On Friday morning, July 29, W2 Media Café will open for business. This marks the end of an eight year journey to establish this important new social enterprise.

Part cafe, part gallery, part immersion in global electronica, W2 is an internationally connected media arts centre. What appears at first as a coffee shop par excellence is but the first step into an ambitious organization.

W2 Media Café is a euro-styled coffee house experience—a large scale space that has already begun to host and curate diverse social and cultural activity. On this weekend alone, W2 will play host to a Pride World Dance Party, an Artist Talk & Presentation by Pia Massie, and the launch of the Surge Festival of Urban Digital Culture. The café itself is an open, modern and welcoming space, where people can connect with stories, art, ideas and each other. (And fabulous coffee and food, or course!)

W2 will engage people from throughout its Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, and from other communities across the city. Local residents will be able to access media and arts tools and support, to discover compelling arts experiences, to decide for themselves the programming W2 will deliver—co-creating the centre’s work. Some of the anticipated programs include instruction in social and digital media; a micro-enterprise incubator, where aspiring social entrepreneurs can learn from experienced mentors; access to the ideas and work of artists who will take up residence at W2 from time to time; and training and access to a letter press machine that once belonged to the Woodwards store.

W2 is located where the renowned Woodwards store used to stand. Vancouverites tend to associate Woodwards either with the great shopping experiences of the 70s and 80s, or with Woodsquat, the activist occupancy of Woodwards, in protest of housing policies and programs in the Downtown Eastside. W2 Media Café sits today at a symbolic meeting point—where Vancouver’s world class waterfront meets the working class neighbourhood that’s so significantly misunderstood by so many Vancouver residents.

W2 is determined to address some of these misunderstandings, and to bring people and communities together. Today is the beginning of another important chapter in W2. Why not join us there for a cup of coffee and a conversation about the city we all love?

Octopus Strategies has been proud to work with W2 during the past few months, in the leadup to this opening. We heartily congratulate the team for all their hard work, their perseverance, and for holding so closely to the intent of the collaborative that formed eight years ago to achieve the vision that today is opening its doors to the city.

Excruciating joy. That’s as close as I can get to articulating the atmosphere at the 2011 Social Change Institute.

Hosted at Hollyhock, June 8 – 12, SCI brought together a group of 55 remarkably diverse individuals, each of whom is working on one or more of the most significant challenges we face: From the need to rethink our organizations and how they’re structured, to unification of distinct generations in service of challenges bigger than each of them, to the recognition that adaptation to climate change will be as challenging as reversing it, the questions posed at SCI required both widely expansive thinking and deep, personal engagement. And it is precisely there that the greatest lessons of SCI 2011 began.

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On Thursday evening, Vancity Community Foundation, Enterprising Non-Profits, JDQ Systems and BC Social Venture Partners hosted the 2010 edition of their ‘Social Enterprise Dragons‘ event. Three social enterprises pitched their organizations to a crowd of 200, and in particular to four ‘Dragons,’ who judged their business plans and awarded prizes based on their businesses’ needs: Tamara Vrooman, CEO, Vancity; Alanna Hendren, Executive Director, Developmental Disabilities Association; Jon Morris, President, JDQ Systems; and Jim Fletcher, Managing Director, Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital.

Octopus Strategies’ involvement was through my invitation to sit on the application review and selection committee, which shortlisted the numerous applicants to the three presenting companies. Along with Adam Wilkins of REV and BC Social Venture Partners, I also coached Katrina Pacey of Pivot Legal LLP on her presentation.

Pivot was first to present. Katrina, their Managing Partner, outlined a unique social enterprise law firm, whose purpose is to turn the profits from their general law practice to the advantage of social change initiatives such as their recent Red Tent campaign.

Mission Possible‘s MP Enterprises went second. Their Executive Director, Brian Postlewait, presented an ambitious but promising plan to develop their graffiti cleanup company into a diverse general maintenance company.

And third was Public Dreams‘ Samantha Jo Simmonds, who explained their organization’s 25-year legacy, their recent success with 2010 Winter Olympic Games contracts, and their goals to develop their social enterprise—a full service event management firm.

All three presentations were inspiring. Each organization is uniting the value of business with the values of mission-driven mandates. And in the end, the Dragons couldn’t decide between them, and awarded one prize to each organization. Public Dreams was awarded a $2,500 grant from ENP, MP Enterprises was awarded a pro bono engagement from JDQ Systems, and Pivot Legal was awarded $15,000 from Vancity Community Foundation to develop their marketing and outreach.

The event itself also featured a good deal of networking among the sold-out crowd, catering by Vancouver’s Pot Luck Cafe & Catering, a social enterprise itself, and a showcase of the wares of various local social enterprises. It was a great opportunity for the social enterprising community to come together, and share ideas, contacts and plans. I look forward to being even more involved in the 2011 edition!

The Social Entrepreneurship Experience, a student-run conference under the Enterprize Canada umbrella, took place November 21 at the Museum of Vancouver. The organizers’ goals were to “tackle the question of what social entrepreneurship really is and how local businesses are radically changing Vancouver and communities abroad.”

I put it a slightly different way: “Traditional business is a flightless baboon,” I said. (It’s a long story!) “I’m interested in the evolutionary next step.” And I believe it’s social enterprise.

The nature of ‘social entrepreneurship’ is as diverse as the individuals who adopt the moniker. Each of us can choose how we’ll build our organizations, but what we all hold in common is a purpose beyond profit, and an open, collaborative approach to resolving issues of sustainability. Yet it is the diversity that makes this burgeoning sector so hard to pin down. And so fascinating.

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