Over the next week I’ll be attending and blogging two very different conferences: the Fall 2010 Communications Network Conference (ComNet010) and the 2010 Social Capital Markets Conference (SOCAP10). ComNet010, a partnership between the Communications Network and CommA, attracts an audience primarily of foundation communication personnel. SOCAP10 attracts an audience of investors, entrepreneurs, nonprofits, philanthropies, and donors.
One could presume that these conferences have nothing to do with each other. And, for the most part, that’s probably accurate. ComNet010 will have sessions focused on the power of stories to change lives, using crowdsourcing to find better answers and solutions from groups, and using entertainment to advance social change. SOCAP10 will have sessions focused on impact investments, alternative and innovative social financing, harnessing mobile technology for social enterprise, and value-driven allocation of philanthropic resources will have sessions on accessing social investment markets. Interestingly, both will have sessions focused on how to inspire and engage individuals to give or invest more.
However, the two conferences do share some common challenges: how to best communicate your work to an uninformed audience and how to explain complex technical approaches simply without getting sucked into a vortex of jargon. I wrote a while back on the importance of philanthropy embracing transparency. In my opinion, an adherence to transparency and simplified communication needs to apply to the social capital markets and philanthropy sectors as well in order to make the sectors easier to understand and access for a lay audience.