It’s been a while hasn’t it?

Today I’m re-launching this For More Than Profit blog – we thought we’d have a makeover at the same time. What do you think of the new theme?

The focus of the blog is changing slightly too. I’ll still be focused on the world of social entrepreneurship – I am more passionate about that than ever before. But I’m currently in the middle of my PhD on social enterprise and reading some really interesting pieces of research and thinking. It will be those that we will be discussing – pieces of research that might be of use to us practitioners as well as the academics who wrote it.

There may not be as many posts but hopefully there will be some interesting ones that will generate some discussion.

I’m looking forward to the coming year … it should be an interesting journey.

Today we are launching The Great Blogging Competition for anyone attending the Listening to the Social Entrepreneur event on the 9th October.

Just comment on a post here on the conference blog before the 9th October and your comment will be entered into the competition.

The prize is a silver 4gb iPod nano. Got one already … not to worry if you win the prize you can always give to someone else for Christmas – sorted!

The winning comment will be chosen by the organisers of the conference for being what they consider to be the most interesting and thought-provoking. The prize will be announced and awarded at the conference.

NESTA are challenging social entrepreneurs to come up with ways of reducing their CO₂ emissions in their communities – local, regional or further a field.

The challenge is to come up with an idea to reduce CO₂ 60%. Applications should be in by 29th February and ten finalists, once selected, will have a year to show that they can turn their BIG ideas into action. The winner will be announced in late 2009.

If you think you are up to the challenge visit them at the Big Green Challenge website

The Third Sector reported today that Ed Milliband admitted he had managed to poison Liam Black, of the Fifteen Foundation, who was on a visit to the House of Commons.

Apparently, it wasn’t part of a conspiracy to reduce the high profile of social enterprise, by the Cabinet Minister but just some dodgy food.

That might teach them to use a social enterprise to cater for their events in the future.
Read the full story here.

As part of the national enterprise week today is Social Enterprise Day in the UK.

There are all sorts of events happening across the country to celebrate social enterprise and raise awareness amongst the public.

You can see some of the things going on by following the link below.

More on Social Enterprise Day

I wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who came to visit The Tool Factory stand at the Social Entrepreneur Show this time last week.

We had a fantastic time and it was great to meet so many inspiring people with some great ideas for social and ethical businesses.

We have just been told that the Social Entrepreneur Show was such a great success that they are doing a bigger and better version of it again at Excel, London on 25th-26th April 2008.

So put it in your diaries and we will see you there.

Today and tomorrow we are at The Social Entrepreneur Show at Olympia, London. So if you are in the London area and are planning to come do drop by The Tool Factory stand (no. 132) and say hello.

The show is part of the annual Business Start Up Show and we have own section as part of that. Talking to the organisers yesterday they said they had had 30,000 registrations for the show’s two days and 2,000 of those were specifically for the Social Entrepreneur Show.

It’s going to be a busy couple of days but hopefully a lot of fun.