[Original Post 5 December 2010]

Connecting people and organisations doing something good is essential to an impactful and resilient social sector. Face-to-face and online conversations between those that work for not-for-profits, social enterprises, socially minded businesses, community organisations and free agents are essential.

Claire Irwin and Emily Chapman-Searle are working on The Unreasonable People project; aimed at developing, collecting and sharing stories from Australian social entrepreneurs, and the people and organisations that are working to support them.

Clare and I met at TEDxCanberra in October. We were introduced by a mutual friend, Beth Worrall from the School for Social Entrepreneurs. Inspired conversation on the day, led to Clare and I making plans to meet up next time she was in Melbourne. We were both keen to continue our discussion and see how we might be able to support each other’s enterprises.

I also thought this might be a good time to get a few people together who were interested in connecting and exploring opportunities for collaboration – myself and others had been talking about doing something like this for a while.

So, a blog post, a few tweets and three days later: a terrific afternoon. The three of us were joined by Jasmine Tragas, Glenn Todd, Stephen Johnson, AdamJaffrey and Amy Shand. All of us  working on our own social enterprises and/or working with not-for-profits on quite a range of issues:

  • Glenn told us about his vision for Bindarri – Australian Creatives for Social Change;
  • Adam, shared the stirring story behind his organisation Step Back. Think. – taking action to end alcohol-induced street violence;
  • Stephen introduced us to his exciting new initiative, Alltitud3 – mobilizing creative & strategic partnerships for social enterprise;
  • We heard from Clare and Emma all about The Unreasonable Project; and
  • I gave a run down on the latest iteration of Doing Something Good (stay tuned for my next post).

Apart from the wonderful connections we made on the day, we all got something valuable from our conversations. We swapped business cards, twitter handles, helpful tips and more than a few good ideas – and we’re all keen to catch up again very soon.

These conversations – a sharing of thoughts, knowledge and experience – help us to identify ways to improve our work, explore ideas and reveal opportunities to collaborate. They can also trigger real insight, lead to innovation and develop in to beautiful friendships.

Several other great folk, not able to make it on the day, also expressed interest in joining us next time. We’ll be starting a regular meetup in early 2011 and likely have a few drinks the week before Christmas.

To find out when our next get together is, or when our regular meetups start, please subscribe for updates and follow @DoingSomeGood on twitter.

As Steven Johnson* says: “Chance favours the connected mind.”

*no relation to Stephen Johnson – that we know of. 😉