• SOCAP session organizers will receive a free ticket, but are otherwise responsible for their own travel and arrangements. Session speakers are given a discounted admission to the conference or can attend for only their session. As a session organizer, you need to make sure your proposed speakers understand this. If you have financial challenges, there are a variety of options for scholarships, volunteering and further discounted pricing. Please see the ‘Get Involved’ section for options. We ask that you consider your own ability to pay relative to others who could bring value to the event, but have financial hardship.
• SOCAP organizers and speakers are required to arrange and cover the costs of their own transportation and lodging.
• SOCAP organizers and speakers are required to work within the SOCAP team’s process and deadlines to ensure the best possible results. If they do not, the SOCAP team reserves the right to cancel their participation.

Anyone with an idea that’s related to social innovation is welcome to submit!

Pick your best idea for submission. Multiple submissions are allowed, but it is rare that more than one session is selected from the same organizer. We advise focusing your efforts on your strongest session idea.

No, unfortunately you cannot edit your submission after it’s submitted, so please prepare thoroughly. If you do have changes or additions, we encourage you to note them in the comments section of your idea.

No, we will not be accepting session ideas after the deadline, so we encourage you to submit early!

Keynote: A 10-12 minute talk that shares expertise, an inspiring story, a call to action, or key insight for the SOCAP community. These sessions require preparation, rehearsal, and excellent on-stage delivery.

Panel: A panel is composed of approximately 3-5 people and a panel moderator. Ideal format for highlighting differing perspectives on a topic, the ecosystem of stakeholders affecting an issue, or a case study. Panels are oftentimes part presentation, conversation and Q&A with the audience.

Interactive Workshop: Workshops, design sessions, intentional networking, and other facilitated modes that help attendees meet a valuable stranger, collaborate, dig in, and work through their challenges.

Docent/Curated Experience: Outside of scheduled sessions, curated experiences exist around the Fort Mason campus to engage attendees in different ways – they spark engagement and new ways of thinking.

Film / Music / Art: Artistic forms of creating and advancing social and environmental change, which may fit within scheduled content or elsewhere in the SOCAP experience.

Think through what level of experience the audience will need to interact thoughtfully with your session.

Beginner: Very basic information (0-1 years of experience)

Intermediate: More complicated information (2-3 years of experience)

Advanced: Expert level information (5+ years of experience)

N/A: Amount of experience is irrelevant

Tagging helps SOCAP staff understand the types of ideas on the platform, and also helps all of us wanting to vote and participate discover ideas related to our interests. We ask and highly recommend that you tag wisely. Under-tagging or not tagging at all will lessen the chances of people discovering your idea. On the flip side, over-tagging with topics that are not relevant (in order to show up in more results, for example) distorts our data and only frustrates voters and participants interested in seeing accurate idea search results. We have attempted to provide a wide-range of suggested tags on areas that the SOCAP community often work. We ask that you stick to this list as much as possible, particularly when it comes to different variations of a word. For example: If you think to tag with “innovate”, “innovating”, or “innovator”, please see (below) that the word to use is “innovation”. This allows for greater discoverability of your ideas.

Suggested Tags

Geography tags: Africa, Asia, North America, Latin America, Europe, Middle East
Theme tags: Impact Investing, Meaning, Divest/Invest, Financial Inclusion, Neighborhood Economics, Professional Development, Living in the Future, Supply Chain
Other main topics: health, education, design, technology, data, energy, environment, food systems, government, leadership, economic development, entrepreneurship, art, innovation, diversity, activism, local, global, research, inspiration

Supporting materials can be anything that provides more context on the idea that you’ve submitted. This can include relevant links to: presentations, articles, videos, companies, projects, reports, etc.

No, SOCAP does not share your info publicly. We collect emails of all individuals who submit sessions for follow-up if your panel makes it into the finals, there are any questions about your submission, etc.

Be thoughtful and intentional about the mix of participants that you suggest for your idea. Consider diversity in experience, opinions, expertise, backgrounds, geographic locations and more. We will require that all SOCAP15 panels include gender diversity as well as racial or ethnic diversity so participants can view perspectives from many possible lenses. It will be your responsibility to bring a balanced representation to the conversation.

Yes, but please note that there is only one space available for Organizer Name & Organizer Email in the idea submission form. Please fill in the information for the individual who will be the organizer and the participant in the SOCAP session. They will be responsible as SOCAP’s contact for the idea.

A title that is as short and as descriptive as possible.

