It’s that time of the year again, when hundreds of social entrepreneurs, development professionals, corporate executives, consultants, policy makers, researchers and students come together at Oxford University’s Said Business School, to discuss some of the world’s most critical social problems and try to find solutions to them through Social Entrepreneurship. The Skoll World Forum 2008 takes place this week and I am disappointed that, for several reasons, I won’t be there. However, I will be keenly following the event, through ‘edgy’ blog posts and updates from our pseudo-undercover journalist, Global X ;-).

This year, the Forum will focus on the theme of ‘Social Entrepreneurship: culture, context and social change’ and aims to examine the role of cultural and contextual issues in the social change process. Sounds exciting, isn’t it? The impressive line-up of discussions and accomplished individuals – check out the Forum’s agenda – is as exciting as the theme itself. Here are a few sessions that I would have personally loved to attend at the Forum this year:

1.      The opening plenary session, which will be addressed by Jeff Skoll, Stephan Chambers, Nobel laureate Jody Williams and a few other distinguished individuals.

2.      The session named ‘Empathy and Ethics: Drivers of our Shifting Culture’, which includes Ashoka CEO Bill Drayton as one of the speakers.

3.      The session named ‘The Internet, Mobile Technology and Cross-cultural Communication’, which has speakers such as our very own ‘edgy’ Victor and Kiva’s Premal Shah.

4.      The Evergreen session on ‘Hybrid and For-profit models’ would have been especially interesting to me, since I believe that these models are the way forward for social enterprises.

5.      The Evergreen sessions on ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, What’s the Impact of this All’ and ‘Effective Models for Partnership’ seem to be interesting too. The second session has SustainAbility’s John Elkington (I am eagerly awaiting his book, ‘The Power of Unreasonable People’, to be released in India) as one of the speakers.

It would have been interesting to attend one of the ‘Consulting Clinics’ too. And of course, the Closing Plenary session, which will be addressed by Al Gore and Acumen Fund’s Jacqueline Novogratz, is not to be missed.

It would have been exciting to personally meet several people whom I know only through e-mail interactions. But then, given the optimist that I am, I am sure I will be able to make it to the Forum next year. All of you attending the Forum this year do write to me about your experiences!