IDE, w1sd0m, Skoll World Forum, Oxford Jam, TedXVolcano..

WOW! I don’t know how it happened, but somehow life has conspired to effect collaboration on a global scale. Ride-sharing, couch-surfing, new communities and networks forming … its mind-boggling and unimaginably inspiring. Last week, Oxford UK became the nexus of global social entrepreneurialism – launching a phenomenon (with a little help from a volcano in Iceland) that feels as if it has irrevocably altered the landscape for social entrepreneurs, their projects, and the people they exist to serve.

I came to Oxford During the Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship on behalf of IDE – (International Development Enterprises), a 28 year old organization founded by Paul Polak. I was to meet the international board and discuss how IDE could achieve greater scale and impact by helping more people at the Bottom of the Pyramid (BOP) sustainably increase their income . We stayed at Corpus Christi college and enjoyed gorgeous days and intensive discussions with great minds. I managed to make it to OxfordJam for a breakfast about online collaboration platforms for Impact Investing – I could only stay for an hour, yet even in that brief period met an incredible group of people open to innovation and collaboration on a scale I’ve never before experienced.

The volcano had already erupted, but nobody paid it any mind till the conferences were over and we realized that we were stuck. So back to London we all went..

… and so now, a new community is being born that is coming together in an even deeper way.

Saturday there was a great Kiva event where people shared Kiva trivia, their own business ideas, and trains and bus trips to the south of France and other places were arranged.

Here’s a little video clip of Matt Flannery, Kiva C0-Founder, and Premal Shah, President:

After this fun trivia contest, Matt & Premal asked if anyone had an emerging company and would like to talk about it. I stood up and introduced w1sd0m, an emerging network that I’m helping to build as core team, that helps social & sustainable enterprises like IDE (For which it’s already opened a lot of doors) find the intellectual, human, social & financial capital they need.

Sunday was the first ever “TedXVolcano” organized by Nathanial Whittemore, Evan Grant & June Cohen. In 36 hours these rockstars brought together TED, TEDxLondon, The Hub, Sandbox Network, Newspepper.com, & Robert Leslie along with Skoll World Forum Speakers and other great minds such as Matthew Bishop, Jim Hornthal, Gary Bolles, Peter Greenberg, Elizabeth Lindsey and musician Shesheela Raman.. Click here for the story of how they did it..

One of my favorite moments was when Jeff Skoll read his volcano poem:

Jeff Skoll’s volcano poem

Monday afternoon, Suzanne Biegel, social venture investor and “catalyst at large” (i love her title!) and Dr. Audrey Selian of Rianta Capital organized some action-takers from the Friday OxfordJam breakfast who have built collaboration and connection platforms for impact investors and social entrepreneurs. Socential, Artha, ClearlySo, Nexii, Sasix, Gexsi along with w1sd0m were there to talk about ways to collaborate in an efficient way and eliminate waste of resources for entrepreneurs, and the networks themselves.

Another networking event after this meeting led to even more fascinating conversations over dinner with Jill Finlayson & Jason Clark of SocialEdge, Lora O’Connor of Citizenglobal.com, Cathy Clark who runs the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) program at Duke, Suzanne Biegel, Sean Holt, David Green (Solar World for All), and others.

Waking up this morning I’m slammed with all of the ideas, people, and inspiration swirling in my head. I don’t even need coffee!

As much as being ’stranded’ in London would be viewed by many as disastrous, the remarkable thing about this exceptional group of people is that, when faced with no other options, they simply turned lemons into lemonade. For the past ten days, due in no small part to the intercession of the very earth so many are working to save, some of the most brilliant minds and open hearts in the world have come together to talk, to dance, to celebrate – and most importantly of all, to find new ways of working together (as the Buddhists would say) in service to all beings.

I’m grateful and honored and humbled to have been invited to engage with these people, at this time, in this way.

As George Bernard Shaw once said, ”The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in adapting the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man [& woman].”

This quote inspired a group of brilliant young men who recently graduated from University of Colorado. From this, The Unreasonable Institute was born in Boulder, Colorado, dubbed here on HeidiCuppari.com for the first time as“SocEnt Valley.” (the new center for social & sustainable entrepreneurship & enterprise!).

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a few of these young, passionate social entrepreneurs.  I’m blown away by their innovation and drive. They have created an incredibly interesting model.  They have assembled an list of advisors, veterans and thought leaders in this industry as well, which includes my partner and President of w1sd0m, Greg Berry.

