Shine 2008 Day Two

So here we are on day two of this fascinating event. I had breakfast this morning so my blood sugar is far healthier even allowing for some late night drinking the night before.

The first workshop was by Siobhan from Nesta who probably thinks I have been stalking her recently. This became a really amazing brainstorming event looking at entrepreneurship and innovation for the elderly. This is currently the most amazing discussion so far and I came away with some really interesting ideas (such as running Mecca as a social enterprise, a not-for-profit nursing home, a social enterprise around incontinence, etc). There were some really sparky people in the room and all our ideas kept building from each other and I just can't spend enough time in environments like that.

I have just wandered into another accidental workshop which seems to happen a lot. Some of the workshops seem to be cancelled and rearranged at short notice and it is frustrating a few of us. So I wandered over to What If (who are being highly recommended) but they had gone for lunch, so I wandered through to Kim's presentation on fundraising from the Foundation of Social Improvement. I had come across her at Voice 08 and this is a really interesting workshop. At the ENLF we botched up our fundraising and I sent out 205 letters and got rejected by 204, most because we weren't a registered charity. It got to the stage where I dreaded opening the post because every day I was getting bucketloads of rejection.

She is presenting a really good 7-stage model which seems really solid and practical. I am not going to replicate it here but I would definitely recommend talking to them or going to their website. I might try and do a podcast with them later although I keep saying that to people all day :(

Once again they are being very tolerant about someone who is typing away on their blackberry and I am sure the person next to me thinks I have a dreadful email addiction. Anyway, I need to go and grab some food in a minute and I hope the pub crawl tonight is a little bit more organised (as I think we lost a few people who couldn't find anyone).