Every day, we look at what is happening in the Sandbox, searching for impactful projects, stories and ideas by Sandboxers and we repost the most interesting, inspiring or brilliant stuff here on our blog.

Today Mark Kaigwa shares with us his talk from the InnoTown conference in Alesund, Norway. See the talk here and connect with Mark on Twitter and Facebook.

Here’s a short excerpt from Mark’s talk:

“For Africa, the proponent of change, the currency of today and the economy of tomorrow in Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria and more recently in Egypt and Tunisia, beyond social media and the internet, it’s the mobile phone.

So if you ask me what’s the one thing I’d like you to remember the next time you think of Africa? Think mobile. Want another word? Think innovation.”

There full transcript of the talk is available here.

In addition to giving the talk, Mark managed to get his experience at the conference covered by Norwegian national television. See the clip here. Mark also took some awesome sketchnotes from other talks at the conference.

Every day, we search the web for impactful content, projects and ideas by Sandboxers. Once a week, we choose the most inspiring, funny or brilliant piece and repost it here on our blog.

This week Steve Daniels tells the story behind A Better World by Design. Check out the conference here and why not give Steve a follow on Twitter.

Four students sat in a basement cafe, pondering the future of their club. Engineers Without Borders was off to a rocky start. Their projects were underfunded and underrecognized. Their members couldn’t travel to the places they were working in – a necessary step, one might think, for a proper community development project. Yet one thing they had in bounds was interest. Students were eager to join and faculty to contribute.

What if we created an event that brought everyone together to discuss design for social impact? This could breed the discourse, collaboration, and excitement needed to garner real curricular change at Brown University and RISD – plus maybe some money for Engineers Without Borders (that’s still in the works).

Fast forward four years. A Better World by Design – planned as a one-time event – now convenes over 1,000 creatives from around the world in Providence, RI each year. It’s a social innovation mecca.

There’s something unique about this conference. Speakers fly in from around the world to talk for free and stay the weekend. Intimate breakout sessions and workshops scattered about Brown, RISD, and Providence dig deeper into issues and build new skills. Even the social events yield a rare excitement (it’s hard to get the “same old” at an office made of shipping containers or an old steel mill).

Yet we never set out to be unique. We wanted to host a great professional-quality conference and initially masked our identities as students. It was our speakers and mentors who showed us that as a student-run conference we could be something different.

Here’s a comment from speaker Maria Giudice, Founder of HOT Studio: “This conference is special and different from all the others. It has a unique energy. It’s authentic and feels like it’s coming from the heart… These kids are walking the talk.”

That’s when we realized our most important asset – something that could never be achieved by a corporate conference – was authenticity. And we began to leverage that. We replaced our conference host with a different student to introduce each speaker, and each would present a personal project or start-up inspired by that speaker’s work. We reinvented the design competition: instead of receiving an award, our annual winners see their solutions implemented in a community or their products manufactured locally. And we introduced one of our most successful events – an expo where any participant could showcase their project for free.

Now a year out of college, I’ve attended many more creative conferences. Jaded by the steep prices, glossy concert feel, and lack of deep, intimate conversation, I find myself – like Maria Giudice – looking forward to Better World more than ever.

The conference continues to grow and innovate each year, both organizationally and programmatically. Yet we still charge dirt cheap prices so students and non-profit leaders can be part of the conversation. Though we’ve introduced bureaucracy into the student leadership, begun to fund projects and research, and reached out to corporations, it will always have a grassroots feel – like something big and different is happening in Providence. Something authentic.

Steve Daniels is a co-founder and former chair of A Better World by Design, an annual social innovation conference held September 30 – October 2 in Providence, RI. Early bird pricing ends September 8. Register at www.abetterworldbydesign.com.

Sandboxers from all over Europe convened in Oxford last weekend for the Skoll Emerge Conference. Hosted at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School (SBS), the event brought together some of the world’s leading industry experts, academics and social entrepreneurs to discuss the topic of social entrepreneurship.

Delegates were in the extremely enviable position, having the chance to listening to some truly inspirational keynote speakers in the form of Bunker Roy (one of TIME’s 100 most influential personalities 2010, he founded Barefoot College – a social enterprise addressing problems of water, sanitation, education and rural unemployment in the developing world) and Tim Smit CBE (Founder of the Eden Project in Cornwall which has turned-over £1.1 billion since it’s launch in 2001 ). As usual the organisers behind the event, the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, offered a great program of events aimed at those delegates interested in learning, doing and building social enterprises.

