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We Made It for Crisis!

So we all crossed the finish line, well those who started! The rest cheered us from the pub. Yes, a bunch of us, very kindly sponsored by our clients hobbled across the finish line of the Crisis Square Mile run on Thursday evening. Here are some pictures to show the hardship, from limbering up in the taxi on the way to the start to reading the paper whilst running, we couldn't resist! Thanks to everyone who sponsored us, we raised £425!

Tech news links 11/06/08

Great post from Ryan Carson demonstrating the benefits of Quik or Seesmic for the instant interview

Online ad spending in Europe maturing, from survey by IABEurope on eMarketer

Latest live onlinevideo numbers, from Ustream via Readwriteweb

Mobile web stats, from Computerworld report

10 mobile social networks, from RWW

Mobile phones expose human behaviour, from BBC Online

And in case you didn't see all the coverage Chameleon got for Sniff here's the Telegraph's take

Two weeks is an eternity

I came back from holiday last week to the usual mass of emails, conscious that I'd not really read any news while away (which was nice) and thinking "I need to update the blog". Travelling to London on the Monday morning, I was gifted a lovely example of how internal communications needs to be improved in large organisations so employees understand how super-connected the world is.

I was sat on the train opposite a "high flyer" from one of the UK's largest communications companies (x) who was on a conference call about a deal with one of the world's largest business intelligence companies (y). She didn't wish to be quiet on her call and announced to the whole carriage: "Well it sounds like y is as good as managing its data as x".

I had my mobile with me and could have posted this annoucement straight to Twitter. I was still in holiