Oli Barrett likes connecting people. “Usually when individuals go into a room they seek out and talk to the people they know already,” he says. “I love the idea of putting them together with strangers. That’s when things happen.”
In fact, whether in a previous job as a Butlins redcoat or in his current role as social entrepreneur and catalyst to the digital masses, he’s made quite a career out of communication.
The 31-year-old spreads the word to his 699 Twitter followers via his Daily Networker blog, through numerous companies and good causes, and with regular “speed networking” bursts – three-minute exchanges between strangers with ideas, a concept he brought to the UK.
“He’s a promoter, a booster, and that’s all he does,” says David Bailey, CEO of film-tech start-up Short Fuze, who saw Barrett’s techniques during last year’s Web Mission, which took 20 small UK firms to Silicon Valley. “Oli was the grease on the wheels. There was great access to big players. We got real business out of it.”
It opened Barrett’s eyes, too. “Entrepreneurs’ status there is so high. Here, it’s seen simply as an aspiration.” He’s reluctant to criticise Britain, though – after all, Barrett is involved in a slew of government-backed projects. But he can’t help admire “the way in which a conversation emerges in Silicon Valley in which people try to add something to an idea rather than knock it down”.
He sits on Gordon Brown’s Council on Social Action, which brings together “innovators” and business leaders to suggest ideas to the government. It lets him meet the PM several times a year and influence how technology is used to tackle social problems.
His pet CoSA project is the Catalyst Awards, which in 2008 recognised Wheelies, a Second Life nightclub for the disabled; Liftshare, a web car-sharing directory; and Slivers of Time, an employment site that makes use of workers’ spare hours.
Oh, and he helped launch SockRush, a “sock-subscription” service; promotes language teaching via FriendsAbroad; and is proud of the Make Your Mark with a Tenner campaign, which gives thousands of schoolchildren £10 to boost a good cause.
In some ways he’s an odd contrast: as he enthuses about how technology can connect people to solve problems, he celebrates the government’s “power to convene” – displaying an eagerness to exploit the political system that open-source pioneers may have scorned, but to which he has been given the keys. It’s a dynamic mix of idealism added to the certain knowledge that you need contacts “to make stuff happen”.
Why Barrett matters:
Sits on the Prime Minister’s Council on Social Action Co-organises Web Mission, taking UK entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley Founded SockRush, Make Your Mark With a Tenner and FriendsAbroad Co-created the UK Catalyst Awards to back socially beneficial technologies Runs speed-networking events
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
