When Peace Breaks Out

When Peace Breaks Out

About this programme by Peter Day

The buzz is tremendous. A cluster of like-minded people, networking like mad. It happens as the Skoll World Forum, which takes place every year in and around the Said Business School in Oxford.

The Forum's founder is the Canadian-born Jeff Skoll. He made a fortune as one of the leaders of the Internet auction site eBay, not a founder but the first employee, and writer of the fledgling company’s business plan.

He left eBay, still impatient to get things done.

He founded a movie company which has made films such as George Clooney’s "Good Night and Good Luck", a biopic about the broadcaster Edward R Murrow. Jeff Skoll also produced Al Gore’s documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", and the recent disturbing movie about American agriculture "Food Inc".

Jeff Skoll also turned his money and attention to social entrepreneurship, applying business insights to gaps in the social marketplace.

He did more than back individual projects. He has put a billion dollars worth of eBay stock into his Skoll Foundation with the aim of accelerating the impact of social entrepreneurs by investing in them, celebrating them and bringing them together.

Oxford, the home of lost causes, is lucky to have been chosen as the base for the Skoll's social entrepreneurship centre and the site of the annual Forum.

To the Forum come driven individuals with very specific ideas for improving the world, or a corner of it. They meet, exchange ideas and out of it perhaps new ideas are spawned.

One of this year's participants was Alberto Vollmer from Venezuela. He is the head of the family's Santa Teresa rum business who started training and employing local gang members after some of them raided the hacienda and stole a gun. We told his entrepreneurial story in Global Business a few months ago, so I did not put a microphone in front of him this time.

But I try to get to the Forum every year, eavesdropping on a few of the things that people are talking about for Global Business.

This programme taps into the expertise of a Skoll Forum panel on how these busy and engaged entrepreneurs can use social networks on mobile phones and the internet in their work to to improve society.

Hyperactive media meet hyperactive movers and shakers.