by Nicolas Takamine

0 Comments »

,

Will the Holidays Come Early This Year?

The things you won't be subjected to at the Opportunity Collaboration networking and problem-solving congress this October include plenary speeches, business suits, and "death by PowerPoint." The event–designed to convene, connect, and create solutions to bring about an end to poverty–is about conversations, not presentations, and doers, not talkers. It will bring together "social entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, social financiers, grant-makers and agents of change [to] explore unprecedented levels of collaboration, identify opportunities for leveraging resources across organizations and accelerate proven models for reducing poverty."

I'm incredibly excited for this event–and I won't even be attending. Delegates to Opportunity Collaboration must be "catalytic leaders" ready to discuss their ideas and proposals and to lead workshops relating to their areas of expertise. Perhaps one day, but not this time. Indeed, a panel reviews each and every application to "ensure the creation of a Collaboration community that is exceptionally rewarding for all participants." Though applications are still being accepted, the list of delegates to the summit already includes the Executive Director of Stanford's Center for Social Innovation, Founder and CEO of Root Capital, and the Social Impact Lead for IDEO, among many, many other thought leaders and change makers. The five-day event (launched on World Poverty Day, October 17, 2009), will represent a gathering of minds as rich and as fertile as the Barra de Potosí wildlife sanctuary just 30 minutes from the campus in Ixtapa, Mexico at which the summit will be held.

Jocelyn Wyatt, Social Impact Lead for IDEO and former Acumen Fund fellow, has already posted her workshop topic: "Design for Big Problems: Applying Design Thinking To Social Challenges." Other confirmed delegates, though not all, have indicated their workshop topics as well and I can already see that this event will host a diversity in perspective and expertise that will catalyze nothing less than an "innovation bloom."

Image by Darren Hester.

I have but one request to make of Opportunity Collaboration:

I applaud the bias for action in the facilitation of this event, but I also strongly encourage an explicit effort to share as fully as possible the information, experiences, and insights that arise from the Opportunity Collaboration. Openness and transparency are core to the "Opportunity Collaboration paradigm" and, indeed, will be so to any successful societal paradigm of the future. Let us commit to those principles beginning now.

I'll be watching for more updates from Opportunity Collaboration; perhaps this is already in the plans. Let's hope so–the organizers could kick off the 2009 holiday season early with an invaluable gift to the world. After all, a solution to poverty will necessarily involve both those whom it affects and those who are implicitly part of the problem (i.e., the non-marginalized of society). If you can't bring the world to Opportunity Collaboration, you can surely bring Opportunity Collaboration to the world.