From 28th-30th of March, I was part of the team running the fantastic Oxford Jam. For those of you that were there, I hope you had a great time, and for those of you that weren't, allow me to explain a little more about it, and why you should go next year.

We have studiously avoided commenting in any press coverage on the launch of Big Society Capital (BSC) today.   As an applicant for funding, it would strain credibility for us to pose as independent observers of this new institution.   Cynical readers have therefore been warned!   More charitable readers of our blog also have the information they need to take what we say with a "pinch of salt", should they choose to do so. Nevertheless, today's announcement is an important milestone for the sector and we feel obliged to offer some comment on it, as we have done in previous posts on the BSC. We offer four observations.

I've always had a pathological fear of heights. So, when I was offered the chance to offer a bit of mentorship while taking a ride on the Ferris Wheel in Liverpool, I had mixed feelings.

This invitation came from the charismatic founder of SMARTA, Shaa Wasmund. Would I like, Shaa asked, to be part of The Revolution on Liverpool's Echo Wheel. All I had to do was endure two revolutions while giving an entrepreneur some business advice. "You'd be perfect," Shaa pitched - well, how could I resist?

The large US based software and content management company, Salesforce, is most definitely not a social enterprise. Its attempt to hijack this increasingly popular term, as part of its recent marketing campaign, actually risks harming the social enterprise sector. This is not to suggest that Salesforce. is a bad business. In fact, they operate a good contact management system, used by us here at ClearlySo, and we understand they give away some of their licenses to charities. This makes them a progressive business, but not a social enterprise or a social business. Why, given ClearlySo's general aversion to time-wasting debates about definitions, are we taking such a strong stand on this recent development?

Last week Liverpool hosted the Global Entrepreneurs Congress 2012, a huge event bringing together 3000 people from 100 different countries to make up the "largest gathering of start-up champions from around world." I was a part of this gathering as a member of the Intuit 100UP group with our new social enterprise Balloon Kenya having been voted one of the 100 most promising young start-ups in the UK.

We all have stuff lying round that we no longer need. Elliot Stock felt the need to stop this waste and has therefore launched Ditto, a company set up to help us find a use for all our unwanted junk. I spoke with him to find out how he did it and if he had a need for any antique high quality novelty toys from the eighties.

By Rodney Schwartz and Tom Cropper

For much of the last month A4e, the business set up to get long term unemployed back into work, has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. Such was the clamour that we set up a review into their position on the ClearlySo directory. Now the dust has settled somewhat it seems prudent to announce a decision.

Defenders of unfettered free market capitalism, as it has been practiced for the past three decades, are diminishing in number. The model has been proven to be utterly unsustainable--a false economy.

It was a penitent sounding Vikram Akula who, at the Social Enterprise Conference in Harvard in February, claimed "Yunus was right", on the issue of microfinance. It was in effect a stark admission that his profit seeking approach to microfinance has failed.

In a week which saw the role of profit seeking businesses in the public sector come under immense scrutiny, the passing of Chris White's Social Value Bill could not have come at a more opportune time.