On Mar 27-28, 2010, I attended the re:Vision conference hosted by YSEC (Young Socal Entrepreneurs of Canada) with Renjie. I attend a lot of conferences, especially ones in social innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology. But for me, re:Vision 2010 has been a very different experience than any other ones I have attended in the past. I left the conference feeling like I was part of this group – and this new sense of belonging felt really good. I am going to try to explain in the rest of this post my defining moments and take-aways from this weekend.
The exercise that helped break the ice at the beginning of day 1 and at the end of day 2 really set the tone and made a difference. For the first one, we each had to pick a card with a number, find another person and tell them the number of things about ourselves according to the card. At the end of the conference, we were asked to go around the room and introduce ourselves in this mash-up individual that we aspire to be.
The exercises have been so powerful and inspiring because of the people in the room. It was a very diverse group of people with different backgrounds, but what brought us together was the common vision that by dreaming big and working hard, we can have a better world. It also helped a lot that we were seated at different tables according to various interests (education, health, environment, social business, etc).
Over the course of two days, I met:
- Kristle Calisto-Tavares, who founded iNSPiRED PRACTiCE which creates strategies and tools for conscientious businesses and enterprising non-profits to grow sustainably
- Joanne Woo, who works in HR at Home Depot and was the social media lead for EpCon and TEDxWaterloo
- Ryan Coelho, who just came back from a long-term volunteer placement with Engineers Without Borders in Ghana and currently exploring with his new venture, Opportunities Inc.
- Chrisitne Lowe, who is from Vancouver and currently on a 2-month trip around North America meeting people who are doing what they can to lead change
- Kanika Gupta, who founded nukoko which works with local youth-run initiatives to education accessible
- Joel Hilchey, a high school motivational speaker, founded The Beanstalk Project, which holds weekend-long that gives students a chance to develop and refine community project ideas, build essential skills, and connect with mentors
- Cristina Opris, who founded Bridges Beyond Borders Network Inc. and is exploring opportunities for cross-cultural exchange between students in Canada and Romania
- Aiden Abram, who facilitated youth engagement at the COP15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen
- Dev Aujla, who founded DreamNow that aims to answer the question “How to make money and change the world” and author of the e-book “Occupation: Change The World“
- Samara & Simon, a couple who are traveling around the world to film a documentary “What Will We Be”, interviewing young people on their views in life, who they are, and what they want
- And of course, the YSEC team
I apologize if I missed you – but that is because I don’t have your contact info and/or we didn’t have more time to talk about your projects. And I am already looking forward to the next YSEC meet-up to meet the rest/more of you. As you can imagine, with a group like this, there is plenty to talk about. I’m someone who still finds it awkward to “network”, especially during those designated networking slots at traditional conferences. At re:Vision, I never felt the need for small talk. Furthermore, I found myself learning and taking notes from other participants at the conference as much as (or even more than) I did from the speakers.
The re:Vision team also put together a special art exhibit in the lobby of Metro Hall, featuring some of the organizations started by the awesome young entrepreneurs in Toronto (thank you to Lulwa and team for putting together the amazing paintings and video).
Another great product from Cincopa The EarthHour event @ MaRS felt monumental. All of us, sitting on the floor in the middle of this building that in itself holds signifcant historic value, with the lights off at 8:30pm to show our commitment for the Earth, listening to the lessons the following changemakers had to share with us.
Tonya Surman, Ashoka fellow, co-founder and executive director of Centre for Social Innovation
My frustrations about the inefficiencies in non-profit is what inspired CSI. Behind the pure passion and energy, it’s rage and frustrations at all the things that are wrong. But keep in mind to not get too carry away by your passion. You need the skills. If you are starting an organization, you should know about cashflow projection, stakeholder relationship, and a little bit of graphic design. My life mission is to make social change and have fun doing it. It’s important to keep them in balance everyday. If you feel out of balance, you need to look for flow of energy. When do I push? When do I wait? How do I balance the two? Entrepreneurs are preserverance, but if you feel like banging your head on the wall, you’re probably going in the wrong direction. Watch where the energy is flowing, look at which door is opening, experiment – over and over again.
