Scaling up hot topic report

I thought the ‘Scaling Up’ Hot Topic was a brilliant generation of ideas and mutually understanding where we now need to be moving. Some of these thoughts of entrepreneurship, cooperative business and moving projects forward seemed to be on the surface with people. Project entrepreneurship talk really livened up the discussion; “starting projects rolling will save a group when it’s going a bit flat. What happens then is you find dormant members come out of the woodwork”. Did that not happen today?

The challenge of ‘creating a viral community brand’ collectively whilst in our own minds asking ourselves can I do my job in my local community sustainably as apposed to nationally at present was pertinent with the urban perspective for me.

‘Turning Transition initiatives into social enterprise’, “liveable wages”, “we need to get good at business plans and spreadsheets”, all seem an avenue but can seriously conflict with some values of the movement across the membership as a whole. I really liked the “Transition Dragons’ Den” idea (ironically). Can we make these needs and best practice sharing bite?

What is the community need? The Transition products then? As one of the soon be to be jobless graduates looking for ideas I can say using Google Analytics (free) on our website has taught us that last month over 90 search enquires to Transition Liverpool were for recycled bicycles. Interesting…

From Ed Houlden.