The lunch session began with a video with NACCE’s 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award winner, Desh Deshpande. "The best way to solve problems in this world is to make everybody entrepreneurs,” says Desh in the film. One of the people interviewed said of Desh, "He’s like Yoda!"

Listen to Desh's comments here.

NACCE President and CEO presented Desh with the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award. Here are highlights of Desh’s comments upon accepting his award:

• I have been part of MIT for about 15 years and I got my Ph.D. at a university so I know the university world. But I know less about the community college world, so I’m going to talk about what needs to get done and then maybe you can figure out how to get there.
• Over the last 40 years the world changed because of innovation. Ideas go around very rapidly and create change. So in this exhilarating world of innovation if we just look at the next 10 years, we will see more change than in the last 50 years. And that presents opportunities for entrepreneurs.
• In the U.S. every year about 500K businesses get started. In the last 15 years on average they have hired about 4 million people. If we want the economy to thrive we have to come up with more jobs from these businesses. So we have to find ways to speed them up so they grow faster and hire more.
• A good goal to have for community colleges is to say that you should have at least 10% of your new graduates start new things. They on average hire 10 people so it’s a community of people that are part of the innovation economy. So how do we get there? Let me give you two examples. MIT on one side; they have a lot of resources. They have an endowment of $12 billion and they think it’s too small. They start roughly about 250 companies a year. But then let me take you for a minute to the other part of the world; about eight years after we had success with the institute we start at MIT we said let’s see what we can do in India. The schools in India are really broken. People typically work very hard but there’s not active learning; it’s passive.
• So we opened the Social Innovation Sandbox in India. We decided to go directly to the students; asked them to work in teams of four and pick a problem in society and solve it. So now we have 1000 students in the program working on 250 problems. In India there are lots of problems but people typically walked around and didn’t notice the problems. But with this program students began to notice the problems. And the problems start looking like opportunities for these people. When the students get focused on the problem, no matter how big or small, when they find a way to unlock the problem it’s a very empowering experience.
• When you’re an entrepreneur you always feel that tomorrow will be better than today. Doesn’t matter what the reality is; it’s just a great way to live!
• Why not look at the whole society and embrace the whole society and look at the problems as an experiential learning opportunity for the students. It’s true that there are certain things that only MIT and Stanford can do. But every big innovation for it to really have an impact globally, it has to be contextualized and in lots of different ways.
• I think at community colleges, your students and your faculty know what’s really best for the community and they can find ways to contectualize a lot of the innovation that is occurring.
• What’s predictable is the fact that things will change. But it isn’t obvious what those changes are. You could have predicted when cell phones came along that they would evolve from the suitcase size to the iPhone, but you couldn’t predict what companies in this would win and which would fail.
• Start with a network of people who are likeminded and really want to do this. Embrace the people in the community and let them talk to your students; people want to associate themselves with educational institutions. You have huge convening power.
• You will need patience. Things always are harder and take longer than you think. But the good news on the other end is that once it takes off it always goes faster than you think.
• Each one of you should treat yourself as an entrepreneur and say what am I trying to do here. It’s all about having the mindset to start the journey without having the complete roadmap.
• Conferences like this help you separate the things that are known from what you don’t know.
• There are certain things you can never figure out until you do them.
• I think it’s going to be very exciting over the next 10 years. The changes are going to be led by entrepreneurs and it’s going to be global.

For the first breakout sessions I sat in on a mind-blowing session. It was part one of the leadership track, "Introducing the Entrepreneurial Method." I need time to turn my notes into a post,which I will do this evening. You're going to hear about the five principles of the entrepreneurial method, as defined by Saras Sarasvathy.

Hear Saras' full presentation here.

I've been working with entrepreneurs and consultants to entrepreneurs for over 25 years and, for the last seven years, entrepreneurship educators, so I've heard a lot about entrepreneurship. So I was fascinated to hear something truly new. You will be too.  More this evening on this!

Over 30 first-timers to the NACCE Conference have gathered for the orientation. Lots of prizes are being given out.

Moderator Tim Mittan challenged people to clear their minds and leave behind their preconditions. "There are so many brilliant people here for you to learn from," he said.

NACCE Fellow Tim Putnam reminded people that there are three more NACCE Summits coming up. In November there will be a Regional Summit at Rio Salado and at Miami-Dade. Then in February there will be a summit New River Community College.

Tim Mittan points out that there are people at the conference with a decade of experience in entrepreneurial education so this is the place to learn.

Tomorrow at lunch, we’ll hear from Desh Despande, this year’s winner of NACCE’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Don’t miss his remarks; I know they’ll be both enlightening and energizing; I can say that with confidence because I had the honor of interviewing Desh last June for the cover article of the Summer/Fall issue of Community College Entrepreneurship, and I very much enjoyed his thoughts on how to the importance of entrepreneurship.

Desh Deshpande is a serial entrepreneur, having founded numerous companies, including Sycamore Networks. He’s also well known for his philanthropic work, which includes starting the Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT. Through the Deshpande Foundation, he provided seed money to start the Center, which empowers researchers to bring innovative technologies from the lab to the marketplace in terms of breakthrough products and new companies. Since 2002, DCTI has reviewed 500 proposals and funded more than 90 projects with over $11 million in grants.

 Desk has also been a major contributor to many entrepreneurial philanthropic causes throughout the world, including the Merrimack Valley Social Entrepreneurship Sandbox in Lawrence/Lowell, Massachusetts, in which two NACCE member colleges, Middlesex Community College and Northern Essex Community College, participate. And as if he weren’t already busy enough, in 2010, Desh was appointed to co-chair a National Council to support President Obama’s innovation and entrepreneurship strategy.

For the Merrimack Valley Sandbox (MV Sandbox), Desh committed $1 million annually over five years, works to strengthen an ecosystem that promotes entrepreneurship and leadership in Lowell and Lawrence, MA. The MV Sandbox coordinates activities between Middlesex Community College, Northern Essex Community College, UMass-Lowell, Merrimack College, community non-profits, and the Merrimack Valley business community. The "Campus Catalyst” program within the MV Sandbox provides entrepreneurial support to students at both community colleges. (For more info on this program, read the article on page 26 of the Spring/Summer 2013 NACCE journal.)

It’s almost here! In just two days, NACCE members from across the country will begin gathering in Charlotte, NC, for NACCE’s 11^th Annual Conference. This live blog will be your source for conference news throughout the event.

I will be live blogging many of the sessions, as will Karen-Michelle Mirko, NACCE’s VP of Marketing, Sales and Meaningful Collisions. (For those of you who don’t know me, I edit Community College Entrepreneurship, NACCE’s quarterly journal.)

This year’s conference is bigger than ever, as registrations are approaching the 500 mark. This will be my third conference, and I always come away so impressed with the energy and enthusiasm of the attendees. I can’t wait to sit in on breakout sessions and hear about the innovative things NACCE members are doing on their campuses to promote entrepreneurship and build strong local economies.

I know many of you can’t be at the conference, so our aim with this blog is to help you feel like you are there. And for those of you who are at the conference, we will be your eyes and ears in sessions you just can’t get to because you can’t be everywhere at once!

Join us as we celebrate the role of community colleges in helping people achieve their entrepreneurial dreams. Stay tuned!