Acumen Fund invades SoCap 2009 conference

It’s hard to miss the swell of excitement surrounding the SoCap09, the upcoming Social Capital Markets conference in San Francisco from September 1 - 3.  If you haven’t hear about it, Acumen Fund partner, NextBillion has an excellent series of blog posts that will convince you that its a can’t miss opportunity - here, here and here.  And if need MORE reasons to attend, check out Change.org’s series of spotlights on the conference.   Acumen Fund agrees with most of these reasons and will be sending a team to participate in the conference.  It will be a great opportunity to meet us and learn about some of the exciting projects we’ve been working on.  Here’s a list of the panels that Acumen Fund team members will be sitting on:

• Breakout Session # 1 on September 1st @ 3:30 - Sangeeta Chowdry will be on the “Disruptive Innovation” panel.  Along with Sally Madsen from IDEO, she’ll be sharing her experience with the Ripple Effect project - an innovative initiative to use design and business strategies to tackle the challenges of transporting and storing clean water in India and East Africa.
• Breakout Session #1 on September 2nd @11:15 - Rob Katz will be speaking on the “Measuring Life at the Base of the Pyramid: Scale and Leverage for the $2 a Day Population plenary.  Rob is the founder of NextBillion.net and co-author of the Next 4 Billion report
• Plenary panel on September 2nd @ 10:00 - Brian Trelstad will be on the “True Tales of Amazement and Horror From the Fundraising Circuit” hosted by Stuart Davidson from Labrador Ventures.
• Plenary Address on September 2nd @ 4:15 - Brad Presner will be participating on the “From IRIS to GIIRS to New Money” plenary.   Along with B-Lab and Rockefeller Foundation, this will be an unique opportunity to learn more about the emerging social metrics standards and the money the industry is hoping to attract.

Finally, whether you are at the conference or not, make sure to check in with NextBillion, a conference media partner, as they tweet and blog about the conference from the BoP perspective.

We hope to see you there!