It has been a long time since I have last posted anything on this blog (fantasy maps take quite some time to make!), but I am back again finally! In this post, I am going to be sharing with you my experiences coming to the "Let's Get Social" conference that took place on the morning of the 15th of November 2023 at the Ipswich Town Hall.
Before we get to the post, let's be clear that there aren't as many visual pictures that I took of the event in comparison to previous ones that I have written about on this blog due to the extremely high amount of people that were present there, but I have tried to make my writing as engaging as I could, and so I hope you still enjoy it nonetheless!
What is the event all about, and how did I get there?
Let's Get Social is an event that was organised by Dot to Dot Consultancy (specifically Simon Pickering, who also happens to be one of the ringleaders of the Make a Difference Boot Camp) to bring together entrepreneurs, academics and business consultants who want to help make a social and environmental difference in their organisations.
I was invited to come along to the event through my connections at the University of Suffolk, who had put out a link to the event registration page as early as September. I really wanted to sign up to go to the event back then, but I wasn't quite certain what I would like to do volunteering and when I would be available to volunteer for, and so it took me quite a while until I booked my place at the event. Oh well - things happen in life.
Introduction and first set of guest speakers
It was 8:20am and I was hanging around the Cornhill - the main town square of Ipswich, waiting for the big doors of the Town Hall to open. I've lived in Ipswich for over 17 years, but I've never had the chance to go inside the town hall, for the simple reason that it is primarily used for hosting wedding ceremonies (chances of me being invited to one of those being next to zero), business conferences, as well for meetings with top Ipswich Borough Council members.
Enough ranting, it wasn't long before Adam Brown, a guest speaker that previously appeared on my blog post for days 4 and 5 of the Make a Difference Boot Camp (feel free to check that post out if you haven't already), showed up with his plus one trying to get past the locked doors of the Town Hall. We were that determined to the point that we even tried the disabled entrance along the side of Princes Street but failed to get in that way miserably... and so I imagined jokingly that Simon got into the hall through some entrance nobody knows about.
It wasn't long though before the Council officials opened the doors into the Hall, and right on cue, another familiar face appeared - Dr Fran Hyde, who I happened to also meet at the Bootcamp (and who I would meet up with much later in this post). As the event presenters started making their way into the building, I wasn't sure whether the attendees were allowed to come in, and so I effectively asked the Council staff if I could come in for the event - effectively "bribing" them as I like to call it.
And so here I was in the function room upstairs enjoying the secrets behind the event - but unlike the Bootcamp Grand Finale and other events, there weren't too many interesting secrets to show - mostly Simon connecting his computer up to the Internet and logging on to his laptop, seeing the event displays being moved around the room to different places, as well as getting the refreshments set up.
The event officially began at 9:00am, and just like the ipSWITCH event, the event would start off being deceptively quiet until the meeting room gradually filled up with people - eventually resulting in a turnout of approximately 80 people. There were also some very interesting moments during the networking portion of the event - one of the guests from the food production social enterprise African Kingdom showed up to sit to the left of me, and he started off by speaking to me about my business idea - getting some very positive feedback as usual, before moving on to talk to the food scientist entrepreneur that was sat next to me to my right, at one point showing off a sample of cashews that were produced some 5,000 miles away in Mozambique and imported into the UK, before going on to exchange information about their work experience and contact information between them.
Eventually time was called on the networking at around 9:30am, and Simon introduced the event by describing his portfolio of helping to set up 100 social enterprises, followed by one very interesting quote that will resonate more with some than with others - "Careers advisers never tell you about social enterprise", followed by a captivating story of how he helped an ex-RAF serviceman who was made homeless one day and decided to change gear by setting up a cleaning social enterprise in Cambridge.
Once Simon did his bit of introducing the event, it was time to introduce the first speaker, Matt Parfitt from Grace Enterprises, and he started off his speech by showing off some everyday objects - a garden kit, a cookie cutter as well as a glass of champagne. For the uninitiated, this might sound like he was just showing off these objects as if there was no special meaning to them, but he actually does mean something, and you will see where things went from there a bit later on.