At such a high profile event there is no surprise that many Sandboxers made the trip to Oxford for the excellent networking opportunities, the constant spew of simply fascinating ideas on the topic and not least to mention the joint Skoll/Sandbox Dinner, which came fittingly at the end of this engaging yet intense weekend of conferencing.

The dinner was organised by Sandbox’s very own Ambassador for Social Enterprise  Kyra Choucroun, herself a writer for the Guardian on all issues that concern the environment, sustainability and social enterprise. Indeed many Sandboxers  found themselves dining with some of the major influencers, innovators and key decision makers across these fields. Geoff Lye, Executive Chairman of SustainAbility, was in attendance and no doubt left an impression on the 33 people that ate at the dinner (around half were Sandboxers). Geoff’s company has been a pioneer in sustainable consulting for over two decades – they pride themselves on tackling the root causes of what un-sustainability brings as opposed to just it’s symptoms. Geoff brought along many of his expert colleagues, many thought-leaders in their own right. This was similarly true of Alexis Ettinger (Head of Marketing Strategy & Marketing at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship) who invited her senior colleagues and several Skoll “Skollars” including Xavier Helgesen a social entrepreneur who has contributed $8 million to libraries and literacy organisations through his social venture Better World Books. It was a dinner packed with a diverse and exuberant audience at the bleeding edge of social enterprise in the UK especially, we even had the pleasure to sit among many seniors from Volans, the organisation which first coined the term “triple bottom line”…WOW!

From the feedback we have received there is no doubt that everyone who attended enjoyed the discussions that took place over the entire weekend and some very valuable connections were made. All felt it was a hugely valuable and worthwhile experience, despite the pain of having an underground tube strike, whilst most people ventured their way home to London. I would like to thank everyone who helped organise the event and all made so great, including those at Skoll, Volans, SustainAbility and Sandbox.

Brad is a Sandbox Community Manager based in London, he’s working alongside Christian to grow the impact of Sandbox and its members around the globe.

Lift is a series of events built around a community of pioneers who get together in Europe and Asia to explore the social implications of new technologies. Each conference is a chance to turn innovation into opportunities by anticipating the major shifts ahead, and meet the people who drive them.

This year, Lift will explore the most overlooked aspect of innovation: people. Known in techno-parlance as users, consumers, clients, participants, prosumers, citizens or activists, people ultimately define the success of all technological and entrepreneurial projects.

They adopt or refute, promote or demote; embrace, reject, or re-purpose. Their approaches are unique, influenced by cultural and generational diversity. A decade after the rebirth of user-centered design and innovation, it is time to explore the myths and uncover the reality behind the “connected people”.

Sandbox is all about connected people under 30 and we are therefore happy to announce LIFT as a new community partner. As a first opportunity emerging from this partnership, Sandbox members can request a discount code for the conference to cathrin.lesslhumer [at] sandbox-network [dot] com.

]]> http://www.sandbox-network.com/events/lift10-connected-people/feed/ 0 http://www.sandbox-network.com/events/taking-sandbox-themes-on-the-road/ http://www.sandbox-network.com/events/taking-sandbox-themes-on-the-road/#comments Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:57:27 +0000 Paul Gleger http://www.sandbox-network.com/?p=325 Since publishing the Sandbox Six Themes report last month, we received a lot of great feedback and interest from our members, our advisory board, larger organizations, universities, and many others.  To keep the momentum going, we were invited to present these themes at various events and conferences around the world.

Just in the last two weeks Antoine gave a talk at the ACE/Bluesky Exchange event in Singapore (with the Minister of Entrepreneurship) , Christian presented at the NACUE Conference in London, and today Fabian and Paul presented to Arnold Worldwide in New York City.  We’re excited to have several other speaking engagements lined up in the near future, including hosting a workshop at the LIFT Conference in Geneva and presenting at the Ivy Leadership Conference at Yale University.

The presentations are raising a lot of interest about Sandbox as an organization uniting the world’s most active young innovators.  Everyone is especially impressed by all the fascinating projects Sandboxers are bringing to life around the world (we’re amazed daily!).  As we continue presenting the Six Themes, we hope to not only bring others up to speed about evolving trends in the community, but also inspire them to act on their passions.  Further, we hope these observations make their way into business strategies, corporate visions, and classrooms around the world.

If you know of conferences, organizations, or people who might be interested in hearing from us, drop us a line!

A lot of traveling happening in the Sandbox team right now. Antoine just came from Singapore where we hosted an event with the Minister of Entrepreneurship (huge thanks to Sandboxer Andi Brenner for the amazing organization!), and our team will be at Digital, Life, Design Conference in Munich and at the World Economic Forum in Davos next week.

