Open Voices

Top Blog Entries (from SocialEdge)

• The Twittered Conference: A Richer Experience, by Tom Watson of CauseWired
• Closing Plenary and Conversations - Leaders for the Future, by Vinay Nagaraju (a Skoll Scholar)
• Belonging and Bullheadedness: Skoll World Forum 2009, by Kjerstin Erickson of FORGE
• A Forum Of Idealists?, by Sagar Gubbi

Top Blog Entries (from the Web)

• Skoll 2009 Reflections: Preaching to the Choir, by Marina Kim of Ashoka (hosted on Change.org)
• Skoll 2009: Speaking Innovation to Power, by Rick Goossen of MakeGood
• Skoll World Forum and the Social Commons: Amidst Oxford's Spires - and in the Twitter Feeds - the Order Is Changing..., by Tom Watson of CauseWired

GlobalGiving's Mari Kuraishi on social media & social entreprises from sociaal ondernemen on Vimeo.

I am constantly amazed at the continuing maturity of the field and the conference over the past three years.

Having reached Oxford on Wednesday afternoon, I attempted to check into my apartment and had an impromptu Bridgespan reunion with living legend Paul Carttar who now does amazing work with New Profit and the Monitor Institute and another former Bridgespan partner, John Hugget who played a strong role in the firm's expansion.  (As I soon learned, that reception desk would be one of the most useful places to meet fascinating forum participants - much to the chagrin of the staff who were trying to assist me while I carried on conversations).

Looking through the agenda of the Skoll Forum, one sees a veritable 'Whos Who' of the Social Entrepreneurship world and those not in the agenda are easily spotted in the hallways and networking areas.  There were two consistent themes in the program- scale and funding.  Though this year, the theme of funding was primarily focused on social investment (and the participants overwhelmingly voted by their feet for these topics!)  

SOCIAL INVESTING

The interest in social investment seemed to balloon over the last couple years.  The exploration of commercially-based finance to advance the social sector is fantastic and I am excited to hear about the efforts of GIIN and those who support this general funding mechanism.  What I worry about is the focus on an entire meta-field rather than particular sectors.  Like social entrepreneurship, the conversation is limited as a general meta-field before having to discuss specific sectors to gain greater complexity.  For example, in the World Economic Forum, we have gained greater traction with corporate leaders and public figures when the Schwab Foundation community of social entrepreneurs interact with their peers within energy, IT, or health rather than as social entrepreneurs advocating for the general field.

Similarly, with social investing, I worry that the movement at the meta-level will risk loosing steam because its trying to define something that may be different for the various aspects affected.  In addition to this approach, one can also look at social investing in a broader matrix (see below).  Within the sectors then, one can look at the gaps and roles that the various funding aspects play. Right now, our leading solid waste management entrepreneurs are testing this hypothesis (more on this in another post).  I would be curious to hear the experience of others who provide a wide array of financial tools to scale sectors and their learnings.

SCALE

I had the good fortune to attend the 'Pathways to Scale' session moderated by John Elkington.  What I've learned from the World Economic Forum is that no matter how good your panelists are, the moderator makes or breaks the session.  While the panelists of the session were superb, you can't get much better than John Elkington as a moderator.  The topic was looking at scale of macro rather than micro enterprises so closely associated with the social entrepreneur industry (e.g. microfinance, micro-insurance, etc.).  The case topic was sustainable mobility.  The examples, including Embarq and A Better Place, were inspiring - though all the panelists espoused public partnership in their actions.  However, social entrepreneurs often innovate their ventures precisely because governments are not universally fulfilling their commitments to their constituents and, in many situations, even the commercial sector can not see a viable model.  Thus, I was left contemplating whether there are macro-industries that can work agnostic of government and/or large corporations stepping in.  The first that comes to mind is the mobile phone industry in developing countries with entrepreneurs like Mo Ibrahim.  Another may be the energy sector with a grassroot approach (e.g. SELCO, DESI Power) yet don't these implement one household/ business at a time as well?  Any other industries this is possible and any examples of significant scale?

