Urekaweekend 6 - Social enterprise edition

Why

Too few activities that are organized these days follow through with action. Urekaweekend was devised to fill up that space - events that are action orientated.

What

An event where we match a bunch of people with ideas thy have yet to e developed. Over the course of 2 and a half days. They will be put together for one simple reason. Injecting a little ingenuity and elbow grease to get these wonderful ideas out to the world in general. 

The participants that attend a Urekaweekend decide what they want to tackle over the weekend and come out at the end with several developed projects. Attendees are responsible for bringing the same desire and passion to the project and walk out of the room with the task at hand, in a short 25 hours 

Urekaweekend is not a conference. Spend some time getting to know others at the event.  It is an opportunity to build community and work with great individuals interested in the same thing all while building an exciting project/company.

Who

Seeing as the highest value is derived from participation from people that stand to gain the most from positive action, it is crucial that selection of participants is done on stringent criteria. Participants are usually action oriented and fairly positive people that are outspoken and value doing over complaining.

Lecturers / Student Advisors are encouraged to keep the number of participants as tight as possible, up to 20 student participants is workable for each session.

It is paramount that you plan your schedule in advance as there is nothing more disrupting than the wedding or birthday party that you have to attend in the middle of a session. I know it sounds harsh but thats just the truth of the matter - if you want the weekend to be effective you need to filter out the distractions and keep your head clear. So leave your boyfriends and girlfriends, homework and officework dogs and cats at home - just bring your laptop and awesome sauce.

How

Urekaweekends don't really have hard and fast agendas. Urekaweekend provides guidance and just general times when the building is open for everyone to meet and work. If you are an agenda driven person, Urekaweekend might not be for you. The agenda is based on the people, ideas and mood of the participants during the weekend. There is no set activity list for Urekaweekend. The closest thing to a schedule would be as follows 

Session 1 - The pitch

Introduction and networking with all participants, once everyone remembers everyone else's name lets talk about the various ideas that are looming and are looking to be built. During this time participants will come together around ideas and find loose teams to form up with. Each team will have to by the end of session one figure out what goals they are gunning for and stick to that throughout the remaining sessions. 

Session 2 - Breakout the Brain Juice 

Finding a nice breakout area to discuss the idea and how to execute it teams split up and attend to their focus points. Teams encouraged to communicate amongst themselves (make lots of noise) and to see what other teams are working on and if there are areas where they can strengthen their proposition. 

At the end of this session each team should have a brief 5 minute elevator pitch on what they are cooking over the weekend. Teams should forego complex solutions at this point, instead focus should be given to small wins and short term goals that can be achieved in Session 3. 

Session 3 - Call to Arms!

You can get going on developing your ideas now. No need to wait for later (action is a dish best served now). Need to Mobilize people - thats where you have facebook, need to share ideas - thats where you have a blog or twitter. All the tools are available, just have to seize them. As the weekend draws to a close each team will share what they have learned and what they have accomplished. 

If you need more time than Urekaweekend then you need to figure out how you can stretch the support of your team

Participants will then be inducted into the Urekaweekender list - where they can find like minded Urekaweekenders and keep track of what everyone is doing and how far they have gone.