The more observant readers will have noticed that the blog has been relatively quiet the last couple of weeks, for which sincere apologies. It feels like I've barely sat still for a fortnight, as a result of Global Entrepreneurship Week, Social Enterprise Day and all the associated events, travel and 'catching-up-on-work-you-were-meant-to-be-doing-when-at-events-or-travelling'…….

So, a retrospective look at Global Entrepreneurship Week is my first step along the way to clearing an enormous back(b)log:

– Probably the biggest event in the UK was Chain Reaction on the Monday and Tuesday. Check out the site for all the videos, pre- and post- gumph, and ongoing info. I wasn't there, but heard mixed reports: certainly the big name speakers were a coup (two Dragons: the very tall Peter Jones and the very chin-stroky James Caan; Richard Branson, Tim Smit, and Gordon Brown + Peter Mandelson), and I heard that the networking was good. Indeed our CEO found himself between several of the above big names over lunch. Others didn't like the dark nightclub vibe, though, and felt that some of the practical sessions suffered from scheduling. Add your comments below.

– At the same time, I was in Toronto at the Social Entrepreneurship Summit and the Social Finance Forum. I'll blog about it more fully in a day or so, but I thoroughly enjoyed getting the Canadian perspective on this world, and meeting some great people out there pushing the social entrepreneurship agenda.

– on Social Enterprise Day itself, there was a whole host of events and announcements; without being preferential, I'll start with the Social Entrepreneurship Forum in Cardiff, which I also spoke at…and where this support package was announced

– later that evening, I was on the panel for a discussion hosted by Westminster Children's Services in the House of Commons with Andrew Mawson, Chrisanthi Giotis (Social Enterprise Magazine) and Mark Sesnan (Greenwich Leisure), which was interesting; WCS were launching their new Enterprising Childcare Network on the day: check their news page

– Meanwhile, SSE CEO was at the Office of the Third Sector's event in central London, along with several SSE Fellows who are either a) young or b) work with young people. The Minister, Kevin Brennan, hosted the event, and Hazel Blears was also in attendance. OTS were also launching a new SROI project, which us evaluation geeks look forward to, and a range of different action research projects with different departments. Check it all out….

– Elsewhere, UnLtd had a big Social which answered two burning questions: how much taller IS Peter Jones than the whole UnLtd team and, most of all, how many UnLtd staff members does it take to put up a marquee? Answers: a lot and 6 (for an hour and a half). More seriously, I heard the social caused a real stir and had several high profile figures attending during the day…

– CAN launched their new Mezzanine, with funding from Triodos and Charity Bank. Big congrats to Andrew Croft and the whole team for doing this in the current climate: a real success.

– Changemakers, UnLtd et al launched the Big Challenge for young people….looks interesting, and something we'll hear more about as the year goes on, I'm sure, as they build on the success of Big Boost.

– And a couple of health-related things: the Department of Health (with Social Enterprise Coalition) published their guidance on "Right to Request" (that NHS staff can request to run services as a social enterprise). That led me to be sitting opposite the Chief Exec of the NHS on Wednesday morning and I had the simultaneous pleasure of sitting next to Victor Adebowale of Turning Point who made much sense all morning. So I'm sure their handbook, Elements of Success, aimed at people entering this sphere will be full of good advice.

I could, needless to say, go on, but these struck me as the highlights. A final word for a current SSE student, Stephen Gyasi-Kwaw, who pretty much singlehandedly ran Entrepreneurship Week in Ghana! Check his work out at GhanaEnterpriseWeek.com / UnleashingIdeas.org, in Trailblazers magazine [pdf] (along with another SSE student Max Graef) and, drum roll, on Ghanaian TV. Nice one Stephen:

The winners of the UK Catalyst Awards were announced this morning on 24/7 (see what they did there?), for the best uses of technology for social benefit. Check out the full list here. Congratulations in particular to two SSE Fellows:

– Nathalie McDermott (of OnRoadMedia), who was heavily involved in the successful SavvyChavvy project

– Andy Gibson, co-founder of School Of Everything, which also won an award

Gordon Brown turned up to give a speech, and was on good form: he made self-deprecating reference to this exciting area "which you all know more about than me", and made passing reference to the campaigner who glued his arm to the Prime Minister earlier this week ("supporting campaigners…even when they campaign against the government"; the sticky incident happened at the Sheila McKechnie awards, which our CEO Alastair was in attendance to see). And a few decent soundbites as well: "there’s nothing in the worst of Britain which can’t be solved and tackled by the best of Britain" (or something like that).

