The School for Social Entrepreneurs

We're in it 2gether...

Currently at 2gether 08, a Channel 4-backed technology-meets-social purpose type event here in East London (about 10 minutes walk, handily, from the SSE office). I'm helping out Cliff Prior from UnLtd (as I mentioned to someone earlier, the Debbie McGee to his Paul Daniels) in his mapping social entrepreneurship session(s).

The event has a nice vibe: wristbands a la festival, different spaces, plenty of coffee. I've only been in the session I was being scribe in, but feedback would seem to be mixed on the session content. The techies and geeks and philosophers seem to have plenty to ponder / debate / discuss; the (social) entrepreneurs seem to have less in terms of action-focused stuff or content that can help move their organisation forward....beyond the networking, which is where most value from these things come, as ever. Nice to remake connections with the social reporting team from Shine: Paul Henderson, Darragh Doyle, Ben Matthews et al

Where the event is great is the amount of interaction / material online, powered and co-ordinated by social reporter-extraordinaire David Wilcox, so would encourage you to take a look at all of that....including video etc. I'm retiring to a quiet corner to do some work before the next session................

Innovation Edge 2: overall thoughts + Sir Bob

The rest of Innovation Edge was....OK. Great turnout, great venue, but caught between a few stools I think: neither a trade fair of new innovations, nor a genuinely interactive forum, nor a traditional conference (keynotes + seminars). Networking was good, though not enough time for it....and the expert seminars (at least the ones I attended / heard about) were average at best: meandering was the word.

Gordon Brown gave an engaging, concise, warm speech (without notes...with jokes), but the highlight for me was definitely Bob Geldof. [you can hear audio etc of lots of the speakers here]

It sounded very much like he'd been reading John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan's book,The Power of Unreasonable People, as he used the same George Bernard Shaw quote (unreasonable people shape the world around them... etc) to frame his address. Without notes, he was passionate, coherent, fluent, intelligent and engaging: really impressive. A few excerpts that stood out for me (make of these what you will):

- "Desperation is the father of necessity, just as necessity is the mother of invention"
- [on Britain being more risk averse]: "We so fear failure that nobody dares try anymore....we need to celebrate the attempt at trying"
- "in a world of hyper-democracy, the notion of leadership comes to the self....decisions will increasingly be made locally"
- "co-operation and interdependence must be the way"
- "we need our social entrepreneurs to consider [ideas of a different world], to be innovative and progressive"

He then ended with a quotation from W H Murray, which he said should be written on the chests of social entrepreneurs, politicians and changemakers in the world; certainly a powerful call to arms, to the doers of the world:

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

Innovation Edge: some live blogging from opening plenary

Am at Innovation Edge, NESTA's big innovation event / conference at the Royal Festival Hall. Sitting in on the plenary session, so will blog a few highlights as we go. Highlights to come? Bob Geldof, Tim Berners-Lee, Gordon Brown and lots of other interesting people. Chair and chief exec of NESTA to kick us off with some opening thoughts.....

[NESTA chair] Chris Powell: key themes are that this is a growing movement, + a broader view of innovation than before...importance in global context re. problems / challenges / UK:world...

- innovation as iterative and incremental process...
- need to embed innovation / make change systemic
- relationship to government (procurement, DIUS, DCMS etc) / demand

(slightly boring this: basically stating why NESTA is needed.....)

[film interlude about innovation...which I think is meant to be funnier than it is....a few sniggers in the audience]

---------------------------------------------

Jonathan Kestenbaum: (detailing progress since last event 18 months ago...seed funding, public service innovation, new tech funding, source of authority and expertise....); key point is that they have built dozens of partnerships, which have been crucial.

- NESTA has learned 3 things:

    - NESTA at best when taking risks; + importance of risk-takers
    - extraordinary power of partnerships and collaborations (innovation coming from creative combinations)
    - huge national appetite for innovative solutions + "not an elite activity"

[now going to film about NESTA's work / stories; quite the production budget they have... ;0) lots of people saying nice things: Geoff Mulgan, David King, Richard Lambert etc...but also some neat case studies]

Final bit emphasises 'misson-driven' nature of NESTA, + praises staff etc. Quotes Robert Kennedy on the future belonging to those with "passion, reason and courage"...

[another film! with Andrew Marr, no less; from his modern history of Britain programme, I think] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now Jonathan Freedland interviewing Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Live by videolink from Bristol...unfortunately slightly out of sync.

