Having trouble communicating with your team members during a lockdown? Are you confused about which tools to use?
StoryCycle can help you to build a safe, successful and productive organization moving forward.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Virtual meetings depend on the flow of information and ease of communication between participants. They allow interaction through different channels. For instance, easily and directly uploaded PowerPoint files for onscreen viewing make video presentations online, coupled with the projection of you speaking at the side give the attendees virtually the same feeling and personalization they would get if they were actually in the same meeting room with you. Participants can, therefore, collaborate properly; as a result, business decisions are made faster, projects are completed on time, and there is an increase in overall productivity.
IMPACT OF THE WORKFORCE AND SIGNIFICANCE OF VIRTUAL WORKSPACE IN THE FUTURE
As lockdown was started, we facilitated various communities by disseminating tools and techniques so that everyone can contribute to vitalizing their spaces through Online education, Photo Exhibition and Virtual Heritage Tour.
Virtual meetings are becoming the most efficient way to hold meetings in business today. They can be used for business meetings with colleagues and staff members, holding training sessions with employees, client interactions, document reviews and sales presentations.
Since virtual meetings systems work on green technology, organizations and businesses reduce the increasing amount of carbon in the environment. Employees, customers and even students get a chance of contributing to the environmental conservation initiative increasing their productivity and efficiency.
HOW STORY CYCLE HAS ADOPTED DURING LOCKDOWN
We have been working remotely since the day lockdown was announced by the Government of Nepal. We carry our communication using accessible tools and technologies. We not only run our organisation but also facilitate other organisation to carry out their works. Here are some of the major achievements:
Work From Home Guidelines
Covid-19 has impacted the future of the work and the workforce. The future of work involves changes in work, the workforce, and the workplace. An application of technology is always crucial in making effective communication. Understanding the interconnectedness among work, workforce and workplace can provide an opportunity for making the future of the work more valuable and meaningful!
Online Learning
As an Outreach Partner, we offered comprehensive online interventions for young people designed by Evolution High School. Each day, the program offered families a mix of customized, guided, monitored and analyzed interventions targeted towards young people.
Virtual Heritage Tour
In April 2020, we announced ‘Bagmati Promenade’ to bring in all the past walk leaders, government representatives, architects, urban planners, travel agencies in one place together to discuss the next actions to promote and preserve the historical significance of Teku-Thapathali stretch. As the COVID-19 took over the world and when WHO declared the situation ‘Pandemic’, we had to come up with a new way to bring everyone together. This was when the Virtual Heritage Tour began.
WHAT SERVICES WE CAN OFFER
We provide technical aid to various organisations to help facilitate in vitalizing their business activities through digital means. It helps to be more productive and enhances efficiency through effective communication.
Virtual Workspace Management - 3 Hour Session
30 Minute - Video Conferencing etiquettes
1 Hour - Tools for effective communication with team members
30 Minute - How to be productive while working from home?
Here is a blog post by our founder Mr. Saurav Dhakal on this special occasion of New Year 2018.
Every morning I post pictures of food or farm on my Instagram, get few likes and few more subscribers to our new initiative called #GreenGrowth. Through this initiative, we are trying to promote local food and organic farming while delivering fresh vegetables to subscribers’ homes.
If you register on the site, you will get a weekly call from one of our colleagues to choose from a large variety of products that will be delivered in a basket at your doorstep inside Kathmandu Valley. And all of them are organic!
While I was traveling through The Great Himalayan Trail (GHT), I came across different local produce in rural places such as Jumla (walnuts), Mustang (beans and apples), and Kanchenjunga (organic tea) which were not finding their way to Kathmandu where consumers would be literally hungry to purchase them. As a storyteller, I was pondering to come up with compelling stories about those products.
Before going on the 99-day GHT trek, I had formed StoryCycle together with some friends. We were on a pursuit of stories -- not the common stories covered by the mainstream media but stories of hidden and forgotten people, places, products, culture, tradition and much more. We wanted to showcase the stories through pictures, videos, graphics, and maps.
It was very challenging to start a new venture without any proven business model and proper team. At that time I realized there are gaps and necessity to produce and publish new kind of stories on the internet. So I tried collecting some stories related to environment and climate affected people. This approach gave me some exposure and I was selected as a Climate Champion by The British Council. This profile helped me win a chance to travel the GHT.
It was also challenging for me to travel for more than three months when my baby boy was just born. I started my trek after when he was 16 days old. But the GHT provided me different perspectives of my own life and inspired me through the different stories that I came across.
