April 15th, 2011 | World Entrepreneurship Day

World Entrepreneurship Day India collaborated with YourStory and IBF Media to host an innovative and inspiring event in Bangalore which saw entrepreneurs, students and would be entrepreneurs gather to exchange thoughts and ideas on entrepreneurship and innovation.

The speakers and topics included:

* Amit Singh spoke on his experience organizing “Startup Saturday” events for Headstart network and the new “Startup Buddies” initiative

* Sagar Gubbi from Ecoforge on “”Financing Renewable Energy and Green Businesses in India: Opportunities and Risks” .

* Jyoti Ramnath from craftmygift on “Women Entrepreneurship”: Avenues for Women to move on the path of entrepreneurship

* Srikrishna SridharMurthy from Sattva on “In search of a development sector ‘market’.”

* Namrata Shah on “Micro-preneurship in textile design” and showed slides about some of the interesting work she is doing. She also spoke about the British Council Young Creative Entrepreneur Program and how it has helped her in her business.

* Alban Leveau-Vallier and Olivier Cohen – de Timary will spoke about their journey to many countries meeting social entrepreneurs and had some really cool videos to share with the people gathered.

WED India’s partnership with YourStory also resulted in a series of interviews with entrepreneurs featured on their website throughout the week.

A big thank you to Vallabh and the team of volunteers in India who made this event such a huge success! Such an inspiration!

Wow, it’s hard to believe that WED 2010 was almost a month ago already! It was such an amazing success that I will have to restrain my gushing or we’ll be here all day. Over the next week the WED Team will put together a series of blog posts with details of some of the most impressive WED celebrations around the world.

But firstly, the entire WED team would like to thank absolutely everyone for their involvement and assistance in making WED the biggest and best yet. We already have some huge plans for 2011 and look forward to getting even more countries and organisations involved around the world.

WED has received an enormous amount of mentions in blogs, tweets and online articles over the past few weeks, which would not have been possible without the WED Country Champions and volunteers dotted around the globe, so a big thank you to everyone.

Now, let the stories begin.

This past Friday, April 16th, 2010, marked the 2^nd annual World Entrepreneurship Day, a 24-hour global initiative dedicated to spurring economic growth and creativity. Thousands of individuals in more than 30 countries joined together to recognize the heroes of modern society that are entrepreneurs.

To kick-off the global celebration, 250 entrepreneurs, designers, educators, and dignitaries gathered in the United Nations Headquarters in New York City on Wednesday evening, April 14^th, for the first-ever WED 2010 Kick-off Conference. Co-founder of World Entrepreneurship Day, 21 year old college junior Lauren Amarante, opened up the event by tagging the gathering as a “celebration of all things entrepreneurial.”  With a lineup of speakers that ranged from entrepreneur/cosmonaut Esther Dyson to fashion entrepreneur Marc Ecko and Chief Marketing Officer of GE Beth Comstock, all in attendance quickly agreed on the diversity of the event. Just as varied were the topics discussed, which covered everything from education and cupcakes to “championing innovation at the highest levels.”

Inc. Magazine wrote a story on the WED 2010 Kick-off Conference that really captured its purpose and overall impact.  Additionally, summaries of each talk will be made available on the World Entrepreneurship Day website in the coming week. Meanwhile, here are some samples:

“It’s about job creation. We call it unemployment. What you call wealth creation, we call poverty alleviation… it’s really two sides of the same coin – we just look at it through a different prism.”  - Amir Dossal; Executive Director, United Nations of the Office for Partnerships

“There is a genetic difference that needs to be recognized early on in entrepreneurs, and that is tenacity. That is the key genome… and it is about taking ten punches to the stomach and getting up for the eleventh.” - Leonard Brody, best-selling author and business visionary

“The mindset hackers have is optimized for discovery. When handed a device, an average person will say, ‘what does this do?’ A hacker will say ‘what can I make this do?’” - Pablos Holman, hacker, futurist, and inventor at Intellectual Ventures Lab

“In law school, Facebook and Twitter were seen as distractions. I remember minimizing the screen in class when my professor would walk by.” -Lev Ekster, founder of CupcakeStop, which relies on communicating with clients through tweets and other social- and location-aware media. Ekster began selling cupcakes out of a van after his legal job opportunities seemed bleak.

“I would love to be a 30-year-old in India or Brazil right now. There’s so much going on with the economy…there are huge opportunities in energy, transportation, health care…”- Beth Comstock, chief marketing officer and SVP of GE, when asked about new arenas ripe for entrepreneurship.