T B-L: my boss "didn't exactly say yes, but didn't say no either"; importance of long leash + generalising specific solutions they have found...."give people space...don't micromanage";

"if you tell them what you want, you're giving them the old ideas...not enabling them to come up with new ones"

[quotes Einstein?]: "if we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research".....importance of not restricting with outcomes + measuring return on investment....

"I hope that the internet will be 'responsible' as it grows" alongside experimenting with "new forms of society, science, democracy etc"

[question about incivility online]: blogs, wikis etc are 'social machines' and are new, so people are finding their way with these new tools of interaction; views these as "growing pains"....

[question about current project: Web Science] thinking of the web as "humanity connected" rather than connections between computers / web pages....; need for 'cognitive science' of the web: "we have a duty to understand the web"

[question about web being fragile] As much about "will it be a force for good?"...in the realm of scientific / drug information...etc

[question about innovation : collaboration] hopes innovation will be "collective, rather than individual"; 'common language' gets built up between groups and teams; web can make these collaborative spaces "transparent"; need for collaboration across disciplines to solve the big problems. "That's why I made the web" (good sentence to be able to be say!)

And break!

Thursday round-up...Blakebrough, Baroness and blogs

Ok, so what with the pressures of Shine, a swathe of documents to write, and two new programmes starting, things have been a little busy. Also been covering some ground of late: Liverpool, Nottingham, Leeds and so on....all good stuff. Particularly enjoyed the board meeting at EMSSE: great to see the progress the organisation has made under Fergus Brazel, with much assistance from the board; and also enjoyed delivering my measuring social impact session with the cultural social entrepreneurs in Liverpool. What a great bunch they are, and look forward to seeing their progress over the coming months.

Anyway, here's a long overdue round-up:

- Adele Blakebrough, CEO of CAN, is stepping aside to spend more time with her family (whilst retaining an involvement in their Breakthough investment fund). CAN and SSE started at a similar juncture around 10 or 11 years ago, and have worked together on direct delivery of support, on the founding of UnLtd and, more recently, on promoting the policy agenda for social entrepreneurs. Adele is a unique, engaging and inspiring presence in the sector, and that energy and passion will be sorely missed. She'll be welcome as an expert witness here anytime ;0)

- At the recent Good Deals conference, a couple of things stood out for me: the first was the social enterprise ambassadors launching their first campaign, called More For Your Money, about the added value the movement brings; the second was a typically rabble-rousing effort by (ambassador) Nigel Kershaw about the need for incentives to attract investment (interestingly mentioning that 3 of the 1706 CICs have received inward investment of this type)

- OTS is investing about £350,000 on developing a standard for measuring SROI; it's a thorny, complex area, but if (even limited) consensus can be achieved, the benefits could be substantial....watch and wait.

- At a recent ACEVO conference, Baroness Glenys Thornton (formerly chair of Social Enterprise Coalition), mentioned her beginnings in this world, which is relevant to us / our founder:

"I was very fortunate when I was a young woman to work for one of the 20th century's social entrepreneurs - Michael Young. He's a person who gave birth to many of the great ideas we take for granted today, like the Open University and the School for Social Entrepreneurs. The thing he taught me was that you mustn't be afraid of coming up with ideas and testing it to see if it works. He was always prepared for ideas not to work."

From what I know from those who worked with him, that certainly rings true.

- And on that note of ideas not working, here's a cheery little piece called the Six Signs of NonProfit Decline., which includes both the obvious ("1. Loss of all or a significant portion of support from a key funding source") and the less obvious ("3. Sudden and dramatic expansion of services"). Interesting to note, and put alongside your organisation, or those in your sector....

- And finally, for those who missed my session at Shine (where were you?), here's my How and Why to blog set of slides....feel free to use (with credit!):

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Shine 2008 aftermath: toasting success

So Shine 2008 was a real success, I think: really did what it set out to do in terms of accessibility (of price), a dynamic feel, practical/relevant sessions, lots of connections and conversations, a real mix of participants and contributors. I think the social reporting also went well, and big thanks to David Wilcox, Paul Henderson, Dave Briggs, Duncan Arrow, as well as guest bloggers Dave Dawes, Darragh Doyle and Ben Matthews....for getting involved and helping it happen! [btw, if you can't see the site, it may be because your ISP is Virgin....] Do check out some of the videos and photos which give a real sense of the vibe and atmosphere of the event.