I was inspired to start the idea of StoryCamp after embarking on the 99-day journey. The beginning of StoryCamp started to serve my quest for the vivid expression of such untold tales. The StoryCycle team started traveling to various small towns and villages of Nepal collecting stories and training local enthusiastic storytellers on newer technologies for sharing stories.
During our camps, we would mark the visited areas on Google Maps and teach the same to fellow trainees in order to increase the digital footprints of the area. During our trip, we realized that many places were not recorded on the map and hence information about them was not available on the internet. I saw many beautiful places along the 1555-km stretch across Nepal during my 99-day trek and recorded stories at some places but I had never been able to showcase a clearer picture of those areas due to lack of technology and skills.
StoryCycle’s collaboration with Google in late 2014 came as a milestone towards fulfilling the dream to conduct mapping projects in the Everest region using 360 degrees imagery.
While we were traveling to show the Google Maps Project to the locals, there was a big earthquake and we couldn't move ahead. It took me six days to be back with my family. Everyone suffered due to the earthquake and I suffered, our teams of StoryCycle and GreenGrowth suffered due to it.
It was a very challenging moment for me and my two ventures. I felt really alone at the moment, but I tried to engage myself in new work. We tried producing a story of Barpak, the epicenter of the April earthquake and collected fund for it.
Parallelly, I was also working hard to promote the idea of GreenGrowth. GreenGrowth is not a food business for me, it's a story business. The only difference is that the story can now be consumed.
The earthquake also compelled me to think about my family roots and to rebuild my cracked house. It was another challenge. Our family decided to shift from Kathmandu to Sindhuli, our family hometown and build a new and safe house.
In the meantime, it occurred to me that the place we were planning to shift to could be a nice and beautiful place. Only if we could use our skills of mapping, storytelling and local food promotion! It might be the key to sustainable growth for the place.
Then again I came up with another social innovative venture called Our Dream City, collaborating with different partners to design a sustainable, livable and smart place/city.
Now with three different ventures and products, the major challenge for me is how to team up.
I tried to adopt a new approach for team building -- a member-based organization with no employees. Every individual has both positive and negative attributes and strengths and weaknesses. I believe that focusing on positive attributes or strength generates more energy than negative attributes, weaknesses or problems. I am trying to create a space/organization with a co-existing platform. All members here have an equal share in decision making and formulating policies and guidelines. The members work on assignments as per their experience and expertise and share the benefits accordingly.
After working for two years, now we are 26 members engaged in the three ventures. We call for membership every year. The members meet regularly to discuss the strategy, ongoing assignments, and activities, and planning for future.
My journey that started with stories, has encompassed not only food but also dreams to build a better city, society, and country. With my team of able colleagues and like-minded people collaborating in our journey, I believe we’ll be able to inspire the young generation to take up the reins in their hands – to build better communities with a better quality of life. So that the whole world will crave to listen to our story!
An unheard-of village in western Nepal, deprived of basic facilities of schools, roads and telephones, communicates through the latest intranet technology. These villages can only be reached on foot with a minimum hike of nine hours, but people here make business deals over computers.
Nepal is perfect tourism and adventure spot with top highest 8 peaks above 8000m with Mt. Everest. Numerous world heritage sites, many short and long trek routes with world class reputation, wildlife sanctuaries and diversified cultures. We have been renowned for our hospitality and friendly gestures. But our content creation and information portals on digital platform and internet is very poor. If digital maps could reflect all of these information whole world could benefit from it.
StoryCycle organised Map Up camp on 7-8 December 2013, as two half days program where participants can learn about various map based tools from Google.
StoryYatris form various locale completed the 5 days journey into Annapurna Dhaulagiri Community Trek collecting stories and presenting them while learning from three coaches on various technical aspect of storytelling, social media and appreciative inquiry.
We present the reflection of the training in the words of participants as they explain the experience, learning and training itself.
Story Cycle is the platform where every one can tell their story. You can tell us your story in your own way. We share your story to the world. The cycle only completes when story returns to the origin with feedback and positive impact.
Story Cycle is the forum where every one can tell their story. This forum for the people who want to make their voice heard. You can tell us your story in your own way. We share your story to the world. The cycle only completes when story returns to the origin with feedback and positive impact.
How It works
We produce storyteller from the community to tell their own story. We support to make multimedia stories in community (offline activities), upload it to this site, partnership with mainstream media (on-air), then again produce multimedia magazine or MMS and DVD or public screening to distribute to the community where there is no Internet (offline).
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Story Cycle is the forum where every one can tell their story. This forum for the people who want to make their voice heard. You can tell us your story in your own way. We share your story to the world. The cycle only completes when story returns to the origin with feedback and positive impact.