How to Host Your Own Hive

HOW TO HOST YOUR OWN HIVE

Below is a manual for those who wish to host their own Hive in their city.

As our mission is to build a global community of leaders working on creating a better world, we are in full support of you hosting your own Hive program. Any Hive alum can host their own Hive program free of charge. Hive is an open source program and in the creative commons.

So far, Hive has hosted Global Leaders Programs in San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Abuja, Lagos, Lahore, Berlin, and Montreal. Thank you for helping us grow Hive around the world as together we build the global community for leaders working on creating a better world.

EXISTING TEAMS

If you wish to join an existing regional team, please contact the below leaders. You can find their contact info in the Hive Directory (requires a log in).

  • Hive Africa (Lagos/Abuja)- Osula Grace, Christopher Imong
  • Hive Europe (Berlin) – Liana Taylor,Mirna Smidt, Amogh Meshram
  • Hive Pakistan (Lahore) – Mariam Khan 
  • Hive Mexico – Jorge Cohen, Raquel Villarreal
  • Hive Canada – Emma Michael, Henry Nnoli, Ana Tavares
  • Hive India – Pratik Chettri, Mohnish Singh, Anubhav Jain, Harsh Bhatt
  • Hive Asia (Manila/Singapore) – Ralph Layco, Ms. Faye Corcuera, Nina Terol, JR Demecais 
  • Hive Nairobi – Debbie Khasiani, Feruz Gebremeskel
  • Hive Romania – Oana Molodoi, Ionut Georgescu, Ana Ghenciu
  • Hive Costa Rica – Darwin Lopez Cruz