It's a toss-up when you decide to leave the beaten track. Many are called, but few are chosen.
 - W. Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1943

President Obama is meeting in London this week with the world’s top 20 economies to fix the global economy and the advance reports are filled with the predictable mixed signals, subtle recriminations and ham-fisted efforts to manage outcomes of such august gatherings in difficult times.

This is in stark contrast to the Skoll World Forum that concluded in Oxford last week. Sponsored by eBay co-Founder Jeff Skoll and the Skoll Foundation, it is a unique gathering of social entrepreneurs, scholars, and thought-leaders who come together annually to both celebrate and examine social entrepreneurs and their new models of social and economic innovation.

What is a social entrepreneur? According to the Skoll Foundation, “Social entrepreneurs pioneer innovative and systemic approaches for meeting the needs of the marginalized, the disadvantaged and the disenfranchised – populations that lack the financial means or political clout to achieve lasting benefit on their own.”

My organization is a regular Skoll World Forum participant due to the ground-breaking work of its founder, Dr. Victoria Hale. Hale was recognized by the Skoll Foundation in 2005 as a social entrepreneur for founding the Institute for OneWorld Health (www.oneworldhealth.org), the US’s first nonprofit pharmaceutical company that develops medicines for diseases of poverty in the developing world.

This year’s Skoll World Forum chose to embrace the financial turmoil encompassing the globe and challenged us all to do the same. In contrast to the uncertainty facing the impact of the London Summit, Skoll attendees were clear in their conviction that they not only had a case for optimism – but also an answer in the form of social entrepreneurialism.
Our speakers sensed a shift in power and a call to arms. Inspiration seemed fitting given the 15th century theatre setting where the main plenary sessions were held. Presenters spoke of the ”triple bottom-line” and how true costs -externalities - long ignored are now visible, their costs are increasingly transparent and the reasons given for inaction are no longer tenable. In the words of Stephan Chambers, Chair of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurs believe now, more than ever, that innovation and empathy can reconcile “the genius of capitalism and its short-comings.”

Yes, there was caution, too. The theme of avoiding a “false choice,” that is, to reject the notion that existing models are the reality, was the central point of Prof. Roger Martin’s opening remarks as reported by Fast Company’s Jeff Chu. Martin urged us all to seek new models by understanding “The Power Paradox,” the ability to see beyond the choice of traditional models, and the courage to reject the obvious choices present for something completely different.

The second day of the conference captured this tension most eloquently. At an early morning session, Bill Drayton, CEO of Ashoka, and the “Godfather” of social entrepreneurs, likened the economic moment we are facing to the transition from dinosaurs to mammals and the fate of conventional management and the industries dependent upon it a “dead life form.”  A McKinsey veteran, Drayton believes the rate and combination of change via “networks” is spreading innovation further and faster than any hierarchical, command and control (dinosaur) model can sustain. Teamwork, empathy, leadership and change-making are the new premium skills – a new model of “everyone is a change maker” organizations.

By the evening, there was no doubt left about the choice we faced. Skoll Foundation CEO Sally Osberg, argued that “the old order is crumbling and the time is ripe to embrace, even as we create, a morally justifiable and sustainable world.”

The closing argument was made by Dr. R. K. Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with former Vice President Al Gore. Dr. Pauchauri linked the work of social entrepreneurs to the economic crisis by citing its root cause as a failure to achieve sustainable development.  In his view, unmitigated forms of capitalism and extreme socialism have failed to address challenge of sustainable development.

Pachauri sees a powerful engine for social and systemic change in social entrepreneurs. He characterizes social entrepreneurs as individuals and organizations, who fashion and develop a new development paradigm based on culture and in tune with grassroots aspirations, sentiment, and values. Equally important, in social entrepreneurialism, he sees a new form of governance that does not supplant existing governance but supplements it and moves governments and citizens to action in a more equitable and sustainable fashion.