No matter how familiar you may be with your topic, remember that most of the people reading your description will not have the same field of reference. Please take this into consideration by clearly stating how your session is important to the social capital ecosystem, and be straightforward about the potential value. In other words, avoid jargon.

Proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization are always important, as they help ensure a diverse community understands your idea. We recommend you have someone proofread your idea before submitting.

We strongly advise against blatant advertorial content. We trust your judgment on whether the idea you suggest does this. SOCAP is about exchanging ideas and pushing the field forward. Most of us come to SOCAP for authentic conversations and explorations, and thus shy away from overly advertorial topics. Exceptions we’ve found to be successful at SOCAP are panels around the launch of a recent study or report, and workshops that give participants a sample framework or tools that may be part of a broader service.

Presenting a session at SOCAP takes a considerable amount of time, preparation, and thought. The items in the Agreement section represent the minimum commitment required to take on the task of organizing a session for such a large event. If you are not ready to make that kind of commitment, entering an idea into SOCAP Open might not be the best choice.

We ask that you do your best to confirm that speakers are interested in participating before you submit your session idea. The speakers listed for a session will have an impact on the selection process.

While we strongly recommend that you confirm your speakers before you make your entry, you can still enter the name and fill in the information about your relationship with the speaker (including if you do not know them) in the unconfirmed box.

Moderators are highly suggested for panels, and are usually a neutral party that understands the topic and can keep the session focused and balanced between other participants.

The social capital market is being built by individuals from around the world, diverse in gender, ethnicity, location, expertise, opinion and more. We will require that all SOCAP15 panels include gender diversity as well as racial or ethnic diversity so participants can view perspectives from many possible lenses.

When submitting your idea, we have created a default opt-in for you to receive an email notification when people comment on your idea. We highly encourage monitoring your idea’s comment feed and engaging with the people who are interested in contributing and discussing your idea.

Absolutely. Rallying your friends and associates to vote for your session proposal demonstrates energy, motivation and organizational ability. All of these skills are important when it comes to organizing a successful session for SOCAP. Please remember that high voting totals alone will NOT guarantee you a speaking slot and that online self-promotion is best when done appropriately and in moderation.

Typically one hour; please advise if you have a different session format that does not fit that time frame or would span multiple sessions.

You can find a selection of video excerpts from past SOCAPs by visiting the SOCAPmarkets YouTube Channel.

SOCAP traditionally hosts 100+ sessions of various types at our flagship event in San Francisco. As we have in the past, we will be developing content independent of SOCAP Open. This is our third year democratizing the programming of the event, after including over 25 ideas from SOCAP Open in 2014! We are excited to see what emerges here and hope to include a similar number of sessions in 2015.

Voting from the public accounts for about 30% of the decision-making process. The remainder of our decision-making process lies with our SOCAP programming staff (40%) and advisory team (30%).

Anyone who has access to the Internet can vote.

You can ‘vote up’ a session once per day.

The core purpose of SOCAP Open is to provide our community with a greater opportunity to co-create SOCAP in the months leading up to the event — to crowdsource ideas, make those ideas visible to everyone, engage in dialogue, and indicate which ideas you’d like to see at SOCAP via the voting function. While receiving votes is relatively important, we’d rather focus our community’s attention on the ideas and not the voting status.

This is taken into consideration in our selection process. Voting from the public only accounts for 30% of our selection. Therefore, if your idea shows great promise but has not received as many votes relative to other ideas, we will take that into consideration.

The Advisory Board is a group of experienced industry professionals, whose advice and insights about programming are trusted by the SOCAP staff.

SOCAP15 will be focused within a number of core themes. While we do seek supporting content within those themes, we are also very interested in having SOCAP Open help us discover content that we would not have found otherwise. We want SOCAP15 to be a representation of what our community is witnessing globally, and therefore welcome any and all ideas.

No. While we recognize that there are some individuals who continue to provide leading expertise, we also greatly value the participation of new talent, perspectives and experience.

Session organizers who are selected will receive a complimentary SOCAP15 ticket. Other speakers will be able to purchase a discounted ticket to the conference, or receive a session pass for the session they are speaking in. Our discounted rate recognizes speakers as part of the community, while acknowledging that they should be compensated for investing their time, talent and resources to contribute to a session.

No. SOCAP is unable to provide travel or lodging for speakers.

Our goal is for all sessions to meet their fullest potential. In order to support this, SOCAP will provide you with suggested timelines, best practices for session moderation and preparation, available resources and our staff’s advice to support your success. However, there is also a limit to our capacity when supporting 100+ sessions therefore, much of your success relies on your own independent work and preparation.