The Social Business

Shine - last day and thoughts overall

I feel completely worn out this morning after an enjoyable weekend at Shine.  Yesterday was much quieter - I did my Monkey Business marketing session at lunchtime and then left to get back to Leeds.

Overall, I think it was very good.  Ambitious, with a tremendous amount achieved with a very small budget.  So a big well done to everyone involved who had the vision and the commitment to make it happen.

Good things included:

• A friendly atmosphere - and lots of good networking going on
• A home-made feel to it all which felt good
• Meeting - and doing an impromptu podcast with -  fellow bloggers
• Some good sessions

Things to work on include:

• I found it hard to work out where I wanted to be/should be next quite a lot of the time - and there was a fair bit of aimless wandering round going on.
• Quite a few of the sessions I went to were poor.  I don't care if you're doing it for free, if you're doing a session you should prepare - and you certainly shouldn't spend half an hour of your 60 minutes getting everyone to introduce themselves.

Overall, I think it was great and there's something really good to build on here.  For me, it has a future as a regional thing.  In reality, and one of the organisers acknowledged this, it was Shine London, with a few keen northerners thrown into the mix.  One of my aims was to get to know more people in London, so that was fine for me this time, but probably not long term.  I could see Shine Yorkshire, Shine Cornwall etc taking off no problem.

Shine - second day

You'll guess from the time of this post that the networking at Shine has got into full swing.  As anticipated the event has felt more at ease with itself on day 2.  I started the day with a visit to the Tate to see the Duchamp Man Ray Picabia exhibition (those of us from the provinces need to make the most of our rare forays into the capital). 

This quote from Man Ray seemed apt for today:

"The streets are full of admirable craftsmen, but so few practical dreamers."

Thank goodness for those practical dreamers we call social entrepreneurs.

Shine - first day

Just got back to my pied a terre following an interesting afternoon at Shine. 

First impressions were that it's a great old building that inevitably works in some ways and not others.  I found myself walking round a bit aimlessly a few times because it's a bit of a maze but on balance I like it.

Highlight so far has been meeting fellow bloggers for the first time - Nick Temple and Dave Dawes.  Also good to hear more about UnltdWorld - I've just got into it more in the last week and it was good to be given a bit more of a tour of that. 

Low point was joining a session where I was greeted with two forms to fill in for some european funding or other.  How much de minimis funding have I had in the last two years?  Mmm.... not quite the spirit of Shine, so after 15 minutes I left that one and then suddenly the early start caught up with me so I decided to call it a day.

I love the idea of Shine and what it's trying to achieve, and I'd give it qualified praise so far.  I think it might take time to settle down - so I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

Shine Unconference 9 - 11 May

After all the moaning I've done about conferences recently, I could hardly turn down the opportunity to go to an Unconference - a conference for social entrepreneurs which promises to be wholly different to the countless other conferences on social enterprise which you could attend this year.

It's only £20 a day - or £45 for three days - so it's certainly not pricing people out - and there's not a keynote speech in sight. It's in London on the 9th 10th and 11th of May. I'm going - and hopefully doing some workshops - I hope to see you there.

There's more about it here on the SSE blog.