Perhaps it was the stiff, wooden benches of the Sheldonian Theatre that caused me to sit up and take notice. Or was it the steep, dizzying rise in the balcony combined with video montages of happy children’s faces, thriving rural villages, clean wells and solar panels, and KT Tunstall’s live performance, that lifted my spirits? Regardless, I could feel the constant refrain of “Innovation. Scale. Empathy. Sustainability.” take hold. After dining in one of the Oxford College dining halls, I returned to my hotel to catch up on the news and pack for the airport. There was more on the London Summit; protest zones were announced and The Guardian had a special “How To” section on avoiding protesters by not dressing like an investment banker during the London Summit.

Will there be a surge in innovation during this recession that leads to a new and better ways of doing things? Past recessions have produced companies and industries like HP, semiconductors, Microsoft, and what we now call the tech sector. Everybody agrees this recession is more severe than any we have experienced in the latter half of the 20th century. Is the financial dinosaur of Bretton Woods finally passing on and some new and nimble mammalian creature coming in its place? Are social entrepreneurs the missing link?

There is much at stake. Maybe off the beaten track is the way to go this time around.

Check out the 2009 Skoll World Forum.

Jim Hickman is the Vice President of External Affairs for the Institute for OneWorld Health.
 

Shari Berenbach on financing social entreprises from sociaal ondernemen on Vimeo.

But early on, something went wrong.

It wasn't the expert moderation by seasoned journalist and Knight Foundation VP of Strategic Initiatives, Paula Ellis. It wasn't the nuggets of wisdom from Bill Drayton of Ashoka, Gregor Hackmack of ParliamentWatch, and Sasa Vucinic of the Media Developmend Loan Fund.

The problem was the audience.

Many of us, including me, came with the expectation that the form of the session would be congruent with the subject. We expected nothing less than an invitation to share our stories, ask questions, demo the social web tools that are transforming media, and model the increasingly grey line between information and action / journalist and audience.

Our session, it turned out, was more consistent with the out-moded Letter to the Editor model. During the 1.5 hours of the session, just one audience member spoke. The rest of us were asked to write our questions and "inspirations" on blank pieces of paper and pass them to the panelists. Most of the comments passed to the front were never even read aloud.

The 100+ people in the room, not to mention the hundreds of people following along on Twitter, passively consumed insightful commentary on how citizens are no longer interested in (or tolerating) one to many communication. And yet, that's we got. Moreover, we accepted the session format as not negotiable. Our passive listening was hardly the behavior one would expect from a group of disruptive social innovators. I don't think I'm the only person who left the room feeling that an opportunity had been lost.

If the adience had only demanded that the session be conducted in a more everyone-is-media way, then the overall message would have resonated more deeply. That message, if I'm not mistaken, was a call to action for social entrepreneurs to continue experimenting with new models of trust-building, truth-finding, and sustainability in the new journalism.

Below is a clip from the session I managed to capture on a Flip video camcorder.

Peter Deitz is covering the Skoll World Forum 2009 on behalf of Social Edge. Peter is a blogger, social media consultant, and the founder of Social Actions – an open source database and website that helps people find and share opportunities to make a difference.

An interesting and very rich panel - timely and well attended with over 200 in the room, piqued ears and quiet consideration.

Matthew Bishop both led us off, and spurred the panelists on with provoking questions.

He started by stating that philanthrocapitalism is going to be one of the leading ideas in this new paradigm more so than in the old.  Financial innovation and capitalism without grounding in sustainability is going to be in trouble.  Now - we need to demonstrate that this model can work and be successful to the powers that be.

Sir Richard Cohen drew out the paradox that we are facing right now:  financial crisis, high unemployment, high need for social sector - but at this very time the government's constraints are very real, and unable to fund the solutions.  Further, in order to maintain the trust of financial markets they may need to restrain their spending.

If we give up on government, we will be in very serious trouble.  We need government support - they need to play a major enabling role in order for us to do work.  This includes tax relief and incentives.  He gave an example of matching finance - Bridges finance was able to start with 20 million pounds of government fund.  He also referenced a number of times hope in the unclaimed asset bank to fund the social investment bank, connecting the social sector to the government market.

