SoCap08 Blogger Recap

by Nathaniel Whittemore

Published October 17, 2008 @ 12:45PM PST

One of the coolest elements of SoCap08 was the way the conference planners attempted to harness the power of digital reflection and social media to improve offline conversations. Smartly, they engaged Peter Detiz of Socialactions.com to organize the community of 30-plus bloggers and tweeters covering the event. What follows are a few of the most interesting ideas and insights as captured by that community.

Champa Gujjanudu, a Haas student, had a great post about a Fair Trade panel which echoed many of the themes found in my profiles of Nathan George of Trade as One and Eduard Rollet of Alter Eco (who's chocolate is, by the way, incredible). You should read the whole thing, but the last quote is key:

"A parting thought: even with mainstreaming and retailer support, the sector continues to require customers to "pull" the products onto the shelves – a consumer driven proposition. We need to continue to use multiple touch points for marketing and educating consumers. I like Regina's [Connell of the Saltcellar Group] idea of educating children to become champions of the cause by throwing tantrums to request fair trade products - fair trade CoCo Puffs anyone?"

From Roxanne Miller, former Kiva fellow and student at Haas, attending the "New African Capital" session:

"Although their investments approaches are quite different, there were several points of agreement amongst panelists.  First, local knowledge is king...Second, the panelists agreed that supporting locally-developed innovation is vital to their work.  How do you do that?  [Venrock Capital's Samuel] Alemayehu's answer is money and mentoring.  He called for the Diaspora of these countries to contribute funds to get ideas moving...The final message was that it's time to change the thinking about entrepreneurship and definitions of success.  [Teba Bank's Jo-Ann] Pohl says Africans are very bad at sharing success stories and don't practice enough self-promotion.  Alemayehu wants to encourage a culture of entrepreneurs that dream big, like the tech entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley..."

From Jim Witkin at Triplepundit.com, writing about the need to "just jump in:"

"Any industry that is growing so rapidly has challenges but also lots of opportunities. All admit the capital markets for social funding are still in development and seeking a resolution to the inherent tension between the social and commercial. Tim O’Shea the founder and C3EO of Cleanfish, Inc. was one of the speakers on the “Social Capital Markets 101” panel. I think he offered the best advice of the day, “Let’s not wait until it’s perfect to jump in; don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”"

Aden Von Noppen, a Brown senior (and total ass-kicker) who has worked with Acumen Fund to help develop youth social enterprise engagement strategies, wrote up a great post about new approaches to development that serves as a nice overview.

Finally, IDEO's Jocelyn Wyatt shares some key takeaways from SoCap on her blog. One important one: "Social investing is still done at a small scale. This is due to a number of reasons, but a big one is that there aren't enough deals to be made."