Tribewanted: Vorovoro

Its not like Labasa. The island of Phuket has some serious infrastructure – a fleet of blacked-out limo-bus things wait outside arrivals, giant (I mean gargantuan) statues and billboards of his excellency, the King of Thailand, are everywhere you turn making brand beckham look like a c-lister, and manicured mid-highway gardens coast by you as you tuk tuk your way to the beach.

I was fresh from of a ‘night out in Bangkok’, which basically meant lots of delicious phad thai, being revitalised after the long-journey by the best value for baht massage you could imagine, and going on a blues bar crawl around the winding streets and temples of this infamous city. An early night was not on the cards.

Despite is breathtaking beauty, Phuket wouldn’t be my normal choice of destination. But I was here because of an invitation – to speak at the world’s first social enterprise summit! I-genius, an international network of social innovators had boldly set-up the get-together and with approaching 100 participants from most regions of the world, set in the stunning ‘tin-mine’ design influenced 5* Indigo Pearl, everything was poised for an enthralling few days.

Socially enterprising? The summit – its people and the questions

But would I and Tribewanted fit in here? On the first morning – with introductions from the Thai tourism board and government, (including an impressive array of statistics on rural community development) – I wasn’t convinced we would. And, during a so-called ‘juice break’ (I drank tea), I started chatting with a few fellow summiters about the question which as yet didn’t seem to be getting asked let alone answered. What the hell is a social enterprise? For some it seemed that the emphasis was heavily on the social – what your organisation does for society, and for others (like me), it was more about the enterprise, doing business in the right way, providing clear positive benefits for the people and place your project impacts. In my mind social enterprise is clearly about ‘good business’ – organisations that seek to create wealth (business) and the right way (good). But perhaps, as Tommy Hutchinson , the founder of i-genius concluded, we don’t need a definition….

By mid-afternoon my concerns about the relevance of the summit to Tribewanted were rapidly dismissed as I started to spend more time discussing various social enterprise projects in smaller groups. Rob & Mike run ‘Mother’ a platform of bespoke building blocks for social online networks. The cross-overs started to become more obvious. Interestingly the most used word during the coarse of the summit aside from ‘social’ was ‘facebook’ – now what does that tell you?

Chris Cramer former president of CNN and head of programming at the BBC was the heavyweight speaker of the weekend and spoke extremely eloquently about the fragmentation of todays media and the need to practise communicating our messages with integrity in order to counter the complex web of messages told second by second across the world. His thoughts were re-assuring if not anything new and it was a priveledge to meet someone with his experience. The most interesting point he made was about how Africa 24 (the continents first dedicated news channel believe it or not) will be launched via mobile before TV – that tells you more than anything where we’re heading.

Dave McQueen (from channel 4’s ‘Vocation Vocation Vocation’) was easily the most warmed to personality of the weekend (both in meetings and night-swims). His light-hearted, energetic and but sincere approach to social enterprise was refreshing and provided for me, the clarity needed to making things happen.

The Unltd team are definitely one of the key movers in social enterprise structure and finance, our man Mark Bowness was represented not just by Tribewanted but also by Andy Jaye, a great guy who is now head of development at thenerve.tv

Controlled Kaos: Meet a new school of pilots
But the people that jumped out and slapped me round the face more than any other this weekend were the Kaos Pilots . No, they’re not the next Arctic Monkeys or Kaiser Chiefs, rather a new type of business and social innovation school based in Rotterdam. Their mission? To think about how to bring together social innovation and business and create a new breed of entrepreneurs. If you ever have the luck to meet the Kaos Pilots ask for an espresso; its not served in a small cup but it does have about ten times the impact.

Sharing our story
Next up was me. I opened with the Paradise or Bust trailer before presenting a Tribewanted Book ‘sevusevu’ to i-genius explaining the importance of symbolism in communicating in Fiji. You know the rest of the story and the audience seemed to enjoy the presentation . I concluded by playing the ‘my english pillow’ and ‘turning on the power’ scenes from Paradise or Bust before challenging the summiters, ‘if social networking and responsible tourism can begin to go hand-in-hand, what else can? Could organisations like yours that focus on maximising the human impact, minimising the environmental impact and making the most of every $, be a strong reason social enterprise will become the best way to find a better balance in today’s world?’ If you want a yes to this question look no further than rapidly proliferating micro-loans industry.

At the film festival that night I played the ‘coup’ sequence from the BBC series, because it is both a brilliantly edited few minutes of film (Bainamarama’s ‘Fiji is at a cross-roads’ as the chopper chots skim across the mangrove swamps) and because I wanted to remind us all that what we do isn’t easy and we will fail as well as succeed. Luckily some more uplifting moments followed with a brilliant film called ‘The Wrong Trainers’ from Greg & Martin at Bold Creative . Films were followed by a BBQ banquet on the beach with the biggest and tastiest prawns I’ve ever eaten, candles in giant tissued lanterns lifting into the night sky. I even managed to teach some meke in the firelight. I thought of home, and despite the fun I was having, I was missing sitting on the mat under the stars and hearing Mesa calmly call, ‘talo na yaqona’. Vorovoro, please don’t ever put out any deck-chairs.

So in one sentence, the social enterprise summit was, for me:
‘like my favourite pair of twisted levi’s – hanging in the cupboard they look a little confusing and worn-out but put them on and you know you’re on a mission and its going to be a hell of ride.’