From that point on, he went on to describe his motivations for setting up his enterprise, and it was really touching to hear how his organisation helped someone who was unemployed for 35 years find a job. Then he goes on to talk about the enterprises that he has managed to bring under their wing - firstly talking about Radiant Cleaners, a social enterprise-focused cleaning company in Nottingham, followed by the setting up of a promotional events agency that deals with setting up of marquees for special occasions (which I found out that it received £60,000 of investment funding to get off the ground).
But the most fascinating of the ventures that was discussed in his pitch deck was "Half the Story" - a cookie product that wasn't meant to be marketed as a commercial venture... instead these biscuits are based on a social model of you guessed it - helping people from disadvantaged groups get back on their feet - and even showed some pictured examples of how the enterprise have been treating people well, especially with refugees from Ukraine who have experienced trauma as a result of the Russian invasion.
That being said, it was time to move onto the next speaker, Claire Staddon, who is the chief executive of the Suffolk branch of Emmaus, a homeless charity that originated from France. After a brief discussion about disproving the belief that you should focus on finding a job that pays the bills rather than doing something that you believe are passionate in, she moved on to talk about how the branch came to existence, opening up their first shop in the north-west of Ipswich in 2016, and not long after recruiting volunteers that they will eventually progress on to paid work.
Another notable achievement came in 2018, when her team opened The Royal Oak in the east of Ipswich, a community outreach service providing a mixture of retail and hospitality services at affordable prices - and what was even more touching was the story on her organisation offering a house during the pandemic that encourages people to live more communally.
But the most important takeaway from her portion of the session is that you need to make sure that you are hiring the right people with the right expertise - especially as she was talking about was her experience of hiring an friend-accountant that she thought would only do the right things, only to discover funding inconsistencies that nearly destroyed the enterprise - no bueno if you are running an organisation that cares about the homeless.
And of course, you can't talk about social enterprise without describing the two primary ESG statements. One of them being that the organisation gives back £11 social return for each £1 spent, a figure that is impossible to calculate due to the amount of interventions required to reach that conclusion, and the other being that they are not currently interested in smaller partnerships and are focusing on a corporate sponsorship.
Breaktime
Once the first set of guests finished speaking, it was time for a comfort break, but little did I know was that the plans for the comfort break had changed - the original plan was that people would go around to the ideation space during the break and chat with different people about their business ideas.
But instead I would remain in my seat for most of the break, and surely shooting, I attracted interest from someone who was self-employed in a copywriting enterprise, and as I was chatting to him about the maps, he seemed to give away some food for thought - I could possibly approach Suffolk County Council to discuss setting up a fantasy mapping exhibition at one of their public venues. Given that I am now volunteering at the archives, does this idea scream volumes? I think so.
Although I found out a few days later in the Ipswich public library that there was a fantasy mapping exhibition that is being run by the British Library down in London, and so I am not sure whether it would be possible for them to organise an event of this scale from my side in the near future.
Once the copywriter finished chatting to me, Amy Volkert came along to speak to me (did I not mention earlier on in this post that she came along to the event?), where after we were joking around with my ambitions to become a self-employed transcriber of multimedia content, I had the opportunity to share my map drawings with her - although it was quite some time after I drew them.
Not long after, she invited me to join her for the coffees (and I even managed to grab a vegan breakfast roll along the way). But whilst Amy got sidetracked with Emma, one of the guest speakers from earlier, Claire came along to speak to me and we exchanged our own opinions on the fantasy mapping idea. It is quite interesting to see that people from two different entrepreneurial backgrounds can converge on one another and that we are not defined by boundaries.
Eventually time was called on the chit-chat at around 10:45am and it was time to return to our seats. As I returned to my seat, I noticed a laptop cover on the seat that I originally sat on, and I was a bit confused as who that belonged to, to the point that I didn't know what to do. It turned out sometime later that it was the laptop case of the African Kingdom guest. Phew.
Second set of guest speakers and plenary
To begin the second set of guest speaker conversations, Simon invited social investor Christian Stannard, who came over from Tyneside in the north-east of England to present at the front stage. The subject - how do social investments work, and I must say that I was really fascinated by how he was approaching the subject of social investment - particularly in terms of how he described how social investments were different from traditional investments.
