Pushing The Field: A Series on SoCap09

The Social Capital Markets conference is the most buzzed about event in the social entrepreneurship space right now.

Next week, 800 innovators from across sectors, disciplines, and cause areas will converge on San Francisco's Fort Mason center for three days of conversations, presentations and meetings about how to accelerate the flow of capital to social good, how to improve impact in social enterprise, and how to better realize the potential of an ecosystem of change-makers.

In that spirit, my coverage of the event will focus largely on how the people and the event itself are pushing the field. This blog actually launched more or less at SoCap last year, and if the coverage was a bit more about introductions to the field and the people in it, this year it's all about getting us to think different.

Social entrepreneurship is entering a phase of adolescence, in which more and more people are entering the field and more and more people have experience with seeing what actually works and what doesn't. The combination of just a bit more experience combined with infusions of new excitement and passion has immense potential to produce creative and effective solutions to global problems.

But to do that, we need to be out actively harnessing what people have learned. For as any adolescent, the field has it's share of warts, pimples, and simply immaturity of knowledge. It's still learning how to keep track of itself, and what measurement really looks like when you move past the financial bottom line. It's still trying to figure out how to break out of it's silos and learn from other fields. Perhaps most importantly, it's struggling to make sure that the whole world of social entrepreneurs have a seat at the table.

These are the stories I'll be trying to grab over the next few days and at the event itself next week. Hang tight and hope you enjoy the ride.

(Photo: Mr. Andrew Murray)