GoodGNUs

To MadLab, yesterday, for the Together Works AGM. Together Works is the social enterprise network for Greater Manchester, and the AGM was a chance to network, then take part in a debate on the future of Social Enterprise in the current climate of cuts.

The panel included Social Entrepreneur Dave Dawes, who started with a strong denouncement of grant-dependency in the sector: “Grants are evil, corrosive - they will destroy you. They are precisely the same as heroin”

“What amazing sculptures would Michaelangelo have done if hadn’t been dependent for 4 years on an income stream from the Pope for the  Sistine Chapel,” he continued.

All of us in the room had been involved at one time with voluntary organisations that had, if not sold their soul, at least severely switched direction for the sake of grant funding. However not all social entrepreneurs have completed a change of mindset to meeting a market’s needs - Dawe’s provocative phrasing drew a stark picture of the effective choice.

Embracing failure

Fear of failure was another key topic as one speaker seemed to say that if you got your market right you wouldn’t fail - forcing me to point out that all sorts of things could make an enterprise fail, but that was a fact of life. You recover and move on.

What’s important is not letting fear of failure stop you trying again (and again).

In that vein I mention here that following the disappearance of the two best people I had to launch a new Social Enterprise for voluntary sector Cloud Software, I’m working on new plans for two projects that had been on the back-burner.

Anybody looking for a new project, feel free to get in touch. I’ll post more here later as things develop.

At recent events, when I meet new people, we naturally ask each other “What do you do?”. I’m failing quite badly at summarising my activities, so thought I’d briefly list current projects here, for reference:

1. Gaia University - IT strategy, project management, & SysAdmin, in a programme to gradually upgrade every online aspect of this international sustainability university over the next few years.
2. Social Media & the Accessible Web - the Profitable Conversations courses highlighted on the courses page. Got off to a good start last year, now lining up a number of courses around the North West for the Spring.
3. Hackspace North West - 10 months ago I started bringing people together whom I thought would be interested in getting spaces off the ground. I have done very little on this as fortunately it turned out there were plenty of people also wanting local hackspaces, and they’ve gone on to work towards getting them going. Latest steps in Shropshire & Staffordshire.
4. Credit Unions - Free Software solutions
   Should have been going a long time ago, but a key personnel hiccough has delayed things. Now we’re on the move again, and I’ll be posting announcements on the project here very soon.
5. Other financial software & local currencies…
   Next step is looking for partners to take the core of the Credit Union software, and adapt it for 3rd Sector book-keeping needs. This is something VCOs have been crying out for.
   We’re also talking to those involved with Complementary Currencies in a number of countries - something just beginning to gain ground in the UK after a brief flurry of LETS in the 80s.
6. Cloud Computing for the 3rd Sector.
   Voluntary Groups can’t host sensitive data in the USA, and don’t want to be advertised at by Google. Hoping to work with Fossbox on this, and looking for a sponsor to host the 1U server I have that was donated to the project by Blue Fountain.
7. Permaculture
   I studied for my Permaculture Designers’ Certificate in 1993-94, while also studying for the Royal Botanic Gardens’ diploma at Kew. It was the wrong time, and once back home in Montgomeryshire there was little or no work. Now I find a resurgent interest in sustainable design, and am following recent speaking engagements with more practical work.
8. IT Recycling
   M6-IT cic had a great success here, with Richard Rothwell’s Supported Family Computing project reaching dozens of families with recycled hardware, Free Software, family training, and local support, as well as broadband for people previously blacklisted by the ‘phone companies.
   Search for partners to replicate this has been unsuccessful, but it’s been a privilege to lead workshops on community recycling with ArcSpace in Hulme, Manchester, with an interesting and enthusiastic crowd of local activists.
9. Web
   Preparing new sites for local sustainability groups, campaigns, and VCOs: some Wordpress, blog-based, mostly Drupal CMS. I miss Plone, but it’s unsuitable for the quick and low-resourced sites I’m doing now.
   When a few more get finished I’ll put up some portfolio pages.
10. Blogging?
    I’m developing a horicultural/ethnobotany blog I started designing some time ago, and a *nix introductory blog for NetBook users. Once I can get a 30 hour day I’ll push these through to publication. :^)
11. Journalism - Linux User & Developer magazine recently commissioned me for a few articles. The first of these, on Arduino boards and open hardware hacking, hit the shelves a few days ago.
12. In Transition - the two towns nearest to our village are both in possession of new groups moving towards Transition Town Status. I’ve been lucky enough to meet some very interesting people, and get a chance to begin to investigate local food and power solutions.
    It’s certainly easier to work totally locally, than try to bring people together at a distance as I did at FACT’s Small Steps to Sustainability workshops. More soon here, and on Twitter.

Hope that helps fill a gap until I renew my calls-for-collaboration posts, too. As to Networking events, maybe I should print this list on a postcard?

In my recent enterprises & projects I’ve tried to spread the work around as widely as possible - bringing in fellow freelancers to help with training, coding, illustration, and all sorts of technical bits & bobs. Sometimes this has been quite successful for all involved. Occasionally things haven’t worked as planned, but lessons are learned and I’ve never failed to gain something from sharing work.

Now I find myself stretched very thinly on a number of projects, mostly at an early stage, with none of the resources I had at M6-IT cic - so I find I would ideally like a shed load of people to work with. The catch? There’s no wage or fee attached to any of these projects. Previously I’ve always paid other freelancers well - up to £1000 a day. This time there’s nothing in the pot, though a number of projects look like they will bring in steady revenue to be shared. Read on for details under the individual projects, as I post details over the next few days…

[...edit...or months; more coming soon (early Spring?)...]

P2P Board

But first, an alternative. Dave Thackeray, at http://wordandmouth.com/2009/09/ultimate-business-advice-free/, suggests setting up a “virtual board” to troubleshoot & share ideas with your peers. Put simply, you find some fellow (social) entrepreneurs, and meet up every month or so to kick round the problems that are bothering you. In a group of 6, 8 or 10, someone is bound to come up with a solution that hadn’t ocurred to you.

It’s certainly something I’d love to try. I’ve been doing this informally to some extent I guess at #OpenCoffee events, co-working sessions, and many other places - but a reliably regular version with a good set of people sounds very appealing. Practically speaking, Manchester looks the best bet - but if anyone’s planning this in any other town I regularly get to [North West England, N Wales, W Mids], then please count me in :-)

Georg Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, has an interesting blog post on What makes a Free Software company? that chimes with a lot of what we’ve been telling people on the subject - in particularin relation to a couple of Start-Up ideas (more here soon).

However, what caught my eye, was a link to a Gartner report, proclaiming usage of Free Software in the enterprise will reach 100 percent by November 2009. A report I somehow missed last year.

Looks like that bell-curve has finally reached the tail. Does anyone have a predicted date for the next few victories to software freedom?