Jan Piercy then spoke, agreeing that we cannot give up on government.  Thankfully - Americans are in a better place now in regards to social entrepreneurship, however we have never done anything in the US on the scale that the UK has done.  Jan mentioned that she is drawing from the quote:  The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Two perspectives - one drawn from the times when Microfinance was beginning to get traction, and it was seen by some as not part of the financial system.  Less than a decade ago, it didn't hold credibility - which gives hope for what can be mainstreamed from innovative social finance solutions as we move into the future.

Shorebank - 2.8 billion in assets, wants to scale in order to have broader impact.  Community banks are not exploding, in large part because of their connection to community.  She spoke of a new member organization” Banking Alliance on Values" made up of a global network of banks.  Blinders have come off, and we can reinvent

Systemic crisis, along with environmental and pandemic health crises, and we need a new architecture to address these crises.  What is unknown is how we create the architecture that will allow this to work- but  what is known is that the old paradigm will not.  It will be unfortunate if only regulation comes out of this - we need to think about the opportunities that come out of it.  Let’s think about the incentives that can release capacity.

More impetus for blended value investment, and also moving from focus on short term value and towards a longer term value, which considers externalities.  There examples of success in this sector - we need now to think big.

David could not make it, but Sam from Grey Ghost Ventures and Grey Matters Capital spoke instead.  After describing the ventures, and some of the tradeoffs in how philanthropic funds can use their capital, he spoke about the need to consider the exit of government participation in the financial institutions, which can begin when significant private investment has come it.

Sir Richard drew a great image of yesteryear of a huge balloon of debt, increased  by financial deposits by India and China - and when the balloon was let go of ...

We have not seen the last hits of the financial system.  We are still very constrained by the lack of credit.  How quickly will this be repaired?  How big will the new balloon be?  Uncertainty needs to be dispelled, we need to understand that the balloon was over inflated, so even when the trends reverse it will not be the same.

Mathew Bishop challenged panelists on the use of government funding: Vast sums of funds will be allocated over the next few  years – and it will be good for folks in this room to have a say how this money is spent. Should folks be trying to get as much funding as possible or driven instead by their capacity to expand?

We need to take money – yes – but then link the nonprofits to capital markets so that they can be sustainable.  Allow nonprofits to raise equity, for example. While maintaining local nonprofits, it is important to also create scalable larger sustainable organizations that can have impact.

Jan also pointed out that government is made up of individuals with their own values – hitherto untapped resources are going into government.

My takeaway from their words is that the social sector can emerge from this a lot more important than before this crisis.

A perfectly defined portfolio in this last year lost 40%, unless you had microfinance within it.  We are in the process of having significant shifts – 

Shareholder value has been defined by quarterly earnings/shareholder value.  As we incorporate other metrics, we are starting to see, albeit in a tiny way, pension funds move in the direction of investing in funds that create positive social value.

Crises are tremendous opportunities.  To make the most, you need to be discontinuous in your thinking, going back to first principles and reconsidering the purpose in the light of this new paradigm 
 

The innovations that were the focus of the conversation was narrowed to how to do investing in portfolios generating a mixture of social and financial returns – and not conceiving more broadly on the space or strategies of social finance.  Having said  that – the conversation was interesting and there were some practical suggestions and strategies discussed which are at their early stages of being tested.

One of the key themes was the importance of  the mission surviving the exit – and discussions on strategies on how to do that, and keep the investors engaged in the tradeoff of value.  Ben and Jerry’s became a term unto itself, referring to the lost of social outcomes after company sale.  Some strategies discussed included putting in a reverse poison pill and raising capital by selling non-voting B-shares.

There is more risk in a social entrepreneurial portfolio than a standard portfolio – and Peter Oostlander estimates that all told, he expects 8-12% return, approximately half of what PE funds achieved formerly.

