The big celebration was also in the Sheldonian: the 2007 Awards for Social Entrepreneurship.  And it was exciting!
Below, I have picked a few select photos: the rest are on my Flickr page.




Salman Ahmed got the crowd pumping as before, and then we met our four rockstar presenters (well, at least one is literally a rock star, and the other three have a pretty good claim to the status): Jeff Skoll, Peter Gabriel, Sally Osberg and Muhammad Yunus.



The ten new Skoll award winners got their moment in the sun (well, the klieg lights).  For social entrepreneurs (except Jeff) this is the Academy Awards, and the smiles were beaming.  I picked Dan Viederman of Verite out as a good example.  Do you have any doubt we are looking at  a guy who has slogged through a lot of tough stuff and is celebrating the moment with  zeal?

 

This year is my year for moderation.  I speak a great deal, and have come to appreciate the role of a capable moderator.  Now it's my turn (am I a "gasp" senior stateman?  statesperson?).

I moderated two panels at the Forum. The first was Fazel Abed of BRAC and Susan Collin Marks of Search for Common Ground.  Our topic was growth: both of these organizations touch millions of people, but in very different ways.  BRAC is Bangladesh's largest NGO (maybe the world's largest).  They employ over 100,000 people.  Abed's approach is to systematically take on the "universal problems of the poor:" health, education and economic opportunity.  BRAC does an amazing number of things and seems to play a more important role in the lives of the poor than Bangladesh's government (but Abed would never say that). 

Search for Common Ground  delivers its messages in a variety of ways, but most typically media.  They produce radio soap operas and TV shows designed to illustrate key social issues: ethnic  co-existence, HIV/AIDS,  and so on.  The core  mission is to reduce conflict in society. 

Both groups have some common traits.  Constant experimentation, measurement and improvement were clearly part of the plan.  Training and knowledge improvement of staff. 

It was easy to moderate two top social entrepreneurs who effectively played off each other while delivering their distinct messages.  And, it helps to have great prep work done by Skoll staff (and Charlie Leadbeater). 

The opening plenary was enjoyable: best Skoll Forum opening that I've attended.  My fellow bloggers have captured many more of the details, so I'll focus on sharing my pictures and the mood.  The weather was spectacular!



The exciting musician Salman brought his dynamic style with the guitar and got the crowd really going. 



Pat Mitchell interviewed Muhammad Yunus, and he did what he does so well: make social action sounds completely obvious and straightforward.  You feel like marching out and making it all happen!



Queen Rania of Jordan is always an impressive speaker.  She manages to deliver her messages so effectively, while  phrasing her words in such a way that it's impossible to quote her out of context.  It's an impressive art and skill, given the incredibly difficult circumstances of Middle East politics. 

I confess, I have a new camera and I'm having fun taking lots of pictures: far more than I can blog.  So, I'm putting them up on my Flickr account. 

 

Isn't this cool?  Kevin Jones pointed me at this for tomorrow's session on human rights social entrepreneurs...

Just arrived in Oxford in time for the opening Monday night dinner of the Skoll Forum.  The Skoll social entrepreneurs get a day together before the big opening on Tuesday afternoon.   The location is Exeter College, whose dining hall was the prototype for Hogwarts in the Harry Potter film.




It  was a time to meet old friends and new social entrepreneurs.  There are a handful of new Skoll staffers so  this was a time to meet the team.  It was also a chance to meet Jeff Skoll in person. 






Each of the new social entrepreneurs spoke for several minutes about what drew them to do this work.  The funniest guy as usual was Joe Madiath.  Long-time Beneblog followers know Joe as the guy who didn't fully recognize Al Gore when he bumped into him at Davos.  Joe talked about organizing his father's workers while a teenagers and getting elected president of the union (he was quickly bundled off to boarding school!). 

I am rushing around getting ready to fly in a couple of hours to London en route to the Skoll Forum. Trying to squeeze in some meetings before and after the Forum, to take advantage of being in the UK. So, I have one meeting in London right after landing Monday morning, and have a couple lined up for Friday.

Just came home yesterday from the biggest disability technology show of the year, the CSUN conference. Adobe and we gave a well received presentation on our efforts to make a Save-As-Accessible-Book option directly out of Adobe Acrobat. We have it working in the lab reasonably well, and now need to complete testing and packaging it as a solution.

The biggest highlight of that conference was brainstorming with the best minds in the assistive tech field about the future. I spent several hours with Professor Gregg Vanderheiden of the University of Wisconsin TRACE Center, who is in my opinion the top U.S. academic leader in the field. Gregg has been pushing me with his "raising the floor" concept: that all people with disabilities in the world should have a basic level of access to information technology. It's a great concept, and Gregg is encouraging me to run with it in fields beyond disability (although that's where our initial focus will be).

And of course, that's one of the attractions of the Skoll Forum. I get to hang out with the best minds in the social entrepreneurship field: academics, practitioners, funders, communicators and so on. I get to try out my latest ideas on people and vice versa.

All I have to do to get ready is clear my email Inbox on the flight over!
Labels: Acrobat, Adobe, CSUN, raising the floor, Skoll