But the show had to continue, as he went on to describe the five possibilities of using social investment as well as the criteria to be considered for a pitch (just so the investors are not setting you up to fail!), before going on to talk about a wide range of possible repayable investments and grants - Thrive Together which is a minimum repayable investment of £25,000 over a six year period, the Recovery investment scheme which covers investments from £100,000 to £1.5 million, along with a cost of living grant for social enterprises that support people with cost of living related issues, as well as a 100% grant for BAME oriented social enterprises.
And to top it off, he even invited one of the guests whom his organisation had helped to the stage to share an example of how his social investment business helped organisations in difficult times - the guest was telling a story of how his food production social enterprise wanted to sell their old property and move into another building, but the costs of moving in and renovating went up by 140% owing to the cost of living crisis and they couldn't finish the project alone, and so they ended up working together to combine different cash pots to allow them to finish the project.
With that being said, it was time to move on to the last guest speaker - Alice Moxley, the director of Pivot. She started off with a story on how she was studying architecture at university, but hated it, and instead discovered her own love for making jewellery, and so she wanted to set up her own social enterprise that revolved around helping people do the same. And like Matt's example from earlier on, it was quite interesting to see her enterprise creating opportunities for those from troubled backgrounds - on one of her presentation decks, she shared a quote from one of the participants of the programme who had a history of violence - they described their experience as it follows: "making jewellery stops me wanting to fight".
Rehabilitation talk aside, it wasn't long before Alice's speech came to an end, and it was time for Emma, the "big boss" of the University's Business Development team, to come up to briefly talk about the University's enterprise offering for those who want to connect up with the support that they offer. Being part of the University's community already, there isn't much that is unfamiliar to me from that conversation, but if I were to look at it from an outsiders' perspective (by pretending that nobody knows me at all!), I think it is good to be able to see an academic institution working hard in general to provide the infrastructure that social enterprises need to bring success to their projects.
Lastly, to finish off the mainstream set of events, we took part in a plenary session, where the guest speakers would collectively answer people's questions. For me, one of the most interesting topics that was discussed was how to balance the social enterprise element with commercial aspirations in a responsible manner, and the panelists all had different opinions - Claire said that you shouldn't be exploitative in order to gain profit and that you should have something worthwhile to offer from your enterprise (otherwise it's not a donation!), while Matt of Grace Enterprises on the other hand, described the need to put the "business first", in particular by having an asset lock to make sure that the resources of the enterprise cannot be used for personal gain.
For the question on how to best market yourself responsibly, there was a general consensus from the panel that entrepreneurs had to maintain an open and honest relationship and that you had to get out there so that others can better understand your vision, however the some of the best words of advice from the perspective of a commercial venture had to come from Matt (again!) - you need to think very carefully about who you are partnering with - a large company might not necessarily share the right ethical and social values that you believe in, and instead you should focus on figuring out a partnership that matches your needs.
With that, the main portion of the event was over, and for some of the guests (including the University delegation apart from Dr Fran), it was time to break off from the event and head off to wherever they needed to go. But for others, it was time to move from our original seats and split up into two groups for the business workshops.
The Workshops, and ending
For the first workshop, I decided to follow along Dr Fran Hyde for her session on how to produce the ideal market segmentation strategy. After introducing herself to who she is and going through the basic marketing concepts that I am not going to repeat here for the sake of avoiding boredom, there were some interesting elements that I got to see all over again - for instance, Dr Fran would throw around an orange to a few of the workshop participants, before asking them to peel off the skin and break away the pieces as a way of simulating how market segmentation worked.
But on the other hand, the short nature of the workshops meant that I got to see something that I didn't see in her original running of the show from Day 4 of the Bootcamp - and that was to discuss the market segmentation strategy that underpins our business ideas - for this I was placed with a social care worker for this scenario. My system of market segmentation was divided up into a B2B and a B2C segment, and the time constraints meant that I couldn't explain them all, but it was really good to be able to get an opportunity to share our marketing opinions around with one another.
