social entrepreneurs #DreamActInspire

Last night I went to a #DreamActInspire event organised by unltd.org.uk to support young social entrepreneurs aged 16-30. I went with a young man from one of our estates I want to encourage to use one of our centres to run afterschool activities based around football training.  I am taking the lead in our team on entrepreneurship.

I have form meeting social entrepreneurs. I sat next to Lord Michael Young at a dinner back when I worked in Tower Hamlets and at the end of the lunch he offered me a place at his school for social entrepreneurs. I couldn’t take it because I couldn’t afford not to earn at the time, but I got a signed copy of ‘Family and Kinship in East London’. He was inspiring.

The young people I met last night were inspiring. J, my protégé is inspiring because he sucks up and acts on suggestions with great enthusiasm and a Can Do attitude.

The first guy I met after a very nice woman on the stairs who did not have a card, was Ed Young from www.whatbarapp.com who just started chatting to me. He has designed an app that advises you about how busy or otherwise local bars are to you, but actually he undersells himself as he is immensely personable. He studied anthropology at uni, then being good at cricket went to Australia with Gloucester to play cricket for 4 years. I think he should have an About Me on his website as one of the pieces of advice I picked up when setting up the blog was not only that you need to have an authentic voice (this guy is erudite – I wish the text on his site was static though instead of jiggy) and that people want to know who they are buying from.

My second inspiration was Siebren who set up Festival Reboot recycling wellies from Glastonbury. He was the first speaker and just touched my heart with his earnestness; ‘I am really lucky to be alive on this planet, among the top 10% in terms of opportunity etc., idealism, ‘make your life spectacular and you will make others’ lives spectacular too’. Do I believe this? Probably. It’s why I enjoyed last night so much.

I tried to find his website today, but it is under construction. I wanted to buy things, but all I could find was a facebook page. He is about to do this full time after 4-5 years during which he also picked up a parasite on a trip to Kenya. He is a geek. I admired his constancy.

There were others, more tortured, more corporate. There was freeby wine and pizza. There was a lot of time for networking. On the way out Matt from Creative Colony spoke to me. He has well and truly thrashed websites in duplicate. Again nothing about him on the site, but maybe because he is a collective.

We hope to send J on an enterprise cube course. www.enterprisecube.org I rate them. Two of their graduates look after my website, business cards and ebooks.