JEFF SKOLL LIFTS UP A PLANET

I am writing this on my laptop on the train from Oxford to London after attending and speaking at the annual Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship at the Said Business School of Oxford University. The wheels of the train go round and round, and so do my thoughts. To paraphrase a poem written by John Gillespie Magee just before he died at 19 during the Second World War, I feel as though “I put out my hand and touched the face of God”. Big words, but what actually happened west of London was even bigger.

Jeff Skoll was the first employee and President of eBay, the world’s online auction site. He led from the front in developing a new paradigm for peer to peer transactions that eliminates geography. In the process he changed the very essence of business around the world. He is a visionary, a big brain and a natural leader. He is also, after the IPO of eBay, one of the world’s wealthiest men.

Almost everyone in his situation does one of two things: they either relentlessly carry on trying to make gazillions of extra dollars, trying to prove that their early success wasn’t a fluke, or else they retire and try to find happiness in the illusory, never-ending pursuit of luxury, excess and dissipation. Yet others run after ultimate power, ultimate beauty, ultimate sex or the ultimately meaningful yacht…. of which in the end there is none available. S.S. Oxymoron indeed.

Jeff Skoll decided instead that he would try to make the world a much better place. This is all the more shocking because, of course, he actually can and he is. His vision was to live in a peaceful and mutually prosperous world where all people, regardless of location, race or economic status could reach their maximum potential, not hate each other and generally live happier. In mighty ways he’s doing exactly that, pulling huge levers which in turn coax great social wheels to turn. He’s a kind of Pied Piper of social change and 600 of us from 40 countries followed him to Oxford to try to help.

The Skoll Foundation invests tens of millions of dollars in social entrepreneurs through three award programs and celebrates them through special initiatives like the four-part PBS series, The New Heroes, hosted by Robert Redford. And it connects social entrepreneurs with philanthropists, nonprofit volunteers and professionals online at http://www.socialedge.org/ …. a kind of eBay for ideas on how to make the world a better place and concrete plans for how to get there. Nick Negroponte, writing one of those great essays on the last page of Wired Magazine once coined the phrase “the exogenous brain”: the idea that using the streamlined communication now possible on-line, we can save the planet by joining into new communities where one person states a challenge and two thousand other people easily contribute wave after wave of solutions which nourish and modify each other until the nut finally cracks and the challenge is addressed. The idea is that many people thinking together become a bigger brain than the sum of the parts. The Skoll World Forum is exactly that, among the spires and church bells of a University town where people have been thinking about life for a thousand years.

I was invited to speak on a panel with people like Jake Eberts who produced Gandhi. We addressed how popular media networks can be used to drive social change in innovative ways. And along the way, we discussed the Skoll Foundation’s licensing of Gandhi to translate it into Arabic and show it this year to virtually the entire population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Will the historic hero of passive resistance in pursuit of national aspiration prove a helpful role model in a tragic hot-spot of hatred and mutual distrust? Time will tell, but it sure beats the vortex of suicide bombings and as my Grandmother would have said, “It sure can’t hurt”. A big lever pulled, a great example of thinking outside a repetitive old box and maybe the best use of celluloid since Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List taught millions of school kids around the world where hatred leads.

Social entrepreneurs from around the world sat in Oxford with leading figures from Hollywood, big business, philanthropy and academia to discuss how to leverage networks for social change. It was like an ant hill of electric people who care about important things that make the planet revolve. Davos with a higher purpose. And we met and were inspired by some honest-to-goodness real heroes: Amitabha Sadangi, who worked out how to pump clean water to hundreds of villages. Nina Smith, who created the Rugmark so we Yuppies can avoid gracing our living rooms with carpets made by enslaved, kidnapped children. Rodrigo Baggio, who brought the Internet, computers and skills to thousands of kids living in slums. Gillian Caldwell, whose Witness program gets video cameras into the hands of oppressed victims around the world to shout for freedom and justice. Victoria Hale, who brings life-saving drugs to dying people who haven’t the money to buy them. Stan Thekaekara, who touches and lifts up the Untouchables…. Leverage, leverage, leverage.

And we talked about Participant Productions, Skoll’s film company that invests in inspiring stories to get them seen, developed, packaged, shot and distributed to the largest possible audience. If their Syriana, from the writer/director of Traffic and with George Clooney and Matt Damon in it, bursts forth in September through the marketing muscle of Warner Brothers, might we better understand the effects of our dependence on oil? Might there be a public mandate to cure the addiction? What a shocking thought: film measured by the metrics of saving our children’s future and not just by the metrics of studio economics. Who would have thunk it?

Jeff Skoll did. And in cafes and cloisters and restaurants and courtyards, six hundred accomplished experts met in an ancient haven of thinkers. They mapped out better futures and then went forth to make them happen. The wheels of the train go round and round. So do my thoughts, and so does our world.

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Peter Samuelson is founder of the Starlight-Starbright Foundation (http://www.slsb.org/) and of First Star (http://www.firststar.org/). He lives in Holmby Hills with his wife and four children and in his civilian life is a film producer. He can be reached at petersam@who.net.