Introduction: A Social Business Plan for Serving the #socent Community (4 parts to follow)

During the last month of 2010 I went decidedly offline and did some reflecting on how to re-frame everything I've been investing my energy in during Evolutionize It's start-up year, into a coherent business plan for a diversified social enterprise model that serves the emerging social enterprise sector in meaningful ways.

As 2011 begins, I am excited to feel my entrepreneurial spirit restored. Last year's explorations in facilitating supportive relationships between social entrepreneurs are connecting with my decades of other professional experience in new and exciting ways, creating a pathway to Evolutionize It's future as a social enterprise support institution that feels comfortable, and easily within reach.

Under my continued leadership for the next 1.5 years, Evolutionize It will be pursuing a diversified and growth oriented social business plan for serving social entrepreneurs in some very concrete and practical ways, including:

1. Development of a commercial consulting practice that sources global teams of short-term consultants from among seasoned social change agents
   
2. Co-creative leadership on designing a cooperatively owned platform of premium business building services for social entrepreneurs, specifically targeting (but not indefinitely limited to) self-identified social entrepreneurs who are vetted members of the global Hub co-working space communities.
   
3. Modeling the establishment of effective, trust based online support networks for groups of social entrepreneurs with specialized needs, and
   
4. Establishing career development services and a "start-over" seed fund for accomplished social entrepreneurs who are transitioning from one brilliant project to another.  

In the coming days, I will be using this blog space to share where I'm currently headed on each of these components with the plan that's in my head and real conversations that are already taking place. 

What's most exciting to me is that while this reframing of my eclectic collection of professional activity since Evolutionize It was incorporated feels new and ambitious, things are already rolling in these directions, and these have been activities/ideas that I have fantasized about developing for quite some time (no - this list is not exhaustive!)   Identifying these 4 components of a plan that's tangibly doable right now is making it easy for me to see how I can build on everything I've already got in place to be able to get Evolutionize It where I'd like it to go. 

What I'd like it to be - what I have always hoped it would be - is a new kind of social enterprise model that meaningfully serves the growth of the social enterprise and grassroots innovation movement worldwide. 

Stay tuned for details.

First impressions welcome in the comments! 

My Notes from #OxfordJam on new trends in #4change events

The following are my notes from the breakout session on new trends in social enterprise events that happened during the Oxford Jam Sector Skills Swap, facilitated by Cliff Prior from Unltd. UK.

New trends in #4change events

Tracey: 13th street theater

idea - social enterprise musical

socents listed in profile

donate part of proceeds to socents

themes in story

Christina: Evolutionize It

Global unconferences

webbed for impact

more news soon

Sharifa: lien center of social innovation (singapore)

focus in on an issue (migration)

planted actors in audience & lunchtimes who posed as migrant workers

audience: mix of entrepreneurs and academics

divided audience into upper/middle/lower class wrt food served

built roleplaying into conference

audience preferred lower class

Kate: Coin street (own & manage 13 acre transformed site)

Master classes

shared experience plus - peer learning events

based around skills required to transform asset based orgs

Dave: social entrepreneurs in health / nurse entrepreneurs

how to compromise btwn participation shaped events and more structured events that cover (by mandate from companies sending people) specific events

benefit/challenges of integrating sociual media

Sean - workshops for social entrpreneurs

how do you get the right people at an event?

@DaveDawes 2 best #socent events Voice & Shine

Product Development: Hosting a collaboration dinner event

I am currently exploring the value of "webbed" collaboration event design as an economically viable product to build the Evolutionize It core business model on. This involves creating contexts for collaboration to take place that integrate participation at online and offline venues for change.

The social impact objective is to develop easily replicable event models plugged into social media tools that can create a momentum of full-sensory participatory collaboration experiences which continue to live online.

So I was recently invited to host a dinner event at the upcoming OxfordJam, whose working title is "The Big Collaboration Dinner." My basic idea was that we design a team-based game that would involve creating some concrete collaborative action plans around the dinner table. My first game idea was too intricate, but then I had a wild thought:

What if the purpose of the collaboration game was to work together to enable the whole room to make a social impact; a practical exercise in building a stakeholder collaboration strategy.

Ben Metz liked it. We connected by voice, and had an exciting chat at which I took the following notes.

private room
[1:54:39 PM] C: 7-8 square tables
[1:54:45 PM] C: 5 people on each
[1:54:56 PM] C: 40 tickets
[1:55:38 PM] C: plan over-engineered
[1:55:48 PM] C: elitism in culling of winners
[1:55:55 PM] C: find a way to keep everyone playing
[1:56:19 PM] C: let people bring their own issues to the table
[1:57:09 PM] C: each table agrees to focus on an issue
[1:57:24 PM] C: table agrees to brainstorm interventions it can create
[1:57:44 PM] C: hearts/minds - technology - legal structures - financing (crowdsourcing)
[1:58:20 PM] C: rather than winner - we have 8 actions to take
[1:58:25 PM] C: central circle: idea
[1:58:31 PM] C: 2nd: people around the table
[1:59:12 PM] Ben Metz: 3rd = the whole room
[1:59:17 PM] Ben Metz: 4th = everyoines networks
[1:59:40 PM] C: use hashtags to map out impact
[1:59:50 PM] C: and other ways of keeping track
[2:00:06 PM] C: keeps building - waves of inclusion & collasboration
[2:01:46 PM] C: gift economy
[2:01:53 PM] C: food price 25
[2:04:00 PM] C: 7 pounds of dinner for everyone - contributes to breaking even
[2:12:33 PM] C: draft text about concentric circles
[2:14:09 PM] *** Call ended ***
[2:14:44 PM] Ben Metz: great chat

Yowza! I'm so excited to have the blank canvas of a dinner event upon which to design a flash collaboration game.

Here's what's tentatively on the evening's menu:

Connect-It Cocktails

Identify people working on issues you can agree to put your passion behind. Align yourselves into 5 man teams; 1 team per table.

Decide-It Dinner

Explore the assets at the table that can be combined to create a social impact your team defines. Sketch out a collaborative plan and a 1 month timeframe for measurable action that includes opt-in ways for everyone on the other 7 teams (and their networks) to participate.

Do-It Dessert

Announce your team's call to action to the other teams. Describe your action, and tell others how they can help.

Drink-It Uplift!

Toast to each other's great work, and pledge to act in support of your favorites. Let the games begin as the room starts tweeting their networks to do the same!

One month later, we'll compile an impact oriented roundup of what each of the 8 teams has achieved.

So what do you think. Could it be fun? What would you change?

Want to come? Click here!

Evolutionizing Board Transparency

Just today, I've started this blog as a place to report on and organize information about what's happening with Evolutionize It.

There's a lot of info that's gone into shaping the direction and design of the 3 year action plan and the 10 year growth plan that I am trying to piece together to present to the Evolutionize It board. Some of that info is in my head; some of it's out there online. The content I will personally post to this blog will attempt to combine the two into some concrete project plans.

Reader feedback, dialogue and questions are most welcome. My hope is that this blog will become an interactive chronicle of social enterprise development experience that can not only inform my board about Evolutionize It developments under my leadership, but also inspire other social entrepreneurs to engage in more broad-based open dialogue about the development of collaborative business models.

As I write this, I do not yet have a clear sense of how involved, or uninvolved, other co-founding members of Evolutionize It may wish to be in creating additional content for this blog. It belongs, however, to all of us, and readers can learn more about who we are at the Evolutionize It, ASBL page. The first-ever meeting with the Board of Evolutionize It will take place on 16 March, at which time I will propose a framework for board members to consider contributing here.