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Event summary: Lean Coffee, December 2020

In December, we hosted our first Lean Coffee event: an opportunity for social entrepreneurs to decide the topic of discussion. Here's what we discussed.

By Ed Cox · December 12, 2020

On December 10th, we hosted our first Lean Coffee event: an agenda-less but structured meetup where attendees suggested and selected discussion topics.

Attendees suggested topics for discussion, including their current biggest issues, topical subjects and things that were on their minds. Attendees then upvoted three submitted topics and the highest-scoring topics were added to a list for discussion, starting with the most popular.

We discussed the following topics:

  • Cross-sector networking
  • “Where to start with my project?”
  • Strategies for coping / mental wellbeing when working as a social entrepreneur?

Other topics were suggested and upvoted, but we didn’t have time to discuss them so we may return to them in future events:

  • Working multiple permanent jobs and/or reducing hours
  • Topics for future Manchester Social Entrepreneurs events / discussions
  • Transitioning from emergency COVID-19 response to “business as usual”
  • In-kind support activities for social entrepreneurs
  • Employability and skills required to work in the SE sector.

We agreed to take the following acitions as a result of the discussions:

  • We will compile a list of active networks and to share with the community
  • We will organise networking sessions and showcases from social enterprises
  • We will create a collection of resources which could help new social enterprises
  • We will create a forum where the community can continue these conversations and share knowledge and resources. We will consider sites such as LinkedIn, Meetup for this.

If you’d like to discuss some of these topics, or have an issue you’d like to discuss with other social entrepreneurs, please look out for future Lean Coffee events.