GUIDELINES

  • Eligibility – Any Hive alum is able to host his or her own Hive program. 
  • Cost – Hive does not charge anything to alumni who wish to host their own programs. 
  • Branding & Curriculum – You can use the Hive brand name, logo, curriculum, and slides free of charge. You can also add your own elements. Hive is open source and all our materials are in the creative commons.
  • Economics & Risk – You can keep all the profits from your program. You also bear any risk of loss. Hive does not insure or have any liability for your program.
  • Timeline – We recommend planning the Hive event at least six months in advance, giving yourself one month to locate the venue and at least four months to market and sell tickets. Spreading the word to the press, getting applications, and selling tickets takes the most time and really takes the shared efforts of many people.
  • Price Point – You can choose the price point of your program, either including the cost of lodging and food in the program or keeping that separate. Ticket prices for Hive have ranged from Hive Africa ($285) to $1250 (Hive San Francisco). We recommend keeping the price of lodging separate from the price of your ticket. For example for the Hive Global Leaders Summit in August 2017 in Silicon Valley, California at 1440 Multiversity, the ticket price is $650-$1000 and lodging/food is $140-$340 per night depending on accommodation type. The attendee first registers with us, then registers with the venue.
  • Key Advice To Keep Costs Down: For your first program, we strongly recommend finding a free venue (like a co-working space or office that is free over the weekend) and not providing any food during the program. We recommend locating programs in urban areas with lots of food options in walking distance to allow for participants to get their own meals during lunch and dinner breaks.
  • WhatsApp Group for Volunteers – We recommend immediately creating a private WhatsApp group for your volunteers who are helping you plan and execute the event.
  • Group Leaders & Volunteers – We recommend keeping the regular Group Leader format (1 group leader for every 8 attendees) though you may change if desired. You can recruit volunteers and group leaders for your program from the current alumni base. The best way is usually via the Facebook or WhatsApp groups.
  • Program Format – You can choose the length of your program. We have had good success with 2.5 day or 3.5 day programs. Most of our programs have been 3.5 days long. We usually begin our programs on Thursday or Friday evenings for The Crucible Dinners and ended on Sunday or Monday evenings around 6pm. Hive Africa ran their program on Wednesday night through Saturday night and that worked out just fine and gave people time to fly home on Sunday. 
  • Venue – Hive programs can be hosted at any suitable venue. Finding a free or low-cost venue is critical to a financially sustainable Hive program. We recommend looking into:
    • Offices that are empty on the weekend (from other Hivers)
    • Community Centers
    • Universities
    • Conference Centers
    • Hotels (can be very expensive, especially if you do catering)
    • Event Spaces (see PeerSpace.com)
    • Co-working Centers (like ImpactHub) – Find a free one that wants to increase their exposure and support a good cause.
    • Empty Office Space (contact office space brokers, who often want their spaces to be seen by potential tenants)
  • Working With Hotels – In some places, you can get nearly free meeting space at hotels by guaranteeing that you will sell a certain number of hotels. Reach out to the hotel event sales manager for more info. Be careful of food and A/V costs at hotels as those can get expensive. You may be better off with a free office or coworking space.
  • Budget – A well run Hive Global Leaders Program (without any food) can cost around $35,000 to run. Here’s a example budget from the Hive Global Leaders Program in Los Angeles held December 8-11, 2017 at the Loews Hollywood Hotel. 
  • Music – Here are some of the Spotify playlists we’ve used at past Hive programs. Thanks to Ryan Rogers for creating most of these!
  • Marketing – Selling tickets to your program is what usually takes the most work. That is up to you. We recommend telling your friends, announcing it the Hive community, posting in related Facebook groups, sending out a press release to your local media, letting local government organizations know, and sending out announcements via partner listeservs. You can also try Facebook advertising. Hive can assist with marketing by:
    • Sharing the list of accepted attendees in your country/region with you so that you can let them know about the program — we have a list of around ~6,000 people who have been accepted to attend Hive but who haven’t yet attended.
    • Listing your program in our alumni newsletter
    • Allowing you to share the program in the Hive Alumni Facebook Group
  • Facebook Advertising –  We recommend targeting ads people with job titles of CEOs, co-founders, executives, managing directors, investors, etc. in your country, especially those in the actual city the event will be held at. In emerging markets (Like Nigeria, Costa Rica, Philippines, etc.) you can often acquire high quality applications (leads who fill out the apply page) for around $5-$10 per application. In more developed countries where advertising costs are higher (USA, Germany, Japan etc.), the cost to acquire an application may be around $30-$50. 