Please drop us a line if you’ll be in Munich or Davos, we’ll be hosting a Sandbox dinner in both cities. Sandbox member Suhas Gopinath will be speaking at DLD and is a Young Global Leader of the WEF.  Marc Bernegger,  Co-Founder of Amiando (Europe’s leading event organization platform) was selected as a “Technology Pioneer 2010” by the World Economic Forum as the only company from Germany.

Sandbox Ambassador Andreas Brenner is a 23 year old German, living in Switzerland and currently studying in Singapore. Besides his studies he is organizing dinners and events for the growing Sandbox community in Singapore. He is passionate about new technologies, especially in the ICT sector and loves skiing as well as delicious food.

Tell us the story of your latest project / occupation

Which one are you referring to? One thing that makes me being me is that I’m always working on several things that are part of a bigger picture. Let me focus on my activity as Sandbox Ambassador Singapore. As such, together with two friends, I’m driving forward a small conference that’s co-organized with local entities, such as Spring and Swissnex. We are bringing three young entrepreneurs (Sandboxers) to Singapore and put them together with three outstanding young entrepreneurs from the local scene to share their experience with a total of 150 aspiring young entrepreneurs. I hope we can inspire other Sandboxers around the world to create similar meeting spaces to foster the exchange within the global community.

What are you doing and how did you get there?

I’m currently a candidate in the Msc in Technology Entrepreneurship and Innovation from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the University of Washington in Seattle. In paralell I’m also trying to get involved with an exciting IT startup company. Getting there for me came natural after I had figured out that the beaten “business graduate” path wasn’t for me and my exchange semester at the University of Hong Kong infected me with the Asia fever.

Tell us about the biggest successes and failures in your life. What worked, what didn’t, and what did you learn?

One thing that certainly worked well was my membership in the International Student’s Committee (ISC). While the success of our work was certainly not attributable to my own work only, I still look back at this intensive year as some of the best time of my life. It taught me a lot about professionalism, communication and working under stress. A thing that I consider a general failure was my initial approach to understanding culture. Though I always thought of myself to be openminded and considerate, as a “Westerner” it takes some time to realize what it means that 90% of the world’s population don’t live in “the West”. They think, learn, work, love and live in a fundamentally different way and there are significant differences between regions and countries, too. That’s something easily said but not as easily reacted to when working in groups or when living in another country. It takes some time to realize that a lot of things we consider to be normal and we think are also normal for the rest of the world simply are not.

What do you want to achieve in a) the next week, b) the next year, c) the next 10 years?

a.) Rock the upcoming strategy simulation game, host a great Sandbox dinner and fix the details for the upcoming conference

b.) To fix my involvement with the startup company, help launch a new project that looks at development aid from a new perspective, build an exciting Sandbox community in Singapore and visit at least three places that I haven’t been to before

c.) To change the way we think about the internet by successfully launching the business, probably get married and grow a family and travel to many countries and places that I haven’t been to.

What was your most inspiring moment during the last two weeks?

Funny enough, the most inspiring moment for me was when I finally had some time to walk through the beautiful autumn forest in Switzerland and just think. Essentially spending two years on the road hasn’t left much time to process what happened and my current hunger for action to shape my own professional future as well as the amount of daily information intake made this some of the most creative, inspiring and valuable moments I’ve had in a long time.

We’re excited to announce an event we’re co-sponsoring: “Entrepreneurial Opportunities Amidst Crisis“. Together with Emily Harbourg from Harvard I’m organizing a small but highly interactive event with exciting people, happening here at Columbia University in New York on Friday, April 24th.

University students from across the nation will gather at Columbia University in an intimate setting to discuss entrepreneurship in the private, public and nonprofit sectors and what we can do to make a positive contribution to our world. Whether your passion is public health, creating iPhone applications, microfinance, saving the environment, or running your own business– the conference intends to bring together a group of like-minded students who wish design tangible solutions to some of the greatest challenges we face today.

Why come? This conference is not about keynote speakers, but about uniting innovative students who want to act upon their ideas. Get inspired and meet others who might help you make your ideas happen. Receive feedback on existing projects. Learn from ventures run by other students, or create ideas of your own.

Find out more about the event and sign up on our Wiki. Would be great to see Sandboxers at the event!

Many thanks to the Ivy Student Council for the great organization, Tim for his hospitality and Ian from Brown Entrepreneurship Program, for his valuable inputs! Check out their annual Entrepreneurship Conference, coming up at Brown with an exciting program.

Photo by Changhoon Cho, Columbia University