GOURAV RATHI: E-19429

A single individual has limited reach and knowledge. In order to go beyond such limitations
and achieve bigger purposes, networking is important.
TEDxHansrajCollege was taking place after a gap of three years and I was the one who had
obtained the licence from TED LLC to organise this event. The core of any TEDx event are
its talks or speaker sessions. While I had a list of prospective speakers to invite, I had no
means of approaching them. With thirty days in hand, something had to be done. It was then
that I approached the Presidents of other societies in my college and asked for their help. I
also contacted my friends from other colleges and cousins working in different domains. I
received good but limited number of responses. To generate more brokers, the volunteer
application form floated by me required names of speakers a prospective volunteer could
contact. Initially it was restricted to my college students. But when my friends of other
colleges informed me that they knew of some juniors who could help me, the form was
opened for other colleges too. The number of applications and with it the speakers that we
could invite increased tremendously. After conducting the interviews, the best candidates
were shortlisted and their skills and resources were used in calling the prospective speakers.
Thankfully all of them accepted our invite.
After the event concluded, I realised how being central in a network allows one to have a
bigger reach. One could further expand the network if one is in a central position. The event
also made me realise that in order to strengthen one's network a higher purpose (the collective
interest of organising a successful event in this case) must be the basis for networking.