See below for notes and actions to take from Teju Ravilochan. I reposted them here because I believe in them and what they’re doing, and want to support them by spreading the word…

“The Background. We announced to the world that we were searching for young entrepreneurs with ventures that could effectively address social and environmental problems while financially sustainable and globally scalable to millions of people. The response was incredible! And now, after receiving 284 applications from 45 countries, we’ve developed an unusual way to involve the world in selecting the 25 entrepreneurs we’ll bring to the Unreasonable Institute while admitting them free of charge, testing their entrepreneurial ability, and covering our costs of operations. It’s an online platform called the Unreasonable Finalist Marketplace and you can learn everything you need to know about it from watching this 1-minute and 12 second YouTube video, to the tune of AC/DC’s Back in Black (if you’d like more background on the Unreasonable Institute, feel free to scroll down to the very bottom of this email and read the section entitled “The Background on the Unreasonable Institute.” Otherwise, read on…)

2 Simple Requests. Every entrepreneur on the marketplace must rally the support of hundreds of people from across the globe. This is your chance to have your say! If you can spare 10-20 minutes:

1. Head to our online Finalist Marketplace and vote with your dollars ($10, $50, however much you like within the current $250 max) for an entrepreneur you believe will change the course of history. The fate of our finalists, and of the lives they will affect, rests in your hands.
2. Tell 5 people you know about our marketplace. Whether or not you can contribute financially to any of the entrepreneurs on the marketplace, perhaps the single most important way to support our finalists without spending a dollar or more than 5 minutes of your time is to tell 5 people you know about the opportunity to back these young, high-impact entrepreneurs. I’ll even make it easy for you: You can copy and paste details below into the relevant channels.

1. • Send an Email: Send our YouTube video to 5 of your friends.
   • Copy and paste this message to your Twitter Account: These 33 entrepreneurs could change the world. You decide which 25 attend the Unreasonable Institute http://ow.ly/149cu
   • Copy and paste this message to your Facebook Account: These 33 entrepreneurs could change the world. You decide which 25 will receive the training, mentorship, and seed capital they need to launch at the Unreasonable Institute: http://ow.ly/149cu

Background on The Unreasonable Institute:

We select and bring together (attract & unite) 25 young social entrepreneurs (Unreasonable Fellows) from across the globe for a 10-week summer institute in Boulder, Colorado. During these 10 weeks, we incubate their ideas by providing them rigorous entrepreneurial skill training, legal advice, prototype consulting, web hosting and development services, and mentorship from 50 proven entrepreneurs and investors like the co-founder of Google.org and an entrepreneur who has lifted over 19 million people out of poverty. (Note from Heidi.. He’s talking about Paul Polak, Founder of IDE, the organization I’m raising funds for. See my projects page) After bringing their ideas from an idea stage to a prototype stage / investable stage (giving their ideas legs), we provide them access to at least $150,000 in seed capital and the chance to pitch to over 200 investors and enlightened philanthropists (finance) and support them with a global network to give their ideas wings.  Our goal is to incubate & finance 25 social ventures a year that will each effectively address a major global issue (e.g. poverty, environmental degradation, slavery), become financially self-sustaining within a year, scale beyond the country of origin within 3 years, and ultimately reach at least 1 million people.

Because.. its snowy almost every place else in the US this time of year and you need SUN?  Or because you can stroll on South Beach and see lots of thongs and muscled bodies?

Well, those reasons are always fun, (believe me, I’ll probably be doing a bit of that too.. why not??!!) but if you want to connect with world leaders in social venture capital and social enterprise.. AND attend the most important Haiti conference at the same time, Miami’s hot and the place to be.

The Social Venture Capital/Social Enterprise Conference, Miami-2010 Advisory Board is led by top professionals from Social Venture Capital/Social Enterprise organizations around the world.

Alvaro Rodriguez Arregui - Ignia
Jonathan C. Lewis, MicroCredit Enterprises
Daniella Levine – Human Services Coalition
Kelly Michel – Vox Capital
Rodrigo Villar – New Ventures Mexico
Percy Venegas – Solar Business Technology
Eric Leenson – Progressive Asset Management and Instituto Ethos
Raul Pomares – Guggenheim Partners

About the Haiti Conference:

So I thought it was appropriate to promote WORLD LAUGHTER DAY!!

World Laughter Day, held annually on the first Sunday of May, is designed to instigate premeditated hilarity around the globe. According to the World Laughter Day website, the goal of the event—started in 1998 in Mumbai, India—is to “change the world in a peaceful and positive way.” So mark your calendar for May 2, 2010, bring your best jokes and get ready to start changing the world—one laugh at a time. For information on how to join the fun, go to worldlaughterday.org.

Prior to reading this and learning about Dawn, I’ve begun to apply intentional tactics to my business as well. Every time I got a result after thinking/intending it, I was almost surprised. However, the more I actually NOTED when I received something I asked for, the more it started happening.

It was all working well until I started getting thwarted by technology, wrestling with my computer, getting wildly frustrated, and out of my ‘power’. More and more terrible roadblocks were recently thrown my way, and the more I thought about them, the more they happened! Its a strange synchroncity because, just as I was in the thick of it, I read Dawn’s interview and realized that I might be the one causing more of these problems. And that’s all I needed to do to turn it around – change my thoughts.  That’s why this resonated so much with me and why I felt I had to share it on my blog.

I’ll be posting more on this topic, so enjoy this and look for more in the future!

I had learned to become what I call “intentional”. No kidding, business would literally just fall in my lap if I thought about it long enough. I learned this technique from a friend of mine whose business was also booming. He told me that the human mind was like a pie and we all had a limited number of pieces of the pie. He showed me that our mind could only focus on a few things at once, but what we focused on we got. When our attention was on business development, business just showed up. When our attention became diverted into non-essential things, business would slow down. (ask me later what my friend’s KISS is)lindambhughes.com, Linda MB Hughes

Click on the link to Linda Hughes’ blog to read the whole interview. It’s fascinating.