  • Hive Membership – Upon completion of your program, you will be able to add all your attendees into the official Hive Alumni Facebook Group and Member Directory so they can join the full Hive Community
  • Language – So far we have only conducted Hive programs in English-speaking markets. However, as long as you have someone to translate the materials and have enough native-speaking group leaders who are Hive alumni, feel free to go ahead and plan a Hive in another language. We are looking forward to Hive programs in many world languages including Chinese, Spanish, Hindi, Arabic, German, and French.
  • Web site – Please set up a domain name for your event. Please use the .org domain extension to signify that Hive is a community-based organization. View the HiveAfrica.org (run by alum Grace Osula), HiveCanada.org, HiveEurope.org, HivePakistan.org, and HiveCostaRica.org (run by alum Darwin Lopez Cruz) web sites as examples.
  • Event Naming – You can name your Hive program after your continent, country, region, school, or city, as you choose. Examples:
    • Continent: Hive Africa
    • City: Hive Los Angeles
    • School: Hive Oxford
    • Country: Hive Costa Rica
    • Region: Hive Silicon Valley
  • Fonts – The fonts we often use are:
    • Gotham Medium (for the word “Hive” in the Hive logo)
    • Gotham Light (for City/Country/Region names in the Hive Logo)
    • Lato Light (for regular text and “Global Leaders Program”)
  • Hive Red – Hive’s official red is #A41E2D. Please always use this exact color red on all Hive materials. In RGB this is R: 164 G: 30 B: 45. 
  • Logo Template – You can create your event logo in powerpoint using the Hive Branding Template in Powerpoint (also see the Hive Branding Guidelines PDF). Be sure to install the free fonts Gotham Medium and Lato Light on your computer first before you open the file so the logos display properly. They should look something like:
  • Tagline – The official tagline/slogan of Hive is “The Global Leadership Community” or “Global Leadership Community” You can use this tagline in your materials as desired.
  • Sponsorship – Getting sponsorship funding or in-kind donations of products from mission-aligned companies and governments can be helpful in making the event successful. We encourage you to have volunteer on your team reach out to potential sponsors about 4-5 months in advance of the program.
  • License – Hive grants you a free license to use its brand, curriculum, and logo to any Hive alumni acting in good faith to build a global community of leaders working on creating a better world and following the standards set up in this manual. Please note that Hive reserves the right to revoke this license to anyone misusing the Hive name.
  • Launching Ticket Sales (Multiple Phases) – We recommend using the following method for ticket sales
    • 5-6 months away
      • Get your volunteers and group leaders set with free or heavily discounted tickets (we recommend free tickets for Group Leaders)
      • Pre-launch Message 1- Announce (to your email list, in the Hive FB groups, and any other channels) that you will be launching ticket sales in 4 weeks. Create a Google spreadsheet so that those who are interested in attending can fill out their name and email addresses. Link to this spreadsheet in your message.
      • Pre-launch Message 2 – Announce that you will be launching ticket sales in 2 weeks
      • Pre-launch Message 3 – Announce you will be launching ticket sales in 3 days
      • Pre-launch Message 3 – Announce tickets will be going on sale tomorrow 
    • 4-5 months away –
      • First day Launch message – Announce tickets are going on sale now. Offer a special price (~40% off) for those who purchase their tickets in the first 24 hours after launch. 
      • Launch – We recommend launching with at least 100 days left to go and at ideally 120-150 days, to ensure enough time for ticket sales.
    • 3-4 months away – Early Bird – Sell tickets at a discounted price for those who purchase early (~30% off). Be sure to message everyone on your list who hasn’t purchased with a 72 hour warning before the early bird price expires. 
    • 2 months away – Regular Ticket Sales. Feel free to run short-time 48 hour sale prices to your list.
  • Materials Needed – Each Hive event should at minimum have the below materials. It is up to the organizations to produce these materials using the logo files available in the resources section below.
    • 1 freestanding vertical Hive logo banner
    • 1 freestanding vertical Hive Global Grand Challenges banner
    • 1 Designing Your Life (DYL) workbook per participant
    • 1 dark red Hive logo t-shirt per participant
    • 1 frame for One-Page Plans per participant
    • 1 chime/small gong for quieting down audience
    • Name tags for each group leader, volunteer, and attendee
    • Group Number signs so attendees know which group is at which table
  • Optional Materials – You can also choose to provide if you wish:
    • 1 Hive branded water bottle per participant
