If you’re at all interested in social entrepreneurship, you must check out the Skoll World Forum.  There’s a link on the site that will take you to Social Edge where you’ll find all of the sessions from the Forum streamed on video, as well as blog entries for each. That’s definitely the best way to see what it’s all about, but I’ll do my best to provide a quick recap. This was the fifth annual Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. The event started out as the flagship gathering for social entrepreneurs around the world, and has since mushroomed into an internationally acclaimed conference with guest speakers like Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, and Paul Farmer to name just a few. The Forum lasts three days, and this year included theoretical debates, practitioner panel discussions, practical seminars, and interactive pitch sessions. In addition to the incredibly packed Forum schedule, we managed to squeeze in two great student-run events. We hosted a “Master Class” session the morning of the first day, which took the form of student/mentor speed dating. We had 50+ delegates sign up as mentors, broke into small groups with students and mentors in each group, then had about 15 minutes to soak up as much knowledge as we could before the bell dinged and we had to move on to the next group of mentors. It was a fantastic way to meet a lot of people, and the mentors were so great about offering bits of wisdom, advice, business cards, etc.

The second event was a networking dinner at Keble College.  If you haven’t seen pictures of Keble’s dining hall, there is one posted down here. Basically, the hall is incredible—think Harry Potter. We had about 220 students and delegates come for dinner, complete with a trivia game and chocolate mousse. It was a fantastic opportunity to meet some really interesting people working in the field, plus the dinner was quite tasty ; )

Make sure to check out Jimmy Carter’s speech at the Skoll Awards Ceremony on video. It was incredible. Sir Anthony Giddens was another highlight, and Paul Farmer of Partners in Health was also amazing. Basically, if you’re in Oxford next March and you’d like to help make the world a better place, you should make sure to be at the 2009 Forum.