Kevin Jones probably generated the most laughs of the session with his emphasis on the importance of keeping the heart, aka the social mission, front and central with his illustrative comment: “ We’ll get your money back, but we want you to see that money differently.”  He spoke about the desire to find ventures which will cap their return – so to avoid the challenge where the heart and the money mind are talking.  He also addressed metrics – the importance of measuring the values that are significant to the project, and that we need to continue to measure more, including the folks that do not have power.

Yvonne U shared some of the constraints and opportunities of  investing in China, pointing out that non only could investing in China create significant social impact, but also presented significant consumer power as well.

Nachiket Mor shared some of the most interesting insights from social investing in India – including trying to use Islamic financing, which is to say a hybrid of debt and equity capital, to overcome the challenge of time to raise debt.  He also shared that the challenge is more in finding instruments and bridges to take in capital for investments in India.

Additional lessons learned from panelists:

• the banks incorporating new financial structures like shiria (sp)? Is fascinating.
• The third sector in China – the destinys of China and India have gotten interlinked, and there is more cross-learning that can be done
• The separation of ownership and risk capital, structured from the beginning.

I am sitting at one of the benches within the Said Business School, waiting for the Closing Plenary to start.

The past few days have been extremely inspiring, intellectually stmulating, and tiring at the same time. Tiring because there were so many random meetings with fellow social entrepreneurs, so many conversations with people at the Forum who are there for a single purpose: to talk, sleep and breathe social entrepreneurship.

I was overwhelmed by it all. Just like another fellow Singaporean who like me is attending SWF for the first time, the happenings and the experience here simply blew us away.

I have much to think and digest on the way back to London, and on the long flight back to Singapore. But for now, time to log off and head for the Closing Plenary, which I believe, like all the other sessions before it, will leave everyone here at the Forum inspired and wanting to do more for humanity.

We sat huddled over our booklets, anxiously plotting where we would go next. "There are too many to choose from!" I groaned.

"These things make me realize something," replied Jessica Margolin. "I don't have financial greed, I have knowledge greed."

We all do.

We are all here to get the most out of the experts and out of each other. And this year's high presence of technology is making it easier to maximize our knowledge intake.

Twitter is proving most influential. While sitting in one panel, I follow the live updates from others. I capture the most stunning quotes from my session and absorb the most influential in others. Most impressively, people in Panel I are using twitter to ask someone in the audience of Panel II to pose a question to the experts. The answer, of course, appears again on twitter, satisfying even more people's need for information. With twitter, we get a taste of every session, we can maximize our exposure to knowledge, we can be greedy.

And the number of people tweeting is impressive. In the (Financial) Power to the People session moderator Tom Watson asked his audience how many people were twittering. About half of us proudly raised our hands. The whole exchange quickly appeared under #swf09, and the rest of the day featured all sorts of analysis on who is using twitter and how it's helping. The conclusion was captured best by Peter Dietz: "Frankly, there are two conferences going on: one for the tweeters and one for everyone else." Later he added: "The twittering delegates are having a distributed conversation with people here and around the world. The others aren't."

We all have laptops or PDAs or simple cell phones. Why not participate in both SWFs?

 

In my panel this morning at the Skoll World Forum, we are asked to comment on the tension between creativity and control. I talked about my work at WITNESS www.witness.org and 1Sky www.1sky.org and the 7 key ingredients I have identified to ensuring a balance between creativity and control, and indeed the success of any organization, campaign, or project.

7 Keys to Success
1. Clear and compelling mission and vision
2. Strategic plan (vision without strategy is an hallucination, as someone once said)
3. A strong team of staff, board, and key advisors
4. A deep dedication to creating and tending relationships, internally and externally
6. Outreach and communications to sustain relationships and convey the mission and vision
5. A system for evaluating impact and re-evaluating strategy so you continue to evolve
7. Strong information management and systems for capturing institutional memory

The funding will follow if you have all that!