After everyone had their turns to discuss their market segmentation strategies (which all sounded quite interesting!), Dr Fran's workshop came to an end, and it was time to move on to the next set of workshops - but there would be a twist. Besides Dr Fran's session, there was a workshop on the other side of the room with Pivot's Alice on creating a killer social enterprise, and some of the people from that workshop would come up to share with the crowd some of the business ideas that they have generated.
I have to say that these quick pitches got more and more fascinating further down the line - one person even produced a pitch for a hand cream that was not intended to be marketed as a commercial venture, but rather, was designed with the purpose of bringing socially isolated people together!
Once the presentation fun was over, it was time to move on to the second set of workshops. Since my business idea was heavily focused on technology and graphics design, I went to the workshop with Andy on how we can use technology to bring purpose to social enterprises, which was on the same side of the room that I was on for the previous workshop.
Andy started off the workshop by describing the common mistakes that entrepreneurs use when building their IT infrastructure - particularly with regards to managing websites and records (it is unsurprising to hear that too many people still use Excel as opposed to CRM programs to manage their accounting records). Then it was time to get to the dirty work - by using the SIPOC framework, which is based on the concept of Supplies, Inputs, Processes, Outputs and Customers.
With that explained, it was time to get onto the first scenario - making a cup of tea, and as we were going through the scenario, we were all learning that the principle of SIPOC revolved around starting with the processes that needed to make a cup of tea, before working right-to-left to finish off with the supplies that are needed to make this scenario happen.
And now that we knew how to use the framework, it was time to move on to the second scenario - the steps that are involved with booking a holiday. In this scenario, there was a diverse range of answers as far as the first steps were concerned - I went with researching the destination as the first step. Others said about agreeing a budget. But eventually we agreed on purpose being the first step, and the rest followed on rinse and repeat until we've managed to come up with six processes.
And here is what the SIPOC board looked like at the end of the scenario (note that the customers and suppliers were the same):
And as everyone started heading off back to their workplaces, homes or wherever else they were planning to be that day, here is a sneak peek of the leftover coffee cups that everyone seemed to enjoy throughout the event:
After observing the photoshoot action with the main organisers of the event (along with getting an opportunity to explore the grandiose nature of the hall corridors), it was time to say goodbye to Simon and after that, it was time for me to start making my way out of the town hall. The day was over.
Conclusions from "Let's Get Social"
I have to say that the Let's Get Social conference offered some very important insights into how people build in social enterprise elements into their business ideas - Simon has bought in some excellent guest speakers who have very interesting stories to tell about how they have managed their social enterprises, and some of the messaging that I have heard from the speakers was very touching for me personally - such as the story coming out of Matt Parfitt's enterprise on how he managed to help someone get a job after an extremely long period of unemployment, or hearing one of the testimonials of Alice Moxley's Pivot about how one of the participants on her programmes said that it helped them to stay out of trouble with the law.
But the most important takeaway that I have had from this is that despite the name of the event, the conference is 100% non-partisan - although my business idea isn't quite a social enterprise, everybody that I had met at the event was very friendly and quite understanding of where I wanted to take my business idea forward - in particular when it came to having the conversation with the copywriter during the coffee break.
Likewise, I can also say that the workshop sessions were well-organised. As I anticipated, Dr Fran's workshop adapted quite well to the limited amount of time (while maintaining some of her cunning ideas from the Bootcamp!), and Andy's session explained the SIPOC framework quite well to the point that I could use that to explain the business case behind each technical process that underpins my business idea.
Would I come back to a social enterprise workshop again? Absolutely. Although if I had to repeat the whole experience of this event again, I would have come to the other workshop on creating a killer enterprise with Alice instead of sticking to the familiar sights - I was spying some of the time on the action on the other side of the room, and it looked like that activity was incredibly lively.
Anyways, I hope you have enjoyed this insight into a major business conference and have managed to gain something useful out of my write-up of this experience. The Kingdom of Vergun project is almost finished, and so my main priority is to get that post published on my blog next.
Signing off now,
Jakub
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