8 February 2010

Well, Voice10 is a week behind us now, the weekend is over, and the SEC team, including me, are feeling a bit more bright-eyed after some much needed rest. I didn't have the time to write last week, but I did want to say that I had such a great time at Voice and I hope those of you were there did too. If you weren't able to be there, you can still watch the plenaries here and see photos here. And you can read all about the Social Enterprise Mark launch here. There's been lots of discussion about the Mark since - take a look at http://semarkblog.com/ for Lucy's blog. 

Couple of quick highlights from me from Voice-

One was certainly Nigel Annett, managing director of Welsh Water - which supplies water and sanitation to 3 million people - saying that ‘social enterprise is the best way to own, run and deliver public services to our customers.'  This is something we the sector have believed for some time, but it is reassuring to hear from someone operating such a large scale and with such a vital public service as water.

I thought that was really amazing, and my next goal, now that John Bird is going to apply for the Mark for the Big Issue is to get Welsh Water to apply. Welsh Water is a social enterprise because it doesn't have shareholders and all profits are retained in the business and reinvested for the benefit of their customers. For the past few years, they have paid an annual ‘Customer Dividend' which has helped to lower bills.

But I'm sure most of their customers just think they have a great water supplier, but wouldn't necessarily have a name for what makes it great. In fact, a Welsh audience member said she had no idea that her water supplier was a social enterprise. So to have three million people see the Social Enterprise Mark on correspondence from Welsh Water would go really far in raising awareness.

Another highlight was Philip Blond, one of the key influencers of Tory policy (Patrick Butler of the Guardian calls him Cameron's ‘ideological guru'), saying that ‘the real future is that all business becomes social enterprise.'

It seemed to me that the mood of the conference was quite an urgent one - this is the time for social enterprise -  and fit in well with our theme of ‘No More Business as Usual'. That is really exciting to me, and I feel really proud to be part of a movement that believes in itself and in the change that it can create.

And you can sense really exciting things happening - O2 have given their support to the Mark and launched their own social enterprise page - saying "This is the age of social enterprise."  That's a big win. We need the private sector to understand the difference we make, and I hope this is one of many endorsements from companies we want to work with.

So on that note, thanks again to everyone who came, participated and of course to the staff here who worked so hard. Let me know if you have any comments about Voice10!

 

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