Social capital, social enterprise, social entrepreneurs, social investment, social innovation...it feels like there is a whole new raft of terms swilling around in the community sector.

These were all explored in an incredibly lively and informative conference in Wellington recently - SOCANZ Doing Real Good Conference. It was organised and convened by Viv Maidaborn , pictured where with Tina Reid (Social Development Partners) at the TechSoupNZ display.

Social capital, social enterprise, social entrepreneurs, social investment, social innovation...it feels like there is a whole new raft of terms swilling around in the community sector.

These were all explored in an incredibly lively and informative conference in Wellington recently - SOCANZ Doing Real Good Conference. It was organised and convened by Viv Maidaborn , pictured where with Tina Reid (Social Development Partners) at the TechSoupNZ display.

Viv brought together a very wide range of speakers and workshops from across business, community, Maori and government sectors.

The scene was well set by initial speakers:

• Nic Francis about being serious about the business of change - moving from a social service to entrepreneurial focus in his work, now making energy affordable, accessible and sustainable.
• Mavis Mullins about bringing a governance focus to rural activities and whanau development, and challenging the conference to realise that long term investment thinking and strong governance focus creates new spaces in which to be working.
• Melissa Clark Reynolds about her international journey from anthropologist to environment planner, and welcoming abundance and wealth for all.

There were three themed workshop tracks for participants to mix and match, or follow a track for in depth and continuing conversations and dialogue:

• Start up social enterprise
• Maori economy and entrepreneurship
• Social Innovation - creativity: innovation: impact
• About money

Each had a great variety of experienced practitioners sharing their journeys and opening up some wonderful opportunities for learning and exploration in workshop style .

The conference  finished with a further line up of outstanding contributions from people working in academic (Bill Ryan) , Maori (Wayne Mulligan) and business (Alan Grainer) worlds which presented practical and theoretical perspectives to developing social innovation and practice.

There were over a hundred registrations for this conference (see photo of Tina and participants as a tea break discussing TechSoup programme in New Zealand) and it was as innovative, inspiring and impactful as promised. The programme and papers can be found at : http://grow.co.nz/events/socanz-conference-2012/