Hard to s...ustain

I was at a 'do' at Hereford's Shire Hall.

It's the same place I attended for a previous council sponsored event, for Herefordshire's Hydro power future. And yet again I was truly inspired by the organisation behind it all.

For a start, I only learned of it in a local paper last week, in a section for a market town to the North of the county, labelled "Let's Go Greener". It had an email to sign up, which I did, but I never heard back. So I risked a trip anyway. Fortunately it was still happening. Unfortunately I'd got the impression it was a day-long exhibition I got pop into (who can take all day off???), when in fact it was a bunch of speeches and huddles to try and 'understand' what sustainability and social enterprise meant. Plus the main speakers had apparently come, spoke and scooted off so no one-on-one there. So I am in no real position really to comment too much.

What I do know is that the acoustics pretty much meant no one could hear anyone else. And the A/V was almost impossible to view which, in light of my PowerPoint phobia, may have been a good thing.

For the bit I arrived at it seems the county suffers from a lack of engineers and trained staff. By some coincidence, that very same evening I was at a Ross-based event where a whole load of guys in suits turned up to say how awful things were because of X,Y & Z but they were all here and listening.

One thing that has struck me is that when it comes to the rather popular catch-all of social enterprise, it is simply too broad to make any reasonable comparison between those who fall under it and what they are trying to do. When it comes to delivery and funding and discussion and, etc...how can, say, Junkk.com be equated to a guy on a grant helping with housing for drug addicts? Yet at such events we are lumped together and competing to be heard. Daft.

And one thing I would mention to some of those who 'work' for entities that do not operate to generate enough value that they can make a profit: frankly if you don't, or can't, make at least a small profit, it would be hard to call any business sustainable. So why being 'for profit' often precludes entry to/partcipation in mnay evnts in the name of sustainable communities is hard to grasp.