Journey From Campus Ambassador to Community Head, Delhi @HelloMeets

I usually don’t write blogs on my personal experiences but this was one such experience that I feel like sharing with you all because it is really worth it.

Ever since I entered engineering college, I was really excited about gaining a lot of practical knowledge apart from the regular learnings from the engineering curriculum.

One fine day I was chatting with one of my friends & I told him about my keen desire to learn about startups and gain some practical experience. I also mentioned my love for meeting different people and listening to their stories. He suggested that I attend some workshops by HelloMeets and also intern with them if possible.So I spoke to Sahiba Sethi, Founder of HelloMeets about interning with them. At that point she was hiring interns who could work for full time but being a college student that wasn’t possible for me.

Then one day, I was going through their website and I found the campus Ambassador Programme there. It really got me interested.

They were offering the following to their campus ambassadors:-

— Ambassadors could attend a few Meetups for free

— Certificates

— Opportunity to network with different people

I immediately filled the form & the very next day received a call for an interview. After the interview I got selected as the Campus Ambassador.

From sharing events on Social Media to handling an event on my own

An interesting fact is that I used to just share HelloMeets events on social media and never attended a single meet up until one day when Sahiba texted me saying that I should attend the next meetup on Content-based Marketing by Nalini Kher. Those days as it is I was learning about social media marketing. So, I attended the event and it turned out to be really helpful for me.

Also, I was the youngest one present in that workshop. Initially, I felt awkward, but when I interacted with all the attendees, I found them to be very interesting. This meetup boosted my confidence to talk to and network with people.

Some key learnings from that event (October 2016)-

• I got to learn more about content marketing and speaker also gave us a sneak peak into marketing trends of 2016
• We had a hands-on workshop session where I designed a campaign for Sheroes which was appreciated by all

Then my exams came and I again got non-serious about HelloMeets. And honestly saying that was the time I missed some really awesome meetups like the one on Intermediate Photoshop & Wordpress Website Development.

After that Sahiba arranged a Campus Ambassador Meet, where we discussed about an upcoming event — Hello Christmas Party (the only free event that HelloMeets does for its existing customers).

Entry to the Christmas party was free for all the campus ambassadors.It was a pool side party at Hotel Ashoka with food and live music. I got to meet and network with many entrepreneurs. That party had everything I loved and from that point, I started talking to Sahiba on a regular basis to learn anything that I could.

Once I asked her if I could volunteer at one of the Hiring Events. She agreed and asked me to come and manage the event. As she was going to be in Bangalore, I along with Ayushi Mohindra (Marketing, HelloMeets)& Vaibhav Gupta (who was a volunteer for the events that time) handled the event. It was a great experience for me in terms of learning how to talk to the startup founders, how to keep everyone happy and work with new people in a team.

Then I got another chance to coordinate a hiring event. From there onwards I started my journey as Event Coordinator at HelloMeets.

I am happy that I am connected with HelloMeets that believes in overall development of everyone, be it a campus ambassador or a full-time employee.

Few months ago I saw the post on Facebook about an AI workshop by HelloMeets and I told Sahiba that I was very keen to attend it. She gave me the responsibility to manage the whole event on my own. That day due to some reason the workshop didn’t go well. We were not able to meet the expectations of the attendees.

Learnings-

• I learned about a great topic like AI and that too for free !! :D
• I learned how to handle a situation where somethings go wrong

People actually complained about their money being wasted as it was an expensive workshop. After that what Sahiba did was really surprising to me, she returned everyone’s money. I asked her why she did that and she said:

“Money is important but when we ourselves know that we were not able to provide value to our customers then it is unethical to earn in that situation.”

Some of my personal favorite meetups are the one on Product Management by Lakshay Pandey and Conversational UX by Neha Sharma.

Reasons why I liked these meetups so much-

• Conversational UX- Learnt of a trendy way of UX designing and why conversations are important
• Product management- learnt how products are built and what all goes into it

Then came our 2 weekends boot camp on UX designing. For this event, I managed and coordinated with the speakers and attendees on all the 4 days.

Learnings-

• Being punctual- As we had this event in the morning I was supposed to reach even before the speakers!! It was quite a task for me.
• Handling the backend operations of an event
• Learning about User experiencing and why it plays such an important role in Design
• Getting feedbacks from the attendees and speakers

This bootcamp was one of the best events organised by us with great speakers Avisek Bhattacharya, Ikshat Jain, Anulal VS, Riken Patel and an amazing audience.

For details of UX bootcamp, you can read my blogs on the entire bootcamp event coming soon….

Now I feel that I can manage & organise workshops like these.I am also planning a startup related to workshop management for music, art, poetryn and Sahiba is advising and helping me build it.

It has almost been a year at Hellomeets and now Sahiba has asked me to be the Community Head for Delhi. She is planning to expand to other cities and needs to focus on that so I have been given this new responsibility.

It is a huge achievement for me that I am going to be the HelloMeets Community Head for Delhi very soon!!

Blog credits: Naman Goel

To join us as a Campus Ambassador, sign up here :)

Some of our upcoming meetups:

• Investors & Founders Meetup — 8th July — Bengaluru
• GST-Opportunities & Challenges for Startups — 8th July — Delhi
• Augmented Reality Workshop — 8th July — Delhi
• The Art of Mobile App Testing — 16th July — Delhi