Make Your Mark Blog

Interest piece about a researcher who disputes Malcolm Gladwell’s vaunted “Tipping Point” model of how social ideas spread in society.

What do you reckon? Are Super Influencers overrated?

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/28/tippingpoint-skeptic.html

Melody, an ambassador for Make Your Mark in the Music Business, tells us a bit about herself…

Hello everyone

My name is Melody and I am a singer-songwriter from west London. I released my song ‘Boytoy’ myself last year with electro and garage remixes to great acclaim, and my vinyl sold well in Ibiza, Sweden and England. Inspired by Madonna, Roison Murphy and Donna Summer(to name a few) I am currently in the studio recording an album with an eclectic group of new producers and Dj’s.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is calling on communities across the country to identify the local heroes who they believe should be honoured by the nation.

Gordon Brown said:
“All of us know someone in our street or someone in our community who spends all their spare time helping others. They are always raising money for charity, running errands for elderly neighbours, coaching kids, or doing something to bring the town together.

“Carers, helpers, or just good neighbours, nothing is ever too much trouble or too much effort: they are the people who inspire us all, make our lives happier or easier, and make our neighbourhoods safer and stronger. They are the everyday heroes who make Britain great.

Channel 4 is looking for 16 to 21 year olds…

…to take part in a new and exciting interactive project.

In the next 12 months are you hoping to achieve a certain goal? Deal with personal issues? Make a professional dream a reality? Address relationship problems with family or friends? Get your life back on track? Are you willing to be filmed for the next 365 days?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then they want to hear from you.

To find out more please email [email protected] or call 0207 960 2009

Hey people for those of you who don’t know me, I’m Oggie, I’m a singer songwriter mostly known on the UK Garage scene, I had my first Garage hit in 2004 with Danny C on a track called ‘Follow Me’, I then released a solo track called ‘YOU’, and last year released a single with Ed Case called ‘All I Wanna Do’. This year ill be releasing a new version of YOU with Agent X, I’m currently recording an album and just put a band together so look out this summer cos we will be everywhere! (Lol).

Enterprising Young Brits finalists Mark Bowness and Ben Keene featured in the BBC documentary Paradise or Bust last night.

The documentary follows them trying to launch Tribe Wanted, a sustainable eco-community and interactive online community on the island of Fiji.

The documentary is repeated tonight on BBC2 at 11.20pm, check it out…

Find out more about Tribe Wanted at http://www.makeyourmark.org.uk/get_involved/enterprising_young_brits/2007_finalists#mark_bowness_ben_keene

and http://www.tribewanted.com/

Working from the West Country market town of Tavistock, Sam Deeks and his partner Clare Winsor are providing people in Devon and Cornwall with invaluable advice about local networking opportunities.

The G2B@ Podcast is a free weekly podcast which started just three months ago in October 2007. Sam explained that he wanted to create something relatively inexpensive that would promote networking opportunities in a simple and straightforward way. He felt that new businesses and young entrepreneurs were without a good resource to inform them about networking locally but that people wanted to hear about events that would be “good to be at”, hence G2B@.

I went to a drinks reception last night at a new members club in London - One Alfred Place is somewhere you can work from, run meetings, store luggage, enjoy the fantastic food (haggis scotch eggs - inspired!) and view the amazing art on the walls.

It could be a great place for entrepreneurs who are either based outside London but need to be here a lot or who have limited office space and need somewhere more swanky in which to do business. Unlike other places it is only open until 9pm so doesn’t convert into a late night drinking den and it seems like they’ve really focused on the details to make it work for their members. Suggest you check it out as there is a discount for founding members…

It was worth me battling with delayed trains to get to the rainy and windswept city of Canterbury last week since it played host to some of Kent’s most innovative and enterprising young people last week.

The University of Kent organised a competition that brought together schools, Further Education Colleges and University students together to use their enterprise skills to solve a challenge.

The challenge was:

“to develop a blue print for a sustainable community town, one that will retain our towns and Cities unique community spirit. Your blue print can be a generic plan for a new community or you can focus on your own local town or City.”

Run by the Federation of Small Businesses the British Small Business Champions competition has been launched. There is a young entrepreneur category as well as most promising new business and regional / national ‘champions’. You can find more info here…

http://www.fsb.org.uk/data/default.asp?id=41&loc=bsbc

last week i attended a really great event - the world entrepreneurship summit, in central london. it was the very first of its kind and i was pleased to be manning a make your mark / global entrepreneurship week stand. i met a lot of great people from around the world - ethiopia, hungary, bulgaria, sierra leone, kenya, canada - who were all similarly enthusiastic about entrepreneurship and the social good it can do.

Back in mid-October Helen and I attended Enterprising St Helens Enterprise Residential. The two days, aimed to get groups of school children from across the borough, thinking about enterprise. Our prescence there, was to tell them about Make Your Mark, set a speednetworking session and to try and catalyse some Clubs. We brought along one of our local ambassadors Chris Bradshaw from Urban Revolution, who was issuing a real life challenge facing his business - trying to market his UR1 Anti-Gum bin. For the challenge, the schools had to set up a Club, identify what roles they would take within it and speednetwork with other schools to start their market research int. Upon returning to school, the pupils worked one on one with the enterprise advisors, to adorn the bin with a design that encourages people to use it and discourages them from dropping gum. They then had to come up with a marketing campaign to get their fellow pupils to use it, sumitting their entries in time for Enterprise Week.

Make Your Mark Connector Heather Wilkinson and her Striding Out network are launching a new competition for budding entrepreneurs to showcase their innovative business ideas. The BIG LEAP competition is looking for young dynamic people aged 18-30, with fresh, innovative, high growth business ideas, who are ready to take the leap to turn their idea into a reality.In 2008, the Big Leap Competition is focusing on entrepreneurial ideas within the leading market sectors of:-

• Information Technology and Communications
• New Media
• Creative Industries
• Environmental Solutions
• Product Innovation and Manufacturing

The Big Green Challenge, is launched today by NESTA to encourage people across the
UK to work together to tackle climate change. They are making available a massive one million pounds for great ideas to save the planet.

A new generation of socially networked entrepreneurs is emerging with tens of thousands of potential customers recruited through websites such as MySpace, YouTube, Bebo and Facebook. Research for MySpace has found that 14pc of 18- to 24- year-old users earn money through their web pages.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml;jsessionid=Y5KO5DXZZVPQDQFIQMFCFFOAVCBQYIV0?xml=/money/2008/01/08/ybsocial108.xml

If you’re making money through social networking sites we’d like to hear your about your success. Please email [email protected] with your story…