The Hub Berlin Blog

This is a summary of the second webinar, which was organized by a Hub Brussels partner project: Green Entrepreneurship Youth Summit which took place on Thursday, July 29, 2010.

Topic: Entrepreneurship Now! What it takes to set sail.

Focus: The internal process that makes people become entrepreneurs!

We had the pleasure of hosting three young entrepreneurs from around Europe:

Chrysosthenis Taslis from Greece, who had just started an olive oil production and retail business on his home-island Lesvos. He is aspiring to be The Best Oil Producer, in the full sense of what we call green on our website: responsible in the environmental and social sense.

Silje Grastveit from Norway. She is the founder of the Hub in Bergen, bringing this global network of people, ideas and spaces into a society where the need for social entrepreneurship is a relatively new idea yet. In sync with our efforts, a Hub serves to inspire and support people realizing their idea and business.

Jonathan Klodt from Germany. He is the co-founder of the Malamut Team Catalyst consultancy, assessing and matching the entrepreneurial and collaborative talents of individuals and working teams. The start-up just won the support of the EU and German government for research spin-offs.

To read the full harvest, click here

It’s been an exciting month to be South African, seeing the World Cup impact social cohesion and citizens assuming the role of host to our visitors. The presence of the Hub was also felt over here, I’ll name a few examples:

- Thanks to Max from Hub Madrid we’re hosting MBA students for IE Business School for 6 weeks as they partner with local Social Enterprises

- 2 Hub Milan members came to town and are now collaborating on a project with a Joburg member

- A Rework participant is in town from Ghana and now obsessed with setting up a Hub at home; she sang the praises of the Hub Rework team

- While flipping channels the other day, I stumbled on Deaf TV and they screening a documentary of Sencity. My team and I went to this event in Joburg a few months back hosted by Hub Rotterdam members (Hub Berlin team went to Sencity Berlin in July!)

- Recently, I hosted a lunch to launch the eCampaigning Forum South Africa on behalf of a Hub Islington member only to find that the room was filled with previous Hub users who were in town for our 1 Goal campaign on education for all and headed up by our president

There is no better encouragement for me to keep working away at what we’re creating. Keep on sending your fantastic members over!

Thanks everyone…. and Viva Espana!
Lesley
(Hub Johannesburg Co-Founder)

Here is a personal account from Hub co-founder, Jonathan Robinson, whose recent trip to Budapest speaks to the momentum behind the Hub and social innovation at large. Find out about the good news he brings us from abroad:

I took a day off today! I was invited by Mohammed Yunus to join him and his global strategist on a flight from London to Budapest. So I flew with them, at my own expense, to talk ideas.

That’s the excuse for being here, what I wanted to share is this. I arrived, walked along the river, then sat in Budapest’s largest music hall and listened along with a thousand others, to a speech by the finance minister, the chancellor of this country and this is what he had to say. “The world as we know it needs radical reinvention. I have learnt about something we need for this project. Professional Yunus told me today about the Hub. We desperately need one here. Like the excellent one they have in Vienna.”

Then a director of the regions largest bank, ERSTE Group (who I remember trying to ‘win-over’ two years ago with the Vienna team) , echoed the sentiments, committing “10 million euros for the social businesses these places breed”.

I’m used to, we all are, the enthusiasm this thing breeds. But there was something different tonight about the people in the room. No more important than those we’ve already enthused, just different – and with it comes a big responsibility, a shared one, for what happens when Ministers for Finance start wanting to play ball. When this movement shifts from fringe, to being perceived as a ‘mainstream’ solution for re-imaging and re-making the established order.

That’s all I wanted to say.

Jonathan

We don’t have a Hub in Bulgaria, yet but through Hub Brussels, we connected to the Green Entrepreneurship Youth Summit 2010 and have virtually met Lucy from Bulgaria:

“To be connected as the most important or at least very very very famous in certain area of life person is a hard task. First of all, you have the responsibility for the others, secondly, you have the one for yourself – not to betray yourself and the people who believe in you.

As I won the EJC award for most influential green blogger in Europe the last year, this raised a whole new green wave in the media world of my home country, Bulgaria. Although not a lot of the media and communication agencies have been interested in topics as cleantech, sustainable development, CSR, climate change, green innovations and etc before that, it appeared that a small step for me could mean a large step for the Bulgarian public.

The words of a person, who believes that the humor and new approaches for connection with the masses, could be not only strong, but also really persuasive. They make us believe even in the things, in which we are not very sure. They make you the speaker, moderator, the new flow. To be a good leader means to be able to point out a problem with a smile on your face, even if the problem stinks and costs a lot of money, which is not yours.

