Social Startup 48 - Sydney
SS48 Sydney begins on Friday evening, 4 May 2012 and finishes Sunday evening, 6 May 2012
Social Startup 48 is a weekend event that brings together people who have a desire to create social impact in their communities and a passion for entrepreneurship.
This is how it works: Meet like-minded people and create a business idea that has the power to bring about real change. Together with your team, you identify a social issue that needs to be addressed. In 48 hours, you and your team (and with a bit of guidance from us) will create an organisation that is ready to make a difference.
If you want to be a change maker, a do-er, a go-getter, a social entrepreneur – then click here to apply for SS48 Sydney. Applications close on Friday 13 April 2012.
4 May 2012 - 6:00pm - 6 May 2012 - 8:00pm
Location
Queen Street Studio
10-14 Kensington St
Chippendale, NSW 2000Australia
See map: Google Maps
Groups:
Comments
Re: Social Startup 48 - Sydney
How fast can you make a difference?
Social change is slow, painful, and full of hard grind. It cannot be done fast, in any form. It entails prolonged conflict with instititutions and interests opposed to the difference you want to make.
If the social innovation scene has created an impression that social change is quick and easy, it has done us all a disservice.
If it has created an impression that the way creative individuals make a difference in the world is by creating a "start-up" with a "business plan", it has pointed most of us in the wrong direction.
Just as 9 out of 10 small business start-ups fail, so 9 out of 10 social start-ups never get to first base. Creating an impression it is otherwise is irresponsible.
To choose one of SS48's examples, if someone wants to support young people affected by bullying, you could start up a non-profit to provide mentors to young people. Or, you could act as a mentor to a young person near you. The big need in the field, is not for more non-profits offering mentorship schemes - it is for people to actually volunteer to act as a mentor. Every existing scheme is desperately short of mentors.
Re: Social Startup 48 - Sydney
Thanks for your comments Vern. There is no doubting that social change is slow and painful, and full of hard work. I have responded to your comments (which are in bold)
How fast can you make a difference?
Social change is slow, painful, and full of hard grind. It cannot be done fast, in any form. It entails prolonged conflict with instititutions and interests opposed to the difference you want to make.
If the social innovation scene has created an impression that social change is quick and easy, it has done us all a disservice.
I can see your view and how you have interpreted the tagline, "How fast can you make a difference".
The whole idea behind this tagline is two-fold. Firstly, to create a sense of urgency that now is the time to act, and secondly, to shape the way that the event will unfold- in a fast-paced, high-energy environment where participants will be working hard to accomplish a lot in a short period of time.
If somebody interprets the tagline in the same way in which you have suggested, then a quick perusal of the website will reveal that this is not the case. Everybody who signs up to the event knows that they will be there to create a business plan, a website and so on; they know that doing this is not going to take a child off the street. But they know that it is the first step in making it happen.
Remember that SS48 is a kickstarter event. It only gets the ball rolling. Do we expect social change to be made in 48 hours? No. But in those 48 hours, we can give people who want to make a difference, the opportunity to do so.
If it has created an impression that the way creative individuals make a difference in the world is by creating a "start-up" with a "business plan", it has pointed most of us in the wrong direction
I disagree. If people who believe in the same causes, come together and collaborate over a 48 hour window to come up with an innovative way to address those causes, then I think they can take the first step towards driving positive change.
Social entrepreneurship is about using market-based solutions to drive social change, and the mindset should be just like any other form of entrepreneurship. Creating an enterprise requires a plan, and without a plan, the organisation will be less likely to succeed.
Just as 9 out of 10 small business start-ups fail, so 9 out of 10 social start-ups never get to first base. Creating an impression it is otherwise is irresponsible.
There is nothing irresponsible about the way the event is promoted. Participants are given the impression that they can make a difference using what they create at the event.
Nowhere on the site do we create the impression that every startup is going to be successful. In fact, if you look at our site's FAQ, it clearly states:
What happens after the event is over?
That is entirely up to you. If you have put something great together with your team, we highly encourage you to keep the momentum going and turn your startup enterprise into something amazing…
Besides, a big part of entrepreneurship - and social entrepreneurship is no different - is about taking the chance and risking failure to achieve a great outcome.
To choose one of SS48's examples, if someone wants to support young people affected by bullying, you could start up a non-profit to provide mentors to young people. Or, you could act as a mentor to a young person near you. The big need in the field, is not for more non-profits offering mentorship schemes - it is for people to actually volunteer to act as a mentor. Every existing scheme is desperately short of mentors.
Perhaps the reason why we have this problem now is because we have been asking people to give their time and effort for free, or no tangible return. Perhaps the creative social entrepreneur, will come up with a way to incentivise people to become mentors.
Re: Social Startup 48 - Sydney
This comment goes to the heart of conflicting visions of social change - whether an activity like "mentoring" can or should be 'incentivised' to encourage mentors, or whether it is intrinsically voluntary as time given freely for another.
It may be possible to "incentivise" mentoring through arrangements which give people time off work to do so. That would be useful, and any employer that did so should be congratulated. How it might be possible to encourage employers to do this, I don't know, short of finding a philanthropist who would agree to reimburse an employer in monetary terms to allow employers to mentor in their work time. This, however, is all very cumbersome, and unlikely.
Governments may incentivise mentoring in certain ways, such as making receipt of the aged pension conditional upon acting as a mentor for a younger person. Whether the compliance and enforcement costs in doing so would make this worthwhile would need to be examined. But in any case, this initiative would be a social policy innovation, and not social entrepreneurship.
I suspect, though, that when the phrase "incentivising" mentors is used, some notion of financial payment is in mind. It may or may not be possible to devise a way of funding such payments, but the more important question is: is it desirable to make such payments at all, and destroy the notion of freely given time for others in the process?
This raises a fundamental tension at the heart of social innovation and entrepreneurship - is social change primarily a matter of persons voluntarily engaging with their world (neighbours, communities, distant colleagues) or is it primarily a matter of business activity, mediated through third party transactions, be they organisations or markets?
There are some strands in the fields of social innovation and entrepreneurship who do indeed see voluntary activity as passe, something that belongs to the last century, and who think a marketisation of every human undertaking is a smart and creative way of thinking and acting.
There are other strands who see social innovation and entrepreneurship as being about the strengthening of social relationships in civil society and the winding back of state and market intrusions into social relationships.
These are quite radically different ways of seeing the world.
In reality, some social challenges require marketised innovations, and some do not. Some require the removal of ever intrusive market incursions into social relations. The maturity or otherwise of the fields of social innovation and entrepreneurship can be judged by how this question of voluntary relationship vs mediated intervention is conceptualised and acted upon.
On mentoring, my view is that the obstacles facing mentoring are primarily cultural - many smart young people don't warm to the idea of voluntarily giving away their time, for free. Many social entrepreneurs are in this category. Many academics who write about social entrepreneurship are in this category. I have a contrary view, that social change in our kind of society requires a winding back of the commmodification of social relations and the reclamation of voluntary activity of all kinds.
The radical social change required in relation to mentoring, is that of encouraging young people to do something for nothing, through a relationship with another. In our age of pervasive managerialism, the idea of doing something for nothing, voluntarily, is radically counter-cultural.
Vern
Re: Social Startup 48 - Sydney
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