Despite needing a couple of cups of coffee to get going for such a breakfast event, I managed to engage a few people in (hopefully worthwhile) conversation; sadly couldn’t stay for the focused networking after 10am, but an interesting event and, most of all, was good to see that this was technology as a tool to deliver social impact on the ground, not as an end in itself. Congrats to all.

Back and reporting after an exhausting final plenary session here at Skoll.

First to wrap up yesterday’s proceedings. I attended one of the ‘consultancy clinics‘: with a panel made up of Liam Black, Alex Nicholls (Skoll Centre, leading researcher), Jim Fruchterman  (Benetech) and Kevin Jones (GoodCap), I had high hopes. But the session never really took off: whether this was due to the ‘pitching’ projects (when a pitch ends after 5 minutes, and the panel ask what you do, it’s never a good sign…) or the format, I’m not really sure, but the fireworks never really happened. With the possible exception of the final project, the Big Give, whose business model (or lack of therein) got a bit of a savaging, before the panellists got a bit more constructive in their critique.

In the evening, the Skoll Awards were given out. Jimmy Carter was, by all accounts, very inspirational and the award-winners are a pretty amazing bunch of people, doing pretty extraordinary things. I must confess that I watched it this morning on video as well, having chosen instead to spend the afternoon with noted UK troublemakers (Black, Wilson, Kershaw) and others in a local hostelry. A good time had by all, as you can see from the photo below; an image I’ve found hard to dislodge:

Later, I went to the Social Edge (where you can see lots of blog and video footage of the Forum) dinner: thanks to Jill and Victor for the invite, and I’m looking forward to working with them in connecting the UK bloggers and podcasters into their great space for discussion and connection. Met some great people (again) from great organisations, like Tal from MBAsWithoutBorders, Mike and Omar from Berkeley, and Matt Flannery of Kiva, who was notably humble and unassuming, not to mention interesting company.

After reuniting with a dissolute UK bunch in a local Chinese restaurant, I headed home…..

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DAY 3: I have to go and catch the train back to London to get to the Ashoka awards event on time, so I will blog about this soon. Suffice to say that whereas by the end of Day 2 I was in full, cynical curmudgeon mode, I leave inspired. The storytelling session this morning was worth coming to the whole forum, with Walter Mosley and James Orbinski…in fact, the whole panel were simply outstanding, and I have countless pages of notes on the risks of heroisation (obviously discussed recently on this blog), the need for relevant role models, the balance between truth and propaganda, perspective and resolution, the risks of empowerment, the role of humour and much more besides. Probably the best session I have been to in five years of coming to this event.

After that, the final plenary was going to struggle, but Paul Farmer (Partners in Health) almost did. He was fabulous and finally, on the Skoll stage, communicated the need for social entrepreneurship to include the disadvantaged, excluded and poorest to "allow them to be social entrepreneurs" rather than viewing them as beneficiaries, problems to solve, or markets to exploit. Amen and hallelujah to him, his work and his words. And he was so good that Al Gore, who followed, left less of an impression: indeed, he was moved to say to Paul Farmer, "I am not worthy".

I would really recommend going to Social Edge (link above), and watching the videos of those two sessions; worth making time for.

 

SSE Fellow Mike Felse sends us news from Salford about an ongoing Active Citizenship project involving himself and SSE Fellow Bernadette Wright. Bernadette (aka Bernie) was the first woman in the UK to get the City & Guilds Active Citizenship Award during 2006.

You can read more about the City and Guilds Active Citizenship Qualifications here, or download the leaflet (pdf). Or listen to Mike on the video above….