    • 1 Hive branded notebook per participant
    • 1 Hive branded pen per participant
    • 1 Hive Six Themes freestanding vertical banner
  • Audio-Visual – We recommend:
    • 2 Over-the-ear microphones instead of handheld microphones to allow presenters to be hands free (always have at least 2–one for the current presenter and one for the next presenter)
    • 2 Hand-held microphones – for the MC or for audience questions
    • 2 Slide advancers – best to have 1 main one and 1 backup one
    • 1 Projector – with enough lumens to properly display colors
    • 1 Screen – a projector screen that is not right behind the presenter, so that the screen is not blocked when the presenters are on stage
    • 1 Confidence Monitor – a monitor pointed back at the presenter, so they know what slide is up (very important).
    • 1 HDMI Splitter – It usually requires an HDMI splitter to present to the screens and the confidence monitor at the same time.
    • 1 Clock – a digital clock that only the presenter can see so he or she knows what time to stop
    • 1 Television monitors – For crowds larger than 100, we encourage you to have 80″ television monitors on the left and right of the stage to make it easier for the attendees to see the slides.
  • A/V Standards – As a rule of thumb, never make changes to a presentation while attendees are in the room (except in emergency). Always prepare and fully test all slides in advance of attendees entering the room. Never be setting up A/V in front of attendees. 
  • Facebook Group for Attendees – We recommend creating a Private Facebook Group for attendees and give the link via email and on the registration thank you page.
  • WhatsApp Group for Attendees – We recommend creating a WhatsApp group and give the link via email and on the registration thank you page for attendees to join.
  • Stage Setup – Place the Hive Logo Banner on the left of the stage and either the Hive Global Grand Challenges banner or the Hive 6 Themes Banner on on the right of the stage. You can also create 6 small vertical hanging banners, 1 for each of the six themes of Hive (Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Personal Development, Health & Wellness, Arts & Creativity, and Social Impact)
  • Branded Material Vendors
    • We usually order tshirts from Boltprinting.com. Select the 50/50 t-shirt in “Cardinal” color. Costs about $4.20 per shirt.
    • We usually holder vertical pull up banners from GotPrint.com. They cost about $150 each.
  • Curriculum – You can modify the curriculum as desired. When we host a Hive, we theme each day. Day 1 = The World. Day 2 = Your Life. Day 3 = Your Work. Key elements of the curriculum that we recommend keeping if possible are shown below. 
    • Small Groups – 7-8 people, with a group leader who is an alum, meet 1x per day to reflect on the day and complete needs and gives and the one-page life plan.
    • Crucible Story – in small groups, each attendee shares for 5-6 minutes “the most challenging moment of their life, what they learned from it, and how it led them to their purpose today” (can be on the first night after dinner or the first morning in small groups)
    • The John Rawls’ Original Position Thought Exercise “Designing a Better World”
    • Morning Mindfulness – 10 minutes of led meditation to start each morning, with very soft peaceful music playing in the background (alternate nostril breathing, bastrika, stretching, deep breaths)
    • Designing Your Life (DYL) Workbook on Day 2
    • The Authentic Leadership presentation on Day 3
    • The framed One Page Life Plan on Day 3
    • Purpose Sharing Circle at the end of Day 3 “My name is _______. I am from ________. My purpose on this planet is to ________________.” (15 seconds per person max)
  • Optional Curriculum Elements – While the above elements are the core of what make a Hive Program these below elements can also be utilized.
    • Art Workshop – A 60-90 minute session that brings an opportunity to be creative at a table with white butcher paper on top of it, with paints, paint brushes, crayons, colored markers, colored pencils, water for cleaning paint brushes, etc. and a facilitator who provides prompts to each attendee to draw or write on certain topics and rotate chairs (see https://www.lateniteart.com). This can be a good evening activity before dinner or during the middle of the day to get people into a creative feel. 
    • Playshop – A 30-60 minute session at which you can play many games including:
      • 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 – Where you shake right arm and count to 8, then left arm, then right leg, then left leg, then repeat, the next time counting up to 7, then 6, then 5… all the way until it goes 1, 1, 1, 1 with one shake each of right arm, left arm, right leg, left leg
      • Rocks paper scissors competition – Rocks beats scissors. Paper beats rocks. Scissors beats paper. Those who lose, get behind the person who just one and shout their names. Competition continues until there are just 2 people remaining, each with a lot of people cheering them on and chanting their name. You referee the Final Round (which is best out of 3) with lots of drama with everyone watching and going bananas. 