This makes you a positive person in a negative reality like the Bulgarian one, where for the most of the people around you it is easier to be unhappy with your work for them than to be confident in their own strenghts and chances to change from their inside to their outside. The question of leadership is not a new one. It is hard to be a oppressor and still to be loved. It is hard to try to teach people to things in which it hurts them to believe and which they have purposely ignored for ages. It is hard to have high expectations, when the people around you prefer to adapt to the lack of expectations. It is hard to try to build new ways when the old ones are already chasms…

Source

I am writing to let you know about these amazing Hub Madrid members, who are trying to be really revolutionary in the cinema industry with a very independent movie project, crowdfunding, and many many other features that make them innovative.

They are all about co-creation and openness and have presented the business plan they have been working hard on to everyone that was interested as well (there is a link to download it in their Hub profiles).

So, our invitation to you is to forward this info to your communities of friends so that we start trying to enable global Hub collaborations.

You can find Bruno Teixidor´s profile in Spanish and Nicolás Alcalá in English, two of the three very young members of Riot Cinema Collective that together with Carola Rodriguez are making this magic happen.

Here is a two-minute video (also with English subtitles) if you want to watch instead of reading.

Let´s Hub!
Sole, Host Hub Madrid

The Cosmonaut is the first feature-film project of Riot Cinema Collective, a young Spanish film production company based in Madrid and focused in innovation and, quoting themselves, “to take cinema to all possible fields.”

The movie, set in the years when the Space Race was in its apex point, it is a science-fiction epic that follows the adventures of Stan Arsenievich, the first Soviet cosmonaut to be sent to the Moon, who, coming back to Earth from the Moon, ends up lost in space during months. When he reaches our planet, Earth is completely empty.

“The Cosmonaut” will be a pioneering film for Spanish cinema, since it bases its business model in the notions ofconectivity, interactivity of contents and community popularized by Web 2.0.

Anybody can back up financially the project from 2 euros, and become this way a producer of the film; with higher quantities, you can get merchandising, and, from 1000 euros, you can even become a true investor and get a percentage of the film’s profits. Companies, individuals, brands- everyone is invited to be a part of The Cosmonaut.

Even more, the movie, once finished, will be released simultaneously in every distribution window, including on the internet (for free), and licensed with Creative Commons licenses, so any user can distribute, lend or even modify it the way he pleases. Along with the film a series of contents for different formats will be developed, including a mysterious ARG (Alternate Reality Game), that will enrichen the story and will introduce the viewers in a twisted and absorbing plot.

In conclusion, The Cosmonaut presents a profile never seen before in Spanish cinema: innovative, modern, and bold.

Some examples of what people have said about The Cosmonaut

“One of the Creative Crowd’s Greatest Hits” – WIRED UK

“Their crowdfunding video turned me into a Cosmonaut” -BRIAN NEWMAN

“Has The Cosmonaut discovered the future of film making?” – TODD BROWN, TWICHFILMS

Hub co-founder Jonathan Robinson will be co-hosting a workshop at Schumacher College in the UK in September.

20 – 24 September, 2010
Kate Davies, Jonathan Robinson

The need to organise just about all human activities differently has never been more urgent, and yet our society seems stuck in a kind of inertia which prevents any substantial change in how it operates.

Course Overview

Established models of social change and activism may no longer be the most effective in a world of information overload, social alienation, gross inequality and massive – but barely understood – global interdependence. In such circumstances, it is vital to think creatively about new ways to engage people and new models of working together for a better future.

How can we create sustainable human systems – social, organizational, political and economic? What methods and processes help generate innovative social change? What are the skills of successful change agents?

Participants will explore a range of techniques. They will consider and work with collaborative leadership, adaptive thinking, social reflection, experiential learning and other strategies necessary for addressing the complex challenges faced by our society.

Jonathan Robinson is a writer, strategist and entrepreneur working in the field of social innovation. His ideas have taken form in Johannesburg, New Delhi, Oslo, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Toronto and London. He is co-founder and executive director of The Hub, a multi-sited incubator for social innovation currently located in London, Bristol and Johannesburg. Jonathan is also co-author of the book ‘Careers Un-Ltd’ and works with agencies including The Tate Modern, UNICEF, Barcelona City Council, FT Prentice Hall and the London Development Agency. He thrives on collaborations with a multi-disciplinary team of architects, scientists, investors, filmmakers and activists.

More info and sign-up: Schumacher College website

Today we engaged with a Hub Brussels project around a BBC article:

“Flipping open my laptop his morning, I wondered if I was on the wrong page. It clearly read BBC-News on top but sounded just like our Youth Summit2010 blog. Entrepreneurship had finally gone mainstream. Stephen Sackur writes about the common feature of all the top changemakers he met over the years. Here´s some excerpts:

(…)

4)A super-sized ego
Innovators do not suffer from low self-esteem.

(…)

What do you think? Is that all there is to it? And what about the Big Ego? Is this really where we should start from?
Let´s have your say!”

Join Hub members Leander, Bieke, Trent, and Frauke in this conversation through the Generation Europe Blog.