Designing a Social Innovation Summit at Ryerson University
How we helped the Faculty of Arts plan their first ever Social Innovation Summit and SocialHack for students.
Changemaking was in the air on the Ryerson campus. The Faculty of Arts had recently launched the SocialVentures Zone, Ashoka had just certified Ryerson as Canada’s first AshokaU Changemaker Campus, two Chairs in Social Innovation had been named and the McConnell Foundation awarded Ryerson significant funding through their RECODE Initiative.
SoJo was incubated in Ryerson’s DMZ, and was one of the first social enterprises to ever take up residence in that space. It was incredible to see the evolution on campus and the explosion of social innovation activity that was taking place. After several wonderful years at the DMZ, we had just moved out to join the SocialVentures Zone as Peer Mentors In Residence, to help support the students in the space turn their ideas into action.
In the Fall of 2014, a group of students from the SVZ had begun talking about the need to host a conference of some sort that would bring students together around the idea of social innovation. They didn’t want this to be any old conference — they wanted it to be a weekend of idea development, collaboration, solution building and inspiration. They pulled together a group of people including students, faculty, administrators, instructors and, well, us. Everyone was excited and energized by the idea of putting this conference together but it became clear early on that it would be challenging to figure out where to start and how to shape such a unique event. There were also concerns about whether it could be pulled off, given it was late Fall and we wanted to host it early in the new year. SoJo saw an opportunity to jump in and play the role of conference planners, helping to shape a vision and execute the plan. We worked with the Faculty of Arts to quickly pull together a contract and got moving.
The Objective
Everyone was excited about the idea of putting together a Social Innovation Summit, but unsure of how exactly to do it and what approach we should take. Everyone knew there were a few key things that had to be accomplished:
- We wanted to attract a broad range of students across different faculties on campus.
- We wanted to bring in both students who were curious about social innovation generally AND students who were actively engaged in social entrepreneurship — and deliver programming that spoke to both groups.
- We wanted to leverage connections from the broader community and bring in people and organizations from off campus.
- We wanted to showcase local social enterprises wherever possible.
- IT HAD TO BE FUN!!!
The Setup
The event was scheduled to take place over two days in early February on campus at Ryerson. The theme of the event was ‘Mobilizing Youth for Social Change’. The budget was limited so we had to leverage partnerships and sponsorships wherever possible — and of course, lots of volunteers. We had two and a half months to plan the event, with December and the Christmas holidays jammed in the middle of it. A planning committee came together made up of students from the SVZ, administrators from the Faculty of Arts, and other volunteers, and we met on a weekly or biweekly basis.
What Happened
When thinking about how to structure the event, we decided to split the weekend into two streams, which we named ‘Dip’ and ‘Dive’. ‘Dip’ would be for students generally interested in learning more about social innovation and ‘dipping their toe’ into entrepreneurship. ‘Dive’ would be for students who wanted a hands-on experience in social entrepreneurship and working on an idea and ‘dive right in’.
On the Friday night, SoJo hosted a kick-off networking event at the Centre for Social Innovation in Regent Park. This was a partner event, not officially part of the program, but an opportunity for Summit attendees to meet each other over a drink in a casual environment before the intensity of the weekend began.
Saturday morning started bright and early, with participants from both streams gathering together in an auditorium to hear from some opening speakers. We had a morning keynote from Dave Wilkins, the entrepreneur (and Ryerson grad) behind Ten Thousand Coffees who shared his story.
We then had a series of local speakers deliver ‘Pecha Kucha’ style presentations, about different ways youth are mobilizing to make a difference in the community. We included speakers on urban sustainability, politics, marginalized communities and the arts.
After the pecha kucha session, we had the streams separate into two sections:
- Dip stream participants participated in a design thinking workshop that would span two sections over the course of the rest of the afternoon. The design thinking workshop, delivered by our partners at Design Cofounders. (See the full Dip Stream weekend itinerary here)
- Dive stream participants joined a world cafe, with each speaker from pecha kucha facilitating a table discussion with students on the topic they were addressing. It was a way to get students thinking about what kind of ideas they want to work on for the rest of the weekend, and probe deeper into the issues they cared about with an expert. (See the full Dive Stream weekend itinerary here)
When we broke for lunch on the first day, our second keynote was Marc Kielburger from Me to We and Free the Children.
When we regrouped in the afternoon, the Dip participants returned to their workshop, and the Dive students began the hackathon portion of the event. Ellen and I were not only in charge of helping to plan the event, but we were also leading the hackathon — organizing the groups into teams, putting together micro-workshops on different tools like the business model canvas and how to create a pitch deck, which we delivered over the weekend, and providing mentorship to the groups to make sure everyone was progressing over the two days.
On the second day, the Dip participants moved from learning about design thinking to applying it. We invited student social entrepreneurs from the different innovation zones on campus to come in and deliver live case studies to the students and have them brainstorm solutions to real challenges the entrepreneurs were facing, using the skills they had learned the day before.
The Dive participants meanwhile spent the entire day refining their ideas and practicing their pitches, which all culminated in a pitch competition that afternoon. We secured a ton of in-kind prizes through a partnership with B Corp Canada and the winners of the pitch had an opportunity to win a $1500 cash prize.
A full description of the event, including partners, sponsors, prizes, agendas, pitch winners and judges can be found here.
The Results
I could tell you how it all went, but the best way to understand how amazing the weekend really was is by watching this 3 minute video.
Lessons Learned
We learned a lot through this experience about how to run pull together an event that was engaging and memorable to a broad range of students. Here are some of our key takeaways from the experience:
- Know your key performance indicator. In this case, it was student engagement. The question: “Will students find this engaging?” was something we asked daily and the strategic lens we used to drive all of our decisions through. Knowing what’s vital to success of an event from the beginning and planning accordingly helps ensure things come together right.
- Listen to the students and incorporate them into planning early on. In this case, the entire event was driven by students from the very beginning so their interests and goals were embedded in everything we did. Every time we came up with a new idea, we could gut check it against whether the students on the event team thought it would fly and adjust our plan accordingly.
- Think about the kind of experience your audience wants to have, then create it. In our case, we really had two audiences we were catering to and had to create two different kinds of experiences for them. We thought about what kinds of things a person within each group would want to learn, see, hear, do — then tried to create that for them.
- Bring candy. And lots of food. But especially candy. We knew the students would need energy throughout the day and we had lots of healthy snacks on hand, but at mid-afternoon when we set up the candy bar things came to a near standstill while every student lined up for a bag of candy. People couldn’t get enough candy. Some of the most positive feedback we got from the event was about the candy. Embrace the small wins.
Have a similar problem you’re trying to solve and want to learn more about this case? Interested in working with SoJo? Contact us at hello@mysojo.co
