Blogs

It was three years ago exactly when I first had my interview to be a Social Enterprise Ambassador and one of the questions posed to me was “How will you measure if you have been successful?”  The night before I had been watching Dragons Den and was furious  with their knock back of a nascent social enterprise.  They filed it neatly under “charity” and “not for profit” and did not understand  the potential for a company to generate a profit and make...

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The furore over the Facebook page set up for Raul Moat and the media frenzy it generated reminded me of many similar problems we faced at Cybermoor a few years ago, before Facebook had even been invented.  Our open discussion forums generated lots of comment from the community on issues affecting their everyday lives and in a tight knit community, some of these topics strayed into areas which were rather unsavoury. Our challenge was to balance the right of people to offer their views with ...

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When we started auctionmystuff.org it was going to be a service for cash rich, time poor (lazy, like myself) people to sell stuff through eBay.  It wasn’t until we actually piloted it, that we found that the idea we planned just didn’t make enough money to even cover its costs. What we discovered, from meeting a charity to try and get access to their shops, was that some charities were offered really large donations of ‘stuff’, which they’d love to convert into cash.  As ou...

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It's been a weird and wonderful week with women at its heart.  On Tuesday I made a presentation to the Department of Business Innovation and Skills with Kresse Wesling the wonder woman who specializes in using waste materials to make lovely things.  Her current products include high-end Elvis & Kresse handbags, made from reclaimed fire brigade hoses and jute supermarket bags made from coffee sacks. On Wednesday I received the International Business Women award from SHE magazine ...

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