Those in the audience were of no less esteem, featuring guests ranging from billionaire Samuel Irving Newhouse Jr. (Owner of Conde-Nast Publications and Founder of Advance Publications) to New York Giants starting linebacker Gerris Wilkinson.

But the UN conference was only the beginning! 36 hours later, on World Entrepreneurship Day (4/16), thousands of individuals in 30+ countries joined together for a 24-hour celebration of entrepreneurship, innovation, and creativity. Below are some examples –

• Neil Huele, a 20 year old in the Philippines (the 12^th most populous country in the world) joined the efforts of his mentors, his peer leaders, and his community organizations to convene 5,000 people for an entrepreneurship convention in his country’s largest mall, the Ayala Center. WED in the Philippines concluded with a celebratory concert. Watch their promotional video here. Find WED Philippines on Facebook.
• Radmil Polenavik of Macedonia hosted a countrywide business plan competition and conference for all Macedonian high schools. Speakers include: Minister of Economy, Director Education Development, and the Minister of Education and Science. Find WED Macedonia on Facebook.
• Joel Bayubasire of the Demcratic Republic of Congo created the first-ever “WED Talent Show” to convene potential young cultural entrepreneurs to compete for a scholarship called “WED Prize” judged by entrepreneurs – the winners were awarded scholarships to attend the Arts Forum, a school where artistic youth learn how to become entrepreneurs.
• Ekow Kwansa of Accra, Ghana, in partnership with his local SIFE, CUC, and AIESEC chapters, organized a countrywide entrepreneurship conference and demo with distinguished entrepreneurial speakers. Find WED Ghana on Facebook.
• Tyler Metcalf of Arizona State University organized a full day of entrepreneurial activities that began with venture pitches and concluded with a conference whose speakers included two entrepreneurs that created billion-dollar companies, co-founder of Blackboard, and the co-founder of Coldstone Creamery. Find WED ASU on Facebook.
• Tran le Thanh Nhu of Singapore organized a speakers’ panel that included distinguished entrepreneurs like Jack Sim of World Toilet Organization, they interviewed community members on the topic of entrepreneurship, and they created multiple videos that brought awareness to the topic of entrepreneurship in Singapore. Find WED Singapore on Facebook.

World Entrepreneurship Day would like to thank its many partners, mentors, advisors, and supporters that have made all of this possible – they are the true heroes! … all of our advisors, especially Wendy Diamond of the fantastic Animal Fair Media, Inc., the United Nations Office for Partnerships, Amir Dossal, Suzette Limchoc, Bob Appel & Blaise Zerega of Fora.TV, Leigh Ferriss of GE, Christine Lagorio of Inc. Magazine, Mike Schreibman of Sweat Equity Enterprises, Steve Wozniak, David Pogue, Tim Draper, all of our Kick-off speakers (for having faith in us! ), Google’s Andrew Schulte, Alex Fielding, Alex Molde of Edloma Web Development & Design, Larry Benz of PhysicalTherapist.com, Arizona State University, all our team members, and OF COURSE all those who celebrated World Entrepreneurship Day – congratulations on your transformative work!!

Footage of the WED United Nations Kick-off Conference is available to view at Fora TV and photos are viewable here.

Videos made possible by our incredible partner, Fora.TV – click the image to see all WED Kick-off talks!

“A Celebration of the World’s Entrepreneurial Heroes”

Two weeks ago, WED was introduced to Amir Dossal at the United Nations Headquarters in NYC. Today, we are welcoming a crowd of 500+ entrepreneurial visionaries to their headquarters for a day of entrepreneurial brilliance and celebration! Scheduled for Wednesday, April 14th, this conference will be a kickoff to WED. All details may be found on our brand new event website.

Speakers include:

MARC ECKO – founder & chief creative officer, Marc Ecko Enterprises

MARIA BARTIROMO – CNBC, Closing Bell

BLAISE ZEREGA – CEO, Fora.TV

PETER THUM – Founder, Ethos Water & Giving Water
AMIR DOSSAL – Executive Director of the UNOP

HOWARD MORGAN – Partner, First Round Capital; Director, IdeaLab

ESTHER DYSON – Entrepreneur, Investor, Cosmonaut

WENDY DIAMOND – Chief Pet Officer, Animal Fair Media, Inc.

PABLOS HOLMAN – Futurist, Inventor, Security Expert, Hacker