Nathaniel Whittemore, blogger on Social Entrepreneurship at Change.org
This movement that we’re part of, whether you choose to or not, is more than just the intersection of good and business. Fundamentally, this shift is making it 1) harder to do bad, 2) easier to do good, and 3) possible to leverage the assets we each other have to do the two mentioned above. When still at Northwestern, I and 12 other individuals traveled to 40 countries to visit young people affecting change on the ground. We hear the same story everywhere we go – tons of passion and energy, but all lack of resources and capacity. They’re not naive, they know what they lack, but if it continues to be so hard for people to do good, people will eventually quit and leave the field. We have to get really good at leveraging what each other has, connect to the web, and look beyond just money as resources and tap into network and relationships. We can discuss about social ROI, what theories of change work best, but at the end of the day, it’s really going back to the gut level feeling that something is wrong and that we have to do something about it.
Daniel Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas
You have to have great institutions, not just great ideas. Entrepreneurs are great because they build these institutions. Toronto is being a great leader in the field of social finance. Patient capital is equity, the money you spend while you are figuring out how to do something and how to be sustainable. Non-profit organizations traditionally don’t have equity. Social enterprises also still struggle with equity. The emerging field of impact investing could be a piece of that puzzle. It’s important that everyone in the organization is a changemaker AND a troublemaker. If they fail, celebrate for having taken the initiative. What truly needs to be penalized is inaction. From the storyteller perspective, the way we imagine our world changes what we do, and that is changed by what we hear. So it’s important to talk a lot to everybody about what you’re doing. Get people to talk about you. Talk to young people, even the little ones at kindergarten, so that they can vision the world in a way that it can be changed.
On Day 2, we had a great discussion at the “social innovation – what the hell is it all about?” break-out session facilitated by Eli Malinksy from CSI. The intention was not to come up with the “right’ answer, but to have a conversation on what the term means to each person. Here are some key thoughts from the group:
- SiG@MaRS working definition: Social Entrepreneurship is sector agnostic
- SiG@Waterloo academic definition: Social innovation is an initiative, product or process or program that profoundly changes the basic routines, resource and authority flows or beliefs of any social system. Successful social innovations have durability and broad impact
- How to define profound? –> significantly changes ways of thinking and/or acting
- Holding the bar high so we don’t start calling every incremental improvement as social innovation?
- All innovation have social impact. Why aren’t all innovations social innovations?
- Social change has always been around, for as long as human beings existed. Plus, changes/innovation happens on its own anyways. What we’re doing now is to make it intentional. (agree or disagree?)
- Example of intentional innovation – Model of CSI (Centre for Social Innovation): a space and community designed intentionally to create opportunities for social innovation
- Analogy: Farmers don’t grow crops; but they create the conditions to grow crops
- Create the condition? Our first thoughts tend to jump to: “how do we create the sunlight?”
- The better question to ask is “how do we utilize and leverage the sunlight that is already there”
- Sustainable system that lasts vs. resilient system that adapts
More posts on re:Vision:
- Kristle’s recent “change from within” and her 20 Take-Aways from the conference
- Cheryl Rose’s recap on the EarthHour@MaRS: Words shining in the dark
- Nathaniel Whittemore wondered whether “Toronto is the next social innovation hub” after speaking as one of the keynotes
- And if you want to take a look at all the tweets from the weekend, you can see them here (courtesy of Renjie)
My future posts in draft. Still pondering on discussions and new concepts learned at re:Vision:
- The concept of “Project Equity”
- Extrinsic vs. internal motivation, and whether the idea of inspiring and empowering people are derogatory
- Putting Toronto on the map
I spent a lot of time on writing this post. But re:Vision was worth it.
Other defining (fun) moments at re:Vision:
