Make Your Mark Blog

You can find a full list of the events taking place for Global Entrepreneurship Week at www.enterpriseweek.org.uk but here is a few of our favourites:

Monday 17 will see a flagship event In the current economic downturn, can entrepreneurs change the world? taking place as part of Chain Reaction. This unique gathering of policy makers, government ministers including Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, young people, global fellows, entrepreneurs and thought-leaders will start a worldwide conversation.

The fourth annual Make Your Mark Challenge – the UK’s biggest live one day enterprise challenge for schools and colleges - will kick start activity for students. It has been awarded the Inspire Mark by London 2012, and over 55,000 students will be taking part.

Through the week Unleash It! - one of the signature activities for Global Entrepreneurship Week - will be encouraging people from all over the world to visit www.unleashingideas.org/unleash and address challenges set by individuals and organisations worldwide, including IBM, Jelly Belly UK and the Federation of City Gardens.

Ruth Badger and Levi Roots will be among the speakers at the 4 Entrepreneurs event in Hertford on Monday 17. Young people will be given the opportunity to quiz the panel and pitch ideas.

Carl Hopkins from C4’s The Secret Millionaire will launch the week in Yorkshire & Humber.

In Birmingham Ian Austin, Minister for the West Midlands, will launch the new Aston Villa Football Club Enterprise Academy.

Across England and Wales, Environment Agency staff will take part in activities including speed networking to encourage knowledge sharing, and Dragon’s Den-style pitches to find new business ideas.

Black Boys in Business will showcase inspirational stories and workshops with support provided by Barclays, BBC Radio London and Voice Newspaper in Tottenham, London.

Serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist, James Caan, will be delivering the keynote speech at Village Drinks Business Club on Monday evening.

Tuesday 18 sees countries around the world holding ‘speednetworking’ events as part of Speednetwork the Globe which will get established and aspiring entrepreneurs talking to each other and sharing ideas.

There will be several large speednetworking events in Central London – including City Hall, The London Eye – and the rest of the UK. Similar events take place globally, including the British Embassy in Warsaw, Poland, the first place in the world to see the sun in New Zealand and on the steps of the Opera House in Sydney, Australia.

European Young Professionals London will be hosting a Speednetwork the Globe event with inspiring speakers, Shed Simove and Shaa Wasmund.

The University of Chicago will celebrate the week with events at its campuses in London, Chicago and Singapore. In London they will host an interactive event with investors.

Presidents of student enterprise societies around the world will be video speednetworking online – hosted by YouNoodle, NCGE and Make Your Mark via speeddate.co.uk

The World Needs More Entrepreneurs is the Global Entrepreneurship Week parliamentary reception bringing together parliamentarians, young entrepreneurs and policy stakeholders.

On Women’s Enterprise Day, Wednesday 19, the Pocket the Problem exhibition will launch at City Hall, London, show casing entries from London school girls who customised Clippykit bags to highlight issues that matter to them, including knife crime and the elderly.

Women Helping Women, Aim high, think big! is an all day event. Taking place at the UK’s first purpose built Women’s Business Centre, it includes inspiring workshops and networking.

The British Library will run two panel events; one to celebrate female inventors where an audience will hear stories from top women innovators and the other entitled Small Business, Global Ambition.

A panel discussion will take place at Foyles bookshop in London on Wednesday evening. Among those in the hot seat will be Rachel Bridge, enterprise journalist and author and Penny Newman, head of the Fifteen Foundation.

everywoman will host its eighth annual conference, the UK’s largest one day conference for women business owners, on Women’s Enterprise Day with Ruby Wax among the inspiring female speakers.

The Pink Shoe Club will host ten afternoon tea enterprise discussions, which will culminate in the Annual Enterprise Debate at the House of Commons hosted by MP Theresa May.

In other parts of the country, leading female entrepreneur and founder of Ultimo lingerie, Michelle Mone will address the South Tyneside Means Business’ celebration. The University of Chichester’s Enterprising Women event will give Year 10 and 11 girls the chance to meet and network with successful women in their area.

In the West Midlands, SWEDA’s Women’s Business Club will be encouraging members to bring their daughters to hear and meet inspiring women.

Also on Wednesday, 14-30 year olds who are keen to get into the music industry will attend Backstage Pass - a networking event where they will come face-to-face with some of the music industry’s biggest hitters, organised by the BPI.

The best Web 2.0 companies in the UK will gather together to launch WebMission09 at Oracle’s UK Headquarters in London. WebMission is an annual competition that culminates in 20 top UK web industry companies flying out to San Francisco to share experiences with web ‘rock stars’ in the US.

Rounding off Wednesday is the launch of Achievers International with two parallel events taking place at the German Embassy in London, and the British Embassy in Berlin on the same night linked by webcam.

Social Enterprise Day, on Thursday 20, will see the launch of the One Water Project. Teams of young people in the UK will be challenged to come up with innovative and enterprising ways to sell One Water bottles. Profits made go to help those who need clean drinking water in Africa.

Social entrepreneurs are set to take Canary Wharf by storm with a day long interactive event run by UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs. Complete with a 50-square-metre TV screen and live debates, the event will demonstrate how social entrepreneurs can provide an alternative to the credit crunch.

Social Firms UK will launch their video “Social Firms: successful businesses, empowering employment” on Thursday 20. Narrated by Mark Durden-Smith of ‘I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here’ fame. The Social Enterprise Coalition will announce the winners of their photography competition.

DSGi Currys Design Challenge - inviting schools to find the next generation product to put in their stores.

On Friday 21, Manchester Evening Post is sponsoring a breakfast with Max Clifford who will encourage SMEs to embrace PR opportunities, in these difficult economic times.

Young Enterprise London will engage over one thousand students from the Lambeth area with a day-long master class, and GLE oneLondon will be holding a Youth Opportunities Extravaganza – both will unleash ideas from their local communities.

IBM and MIDAS, Manchester’s Inward Investment Agency, will be exploring how future developments in technology and innovation could impact on business at the Imperial War Museum North.

Barnardo’s will be challenging students on Friday to start with one green paperclip and then undertake a series of swaps or trades to acquire something of a higher value each time. At the end of the competition, all the items acquired will be sold to raise money for the charity.

Colchester Zoo will be holding a series of workshops for young people in Essex, with winning students getting the chance to adopt an animal!

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 16th, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Global Entrepreneurship Week, Innovation, MYM Challenge, Make Your Mark Ambassadors, Make Your Mark Clubs, Music, Social enterprise, The Debate, Web/Tech, Women's Enterprise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.