Virtually attending SEWF22 & Mentoring for Catalysr
So the Social Enterprise World Form is taking place here in Brisbane. I would like to say I am attending in person but I opted for a digital pass instead. I would use Kyco as an excuse but let’s face facts here, virtually attending was just me being averse to people!
I did want to join the after-party but the tickets were sold out. That’s what I get for being lax and only deciding last minute to attend somehow!
As I type this, I am listening to the “Doughnut Economics: going beyond GDP” and the timer says the event ends in a couple of hours. so I wanted to share some of my thoughts.
I enjoyed the talks I got to attend live. It was great to hear first nation voices and listen to the struggles of first nation business founders. I appreciated the conversations around funding with one of the comments that struck me is that funding is often allocated based on the funders’ values which may be too narrow.
As someone who has seen the struggle for funding in both startup-land and research-land, I can appreciate struggling to connect and communicate with capital allocators.
I also appreciated the discussions around procurement and how social procurement can become administratively difficult for both the procuring organisation and the vendor organisation. It’s a problem I am aware of but I feel a lot of activists ignore it when trying to push for change. So I appreciate the advice that “You have to provide solutions, not problems” to social enterprise practitioners.
Finally, I am glad that in the doughnut economics session they brought up the fact that environmental concerns are not necessarily always included when people develop solutions or have organisations dedicated to addressing social issues. Of course, it goes the other way too. The plastic straw issue, for example, became a wedge issue between disability advocates and environmentalists because plastic straws aren’t convinience items for some disable people, who also could not use plastic alternatives easily.
I think the environment vs social issue resonated with me the most becaue there was a web 3, ie. cryptocurrency, based social enterprise at the forums. I am not one of to dismiss any technology out of hand but given the worsening climate crisis, we really need to ask the question if we can afford to let blockchain and cryptocurrency enterprises continue to waste resources on a solution that are still largely trying to find a problem to solve.
Overall, I am glad I made the effort to attend the forum. Even if it was virtually. I look forward to staying connected with the social enterprise community going forward.
The other thing I am doing is making myself available as a mentor to this year’s cohort of Catalysr migrant and refugee entrepreneurs. My two activities collided yesterday and not just because I had to duck out of SEWF22 to meet with two startups for office hours. But also because Usman Iftikhar, the founder and CEO of Catalysr, was the host for the “social enterprise response to migration and its impacts”.
It was great to see him up on stage, and made me feel bad for not making the effort to be there in person. Because it would have been nice to meet him in real life!
As for the mentoring, I always feel like an imposter, and I don’t know how much value I provide those to take the time to meet with me. But hopefully, the two startups who requested office hours with me yesterday got some value. Now, time to return to the SEWF22!