I'm here at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship http://www.skollworldforum.com/ in Oxford and just got out of a private discussion with Dr. R.K. Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  He described being "anugished" that governments had not come to some agreement regarding threshold concentration levels of carbon in the atomosphere and how to mitigate further increases. In response to my question regarding how we can wait for the 5th IPCC assessment, due out in various parts in 2013 and 2015, to catch up with climate impacts when he describes the 4th report as "history", he said nothing was necessary earlier, but that he would agree that setting 450ppm as the threshold concentration of carbon in the atmostphere is "very high" and acknowledged emerging evidence that we shold aim lower. He reinforced his point that the IPCC is "policy relevant" but not "policy prescriptive", and said that it is important that the IPCC and the scientific community retain their distance from advocacy. 

He also talked about the fact that the 4th IPCC report reveals that even with 2 degree celcius stabilization, we commit to 0.4-1.4 meters increase in water levels due to thermal expansion alone, which is "very bad news for the world."  "Impacts will be disastrous in many parts of the world and we wont be insulated no matter where we are from those impacts."  When asked what he thought the critical prerequisites for setting the stage for Copenhagen were, he said (1) adequate progress on the part of the US in moving towards effective policy; (2) a commitment from the developed world more broadly to help with adaptation costs and facilitating access to necessary technology in the developing world and (3) a clear acceptance from global leaders and the US in particular that we need a change in lifestyles. 

He said he is in active conversation with Indian leadership and hopes and expects that some important commitments will be forthcoming in the next 1-2 years from India, but that it is "unfair and unethical" for the developed world to say we must wait until India and China are on board before they take leadership.  He urged but said he didn't see evidence of strong global leadership from a critical cadre of 4-5 leaders globally, representing the US, Europe, and key developing economies. This relates to another conversation I had with a US Senator recently in which they thought the quickest way to set the table for Copenhagen is for the US to negotiate an agreement with China. Thoughts?

I was watching the television series 24 last week with an Indian friend of mine, and he quietly commented on how the fictional President was so carefully reading the newspapers and incorporating the opinions of certain columnists in the life-threatening decisions she needed to make to help Jack Bauer fight terrorism. I smiled at his observation and lost myself in a philosophical tirade about the power of the media and how opinions leaders should be obligated to tell stories. What's written on the op-ed page of the New York Times will certainly matter to the President of the United States. What's broadcasted on national television will influence conversations amongst the general public. What our celebrities, religious leaders, and other mentors say affects our own opinion agenda.

The bottom line is the "experts"--the people whose opinions we respect--do and say shape a much larger course of action. The media becomes the platform, the voice, the gatekeeper. What stories are told become like the ripple after a stone thrown in the river: they grow bigger and spread farther--especially with the help of social media.

The question then becomes, How do we reach these influencers? How do we compel them to write/speak/create? Are we as social entrepreneurs giving them the right stories to tell?

Every day that we chase our dreams and strive to change the world, we realize that it would be so much easier--that so many more people would support us--if only they knew. If only they knew the tragedy, the urgency, and our solution. If only they met our clients, partners, members. If only our story was out there.

This morning's Story Telling session was a powerful reminder for the need for communications and media. We have to be able to tell our stories in a compelling and broad way. As a writer, it touches me to know the power of words... and that what communicators capture can also help change the world.

Blogs

2009 Skoll World Forum, by SocialEdge, on SocialEdge

Skoll World Forum 2009 – Opening Plenary, Vinay Nagaraju, on SocialEdge

The forum kicks off..., Linsey McGoey, on SocialEdge

When the chips are down..., Dennis Whittle, on SocialEdge

Taking the long way round to social entrepreneurship, Mari Kuraishi, on SocialEdge

Video: Skoll World Forum 2009 Delegates Tell Their Stories, Peter Deitz, on SocialEdge

Live, Learn & Connect, Catherine Michel, on SocialEdge

Back On ‘The Edge’….For Just A Bit, Sagar Gubbi, on SocialEdge

Social Innovations in Fragile States, Karen Doyle-Grossman, on SocialEdge

Global X interviews Skoll Entrepreneurs, Global X, on SocialEdge

Skoll World Forum Kicks Off, Mathias Craig, on SocialEdge

Preparing for the Skoll World Forum, Kjerstin Erickson, on SocialEdge

More On My Social Entrepreneurship Twitter for @SocialEdge, Louis V. Galdieri

Interview with Director of Oxford's Skoll Centre For Social Innovation, Jane Dudman, Guardian.co.uk

SkollFest, Marcia Stepanek, CauseGlobal

Notes from the Skoll World Forum, Gbenga Sesan, Paradigm Initiative Nigeria (and Ashoka Fellow)

Ideo Redesigns the Icebreaker , Jeff Chu, FastCompany

Avon Calling: Could Beauty Be a Path Out of Poverty?, Jeff Chu, FastCompany

At Skoll, Biz Dean Roger Martin Inspires Social Entrepreneurs to Find a Better Way, Jeff Chu, FastCompany

Blogging from the 2009 Skoll World Forum, Gayle Ferraro, FlimMaker Magazine

Reporting from the Skoll World Forum, Rick Goossen, TechVibes

Skoll World Forum 2009 Introduction: New Heroes or a New System?, Nathaniel Whittemore, Change.org

Shifting Power at the Skoll Forum - Day One, Nathaniel Whittemore, Change.org

SWF09 Interviews: Daniel Lubetzky, Nathaniel Whittemore, MakeGood

Skoll 2009: “Everyone a Change-Maker World”, Rick Goosen, MakeGood

Skoll 2009: Universities & Virtual Communities, Rick Goosen, MakeGood

Skoll 2009: Use Your Imagination To Change The World, Rick Goosen, MakeGood

Skoll 2009: How To Get Students Hooked On Social Entreprenuership, Rick Goosen, MakeGood

"Blogging" from the Skoll World Forum, by George Roter, Engineers without Borders

Tweets

Twitter has exploded with dispatches and commentary about the Skoll World Forum 2009.  Follow @socialedge on Twitter for on the ground dispatches and retweets. You can also browse the entire #SWF09 feed. As of today, #SWF09 is the 3rd most common phrase across the entire Twitterverse.

Sometimes I feel like the lives of the young and socially driven are disconnected. We tend to be rootless, focused on chasing our dreams,  eager to see everywhere and do everything, and heavily dependent on wifi signals, crackberries, iPhones and twitter. Our community, our network, our comfort come from the knowledge that we belong to something bigger--to this world of social entrepreneurs who are doing things differently.

Most of the young social entrepreneurs I met within the first moments of arrival in Oxford had cell phones from three or more countries listed on their business cards. If you're changing the world with on-the-ground innovations, you obviously travel a bit. Others had just as many cell phone numbers but worked virtually; they have more freedom on where to call home, but they travel just as much. I'm still shaping my dream, but I remain rootless and proud of it. I flew from India, visited Paris, took the train to London, and rode the 100-minute bus to Oxford in a matter of two days. And here I knew almost no one.

But that's the thing about these conferences: They're designed to connect people and build communities. Erehwon and the Rural Innovations Network are doing incredible work in India. Forum d'Action Modernitées is helping grow social entrepreneurship in Paris. Kiva will be partying in London by the end of the week, and everyone in Oxford are sharing lessons learned. The nomads amongst us are finding where we cross each other's paths, and how we can work together at such intersections. Standing in rooms so charged with energy and ideas makes even the youngest social gypsies find focus and partners. We may all hail from different places, and we may all be doing drastically different things, but we're here for the same reason: We want to change the world.

So that's it: We're here to learn and connect. At the opening ceremonies Stephan Chambers expressed the hope that the Forum would educate and convene, and "change your lives a bit, and changes the world a lot more."

I already feel changed and exposed to new ideas from parts of the world I have yet to discover. But despite the business cards in my wallet and new memories of emerging friendships, I'm not feeling so connected. As the young, socially driven, rootless, tech-junkie, I opened my MacBook to capture the day's emotions... and realized Exeter College has no internet access.

Alas, blogs can only come from Said!