      • Tape on nose competition – Put a piece of folded masking tape on each participant’s nose. Then have people go up to other people’s noses and attempt to ‘steal’ the tape on the other person’s nose. Those who lose, get behind the person who just one and shout their names. Competition continues until there are just 2 people remaining, each with a BIG stack of tap on their noses. You referee the Final Round with lots of drama with everyone watching and cheering on their person. 
      • Group Dancing (with a few leaders on stage) to the song The Cha Cha Slide.
      • Dance move copy – Partners copy each others dance moves for 30 seconds each, then switch who is leading
    • Speed Friending – slides in the resources section below. Have one outside circle and one inside circle facing out. Have exact same number of people in each circle so each person has exactly 1 partner.
      • Give 40 seconds per question
      • Then say “Switch” (while turning off the lights briefly to signify the change) to switch who is sharing
      • Then another 40 seconds for the other partner to share
      • Then say “Rotate” (while turning off the lights briefly to signify the change) to have the inner circle rotate clockwise one person to the right (only inner circle moves).
      • Then quiet people down using a chime or “if you can hear me clap twice” or “bap bap da bap bap” or “alligator alligator”
      • Then read the next question out loud (and be sure the question is displayed on the screen too)
    • Hive Talks – 8 minute talks from either an alumni or an attendee that answer the following prompt
      • “What was the most challenging experience of my life, what did I learn from it, and how did it lead me to my purpose.”
    • Hive Artistic Offerings – Alums or attendees offer artistic experiences ranging from 1 to 5 minutes (poems, songs, dances, musical performances). Be sure to advance screen all artistic performances before allowing them to be played in front of the full audience to ensure quality.
  • Curriculum Content Themes – All Hive content and curriculum is within the six Hive Themes of 1) Leadership 2) Entrepreneurship 3) Social Impact 4) Personal Development 5) Health & Wellness and 6) Arts & Creativity. Please have all curriculum and speakers are generally within one or more of this six themes. 
  • Hive Values – Please display and cover the Hive values visibly at the beginning of each Hive program. They are:
    • Purpose – Working with a sense of deeper meaning in your life.
    • Integrity – Making commitments thoughtfully and honoring your word.
    • Empathy – Caring for other people with your words and actions. Doing your best to be sensitive and aware to the needs of others. 
    • Wellness – Living a healthy, joyful, and mindful life.
    • Inclusion – Actively working to integrate perspectives from all parts of the world and all perspectives.
    • Presence – Ensuring you’re “in the moment” and that you’re making a positive difference in the room with your presence.
  • Break Music – When a break begins, start playing music immediately (within 3 second) to signify the break and keep the energy high.
  • Attendee Entrance – Ensure there is a high-five line (of 2-5 group leaders or volunteers) every time Hivers enter the main session room to keep the energy high. Always ensure music is playing while attendees enter, up until the moment the program/MC is ready to begin.
  • Chair Reset – At each break, if needed, reset the chairs and pick up any trash and recycling in the main session room.
  • Online Bios – We recommend creating an online directory for your attendees to view. Ask your attendees to submit a photo and short bio 2-3 weeks in advance of the program. You can see an example here.
  • Speakers – You can choose whichever speakers you want at your Hive program. We encourage you to have a diverse selection of speakers representing multiple countries, ethnicities, genders, and backgrounds. We encourage you to have equal stage time for male and female speakers. If you have never seen someone speak before, be sure to watch video of them beforehand to ensure they are a captivating speaker. Only put speakers on the main Hive stage that you have personally vetted their presenting ability and presentation quality in advance.
  • Feedback Forms – Be sure to pass out and collect feedback forms just before Purpose Sharing on the last day. Get a 1-10 ranking for every session as well as open-response feedback about each day so the program can be improved next time and you know which speakers to invite back.
  • Hive Speakers – We can help connect you with other frequent Hive speakers if you wish to talk to them about inviting them to speak at your Hive Program. If you want to have Hive Chairman Ryan Allis attend your program, we ask that you pay for flight and lodging costs. You can reach him at ryan@hive.org or via Facebook messenger. 

FILES & RESOURCES

Below are some helpful resources. The creation dates of each version are shown after each resource. Please reach out to us if you need a more recent version of the file. For the powerpoint files, be sure to install on your computer Lato Light, Bebas Neue, Gotham Medium, and Gotham Light fonts for proper display of Hive slides and materials.