AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 6 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 191 of 332 idea of having eminent Guest Speakers interacting with our members and sharing their thoughts on their subject matter expertise over Zoom platform. While everyone accepted this idea within the team, we were lost on taking our first baby step on this initiative. That’s when Raja Sir our VP stepped in and connected us with Mr Yee Gee Mahendra who readily accepted our request. We did take our initial baby steps and after the first show there has been no looking back since then. Initially our initiative was not well received since we were holding our meetings on Zoom platform and it was those times when there was a lot on anti-China sentiments floating around and many of our members were convinced that Zoom is monitored by Chinese agencies and decided to give our eConnect effort a go by and they continue to do so. Undeterred we have had over 35 odd eminent guest speakers sharing their knowledge with us till now and we are confident that the numbers will grow. When we started with this initiative, we as a team agreed on certain yardsticks that we would follow in our choice of subject and speaker and I am proud to say we have stuck to it. A flurry of activity would start once we decide on the subject or the speaker. With no leads, we would look around the social media to get contact details of experts on the subject. Between Vartha Sir, Ravi and me, one of us would establish contact with the speaker through a call or message them on Facebook or Linked In or email and get their initial consent. Once our request was accepted as flurry of activity would take place • Vartha Sir would make out the formal invitation which he would forward to me along with the email id and mobile number of the guest speaker and I was responsible for sending out the invitation. • Next Vartha Sir would set up the meeting on Zoom and send the ID number, Passcode and also the link of the meeting. He would also send the flyer for the meeting. • Ravi now comes into the scene and he will set up the meeting on YouTube and send me the link