, people only pay for their Coffee to support the venue requirement).
Gradually I started getting support from Co-working spaces as they wanted a footfall of Startups,
and I started getting venues and Coffee and cookies Free of cost for all the people along with Audio Visual Support
I was hosting events on topics as varied as Hardware Technologies, Social Impact Assessment, Flipping Education, and whatnot.
That's when expatriate started recognizing me coz they were able to search me on the Internet and I got them as a guest on my events and even at my home.
Yes, that's true, people were finding me from Internet searches. I was getting the chance to meet some really great individuals whom I would have never meet otherwise, even in my dreams.
My personal brand was growing.
Today you can search 'Anupam Kaushik' on Google and may find a few links talking about me.
The power of social was amazing, now I was not afraid anymore to talk to anyone to invite them to speak at my events, coz it was not merely for me, it was for everybody.
The Growth in the number
I gradually started calling it 'Edupreneurs Network' and the number of members was still growing
When it was around 700, I was confused, what to do next with this community, and a member suggested making it a public incubator and I said what is that.
She, (I mean Suman Prasad, a research scholar in DNA structures from Delhi University) explained it to me as 'A platform where individuals can help each other with their respective skills. If A knows Internet marketing, B knows Legal issues and maybe C knows Operations, all of them may be running their own organization, alternatively, they may also help each other as a public incubator'.
I liked the idea and implemented it,
We collectively named the initiative EDIX - The Educational Innovation Exchange
Probably the idea worked and the number grew very fast.
Within a month, we crossed a 1000 members mark.
But later I had to drop the idea on practical grounds. A majority of people were willing to get the help but were not really interested to provide it to others.
We had to change the name too because EDIX was an internationally well-established brand in education events
And we started calling it 'EdMonks Education Entrepreneurs Network' or 'EdMonks Edupreneurs Network'
We wanted to solve four major problems for educational entrepreneurs.
Funding | Human Resource | Sales & Marketing | Product Development.
I got the opportunity to host speakers from large international organizations, industry stalwarts, investors, entrepreneurs, and many more such dignitaries.
But there was something more to come for me from this community.
While I was working with the education startups, I got to understand that I have missed one stakeholder completely, without whom things cannot be solved, the academician, the school leader, the educator.
So, I started speaking at various conferences of school leaders, where I met hundreds and hundreds of them.
I interviewed many of them and I realized that the pain in this section is much larger in this entire zone of education.
Sitting on this side of the table, it is easy to crib about school leaders, their attitude about education.
We easily label them, but when you go to the other side, you realize that not all school leaders are the same and neither their situations.
In my year-long research, I have seen dumb people sitting in the top positions and I have seen very passionate people struggling to survive and so I started building an idea called EdMonks
In the next issue, I will write about EdMonks
The Way Forward for this community
Since I started focusing on EdMonks, this community for education entrepreneurs went dormant
And after the pandemic, I decided to build it again
Recently I started ‘EdTech NeoGurus’, which is nothing but the new avatar of EdMonks Edupreneurs Network
Which is a yearly campaign to identify promising EdTech Entrepreneurs
See you soon with the next story of my community EdMonks
Do share your thoughts with me