To: Leaders, re:Vison

What do you get when you take 100 leaders into 1 room?

Well if the room isn’t big enough, a lot of uncomfortable sweating… but in this case it was and it was actually quite the opposite. You got a environment where each person had the space to dream big and re:Think the world they want to live in.

Hosted by the newly started Young Social Entrepreneurs of Canada (YSEC) in partnership with the Social Innovation Generation (SIG) @ MaRS, the re:Vision 2010 conference got local leaders engaged and focused  on working together to develop ideas on how we can develop, initiate, and sustain social enterprises. 

Since my recent interest in social entrepreneurship, which was sparked while I was in Ghana, this was the first time I was really able to be part of a large group that was seriously aiming to find ways to develop businesses that went beyond just profits.  I was amazed as I stood their listening to story after story of a new idea that someone has brought to life, and the passion and excitement each person had while talking about it.

Just to set the tone on what the weekend was like, here are a few highlights for me:

• 

  After arriving the first day I still remember sitting at a table with a bunch of strangers, and within a matter of 10 minutes they were friends.

• I joined the super awesome ‘Biz Crew’ where you could usually find us coming up with good ideas or  tweeting about good ideas! (Oh yea.. just so you really get an understanding of our tweet-addiction.. we even tweeted about being in a picture while the picture of us was being taken!)
• ‘Awkward Turtles’… Long Story!
• We had an awesome session of systems thinking, which helped us understand how we need to change how we think to better compete in today’s society. Sounds complicated, but what if I told you their analogy was that of a simple red pen and blue pen!
• I was definitely inspired listening to some great Entrepreneurs speak during an Earth Hour event that took place at the MaRS building!
• Learning about de Bono’s powerful parallel thinking took, Six Thinking Hats, that is a simple and effective thinking process that helps people be more productive, focused, and mindfully involved.  It was so powerful that we actually brainstormed legitimate ideas for a bathtub design from the word ‘banana’!
• What I love most about these events are the incredible connections you make and relationships you build with young, hard working, driven, and inspiring individuals! Like they say, it’s the people that make a conference what it is! 

Overall it was AWESOME! Thanks to the YSEC crew for all their hard work and I look forward to re:Visioning the future next year! You can check out the full program of the conference here!

Check out some other posts on the conference:
“20 Take-Aways from re:Vision 2010” & “You need people to re:Vision”