Lots to learn of course, and my (unthoughtthrough) changes/amendments would be to do with some bigger collective moments (as per what Kaos Pilots Netherlands did), slightly more structure / formality at certain times, linking online and face-to-face connections better, more food/drink options and so on. And, at times, numbers were affected by a) it being the most beautiful weekend for many months, and b) the Premiership title decider....

Nevertheless, whilst fully acknowledging my inbuilt bias, the event was a real success and very much in line with what we had discussed and planned since the get go; and it's a tribute to those involved that it all happened on such a tight budget. HUGE thanks to Andres from Eudemonic and Jess from Germination (and their teams: Grace, Lizzie, Gemma et al), all the blue t-shirted volunteers, all the contributors who took a risk on an unproven event, the pioneering funders (NESTA, DCLG, Buzzacott, BWB, OTS), the pro-bono branders and web designers (Neru, Rolled), Green-works for providing all the event furniture, and many many more.

Along with the other founding partners, UnLtd, Ashoka and the Hub, SSE's delighted to have been involved in making it happen...and look forward to next year's event, which can now be built on some really credible (if radical) foundations.

Follow the action at Shine 2008

Come join us over at Shine 2008 which starts today and runs right through the weekend. I'll be blogging live across the whole weekend, along with others, over at a site we've set up specially: http://shine.socialreporter.net (thanks to David Wilcox, Paul Henderson, Dave Briggs et al) will feature video, blog posts, flickr photos, twittering (oh yes) and everything else you might possibly imagine.

If you're coming and blogging, everything should be tagged with shine2008 (or #shine2008 on twitter); if you're not, then follow the action live and come join in on Saturday and Sunday.

Shine unconference: a 2.0 event

Many moons ago, I wrote in an application that I was going to do live blogging from an event for grassroots social entrepreneurs, and create a publication (possibly online) out of the presentations / narratives emerging. And now, in the form of the Shine unconference (why haven't you bought your tickets yet?), it's coming back at me, in quite an exciting way.

I've been talking to a few of those in the know (David Wilcox, Simon Berry, Alberto Nardelli) about the best ways of utilising all the new tech available in as coherent as way as possible. We're probably going to look at something similar to what Collaborate 2008 did: a simple platform that allows various technologies (twitter, qik video, slideshare, blog posts, del.icio.us, flickr et al) to be aggregrated and connected. It's not about an owned space, but about a light framework to facilitate all the connections, and provide a way through the information.

We'll also be using shared tags: a new one for me, but if you tag anything with shine2008 in any of the places above, then it should work nicely in bringing us all together [via Simon B's advice, I've also discovered using hashtags and twitter to create a miniblog, which was a new on me]. The twitter to follow, incidentally, is http://twitter.com/shine2008 and we'll also be cross-linking with the various Shine groups on Facebook and UnLtdWorld.

Like the event itself, the hope is that this will help make the event as participative, interactive and user-shaped as possible. As well as sharing and disseminating news / info / opinions of interest to as many as possible.

More on this soon....

Your Chance to Change the World launch

Just a brief note to say that I attended the launch of Craig Dearden-Phillips' book, Your Chance to Change the World this lunchtime. In proper disclaimer fashion, I should say that SSE is formally endorsing the book as a good and practical guide for social entrepreneurs, particularly for those in the early stages. [SSE Fellows reading this: contact me for a negotiated discount!]

The reason we agreed to support the book is that, like SSE programmes (which are the antithesis of classroom-textbook-teacher approach), it is practitioner-led and peer-led, not just in terms of being authored by a person who walks the walk (Craig founded Speaking Up and has seen it through a fair rollercoaster ride to its current position), but also in terms of containing nuggets of advice and experience from other social entrepreneurs (including SSE Fellows Luljeta Nuzi, Roger Wilson-Hinds and Simon Fenton-Jones).

Simon was at the launch, along with more recent SSE Fellows Tokunbo Ajasa-Oluwa and Cerdic Hall, SSE champion / friend David Gold, and former SSE Director of Learning Matthew Thomson (now at LCRN). As that reunion went on in one corner, my eyes scanned the room, and it was a good turnout: Phil Hope said a few words after Craig and Debra Allcock Tyler (DSC's CEO), and there was good government representation from OTS, DCFS and others; + sector-heads Owen Jarvis (from Aspire UK), Bergin O'Malley (from SEC Ambassadors) etc....

All good stuff, and we wish DSC and Craig all the best with the book: Craig is a really good, and talented guy, and it's nice to see someone nice have their day (and his mum looked chuffed too ;0).

Storytelling in the modern world

Storytelling seems to be a crucial part of how social entrepreneurs operate, develop and communicate, so I've been meaning to write up this session from the Skoll World Forum for a while (that I posted about before), but haven't been best to decide how to do so; looking at my notes is just a bunch of quotes...but then I thought, maybe that will provide some sort of narrative. Here goes, with all due apologies for paraphrasing and bad note-taking. The people speaking, hereon shortened to initials, were:

• Ken Brecher, Executive Director, Sundance Institute
• Cara Mertes, Director, Documentary Film, Sundance Institute
• Walter Mosley, Author, The Thingitself Inc.   
     
• James Orbinski, Ph.D., of Medecins Sans Frontieres / Rwanda
     
• Annie Sundberg, Filmmaker and Writer, Break Thru Films
• Bill Strickland, President and Chief Executive Officer, Manchester Bidwell Corporation

KB: "storytelling is a way of thinking about things, about the meaning of things, not the value of things; storytelling is a seach engine; it is a form of disguise and dialogue; stories are a way of finding what the questions are, not giving answers"

BS: "use storytelling to communicate and opportunity...and a possibility"

WM: "if somebody knows something is true, they will take an action....; all stories told are fictionalised (edited, changed) but truth is not the same as 'facts' "

AS: "always interested in the story behind the work, the personal story....again, not about a 'factual' truth, but one with emotional resonance; always thinking: 'what journey do you want to take people on?'

BS: "It's the passion behind the words that gets it sold"

CM: how to "move from telling a story to becoming a story"

JO: (quoting Hannah Arendt): "the first political act is to speak, so stories matter"

WM: "the problem of making heroes in stories so large...that people don't associate with them"

BS: "you don't have to be anointed to do this work....but have an awareness and an obligation to act upon it"

JO: "there is a real problem: the risk of heroisation"; views "responsibility as the ability to respond", not in terms of obligation

WM:....and "the story is how you understand that responsibility"

AS:....and getting responses: "continually wanting to invite someone in...and giving them space to do so"

BS: using "art as a language, a vocabulary to communicate: a balance sheet doesn't get it done"

WM: "a lot of stories fail; most work, most art, is a failure"

BS: "we have no special privilege to be raised up or celebrated: it's about how I celebrate others"

AS: important to "get rid of the heroics"; humour has an important role

KB: [great anecdote about how his father-in-law worked on the Burma railway and said that 'you survived if you kept your sense of humour....the Dutch perished']

WM: "winning is a notion that doesn't belong in this kind of work"

JO: "what we do matters, and you can only do if you live....and I'm going to die living"

[responding to questions now]

WM: "the mistake of wanting to talk about the hero...best to understand the point of view opposite from you, [which gives] much more chance of resolving the issue"

CM: no perfect solution; "carrying the burden of having to fix it will paralyse you"

JO: "don't get trapped in these utopian narratives....these are lies; but do engage as a human being and as a citizen"

WM (on measuring impact of stories): "as soon as someone says 'I can measure that', you're in trouble"; "fiction is always closer to truth than non-fiction"

KB, quoting JO: "stories: we find ourselves in themm make ourselves in them, choose ourselves in them....we'd better choose them well"

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There was lots more here, and lots to pick out: about heroisation and the risk of utopian narratives (which I'd connect to various other discussions about transparency, authenticity, superhero myths and so on), about the power of stories and passion to further what you do, about the relationship between truth and facts, about responsibility (response-ability), about humour and enjoyment, about stories as journeys (of questions), and about humanity.

The above might seem a lot of words, a lot of sentiment, but it was absolutely compelling and relevant. For me, James Orbinski was an extraordinary communicator, and his words carried great weight, whilst Walter Mosley seemed to slice through to the key parts of the topic. I hope that, from some of the above (and maybe watching the video via the link at the start of this post), you might find what Walter Mosley called "the nuggets, the glimmers of hope" to keep telling your story.

Shine unconference: get your tickets!

The Shine unconference is now open for booking: please do get involved. The event is being backed by SSE, Ashoka, the Hub and UnLtd (amongst others). It promises to be the practical, relevant, peer-to-peer, practitioner-based, exciting, grassroots-y, networking, promotional event all you social entrepreneurs have been waiting for. Not to mention low-cost....

More details, and online booking, via the link above. Or see this pdf flyer for more: Download shine_website_and_ticketing_launch.pdf.

Don't delay: limited tickets available, and we're expecting them to sell fast.