MMM Good: Social Entrepreneurship Day at Stanford

As Social Entrepreneurs we must routinely flirt with Media and Money. The event at Stanford on Sunday (info in my previous blog) was an incredible such opportunity. But if you missed the Feb 24 event -not to worry. Catch up in the blogosphere. I am still pretty caught up with eweek so will get to my musings later but I wanted to get the ball rolling - For starters let me point you to great pics from Mitchell Tsai and a detailed writeup on the panelists from Project View John Kuner.

For the panel - Kriss pointed out that the debate was not about "what is social entrepreneurship?" - an endless and incredily engaging topic in and of itself - but about "how to be a social entrepreneur" by showing the Greg Dees definition of social entrepreneurship. For me this really set the tone of the event in a positive fashion - less intellectualizing and more action. All the panelists were stellar in providing practical "how to" advice. I liked "Do Good Smart" from Jessica who said she first heard it from someone else.

Digital Vision Fellows - that's us showcasing projects in all areas from Tele-medicine to Digital Big Game- attending "in the flesh" and "in the virtual" created an incredible buzz with their passion and energy. I met some new people and we all made new connections and partnerships that should further the cause of social entrepreneurship.

Ah yes - in answwer to the question "what else is the one thing, besides money, a social entrpreneur needs?" - the answer was - "Mentor" - and talking about mentors Stanford eweek is piloting a program called "Coaches On Call" a mentor match up program -

MMM Good is my summary: for social entrepreneurs - easy to remember- MMM - its Mentor (to bounce ideas in a supportive fashion), Money (SE is a new business model so it is extra efffot getting started and be prepared to do something fo a while before you get any), Media (get the word out and let them find you) but most importantly "Moi" - i.e that's you - the social entrepreneur - its about your focus, your passion and your leadership that will get the M3 chasing you an not the other way round.

Or, to quote: Just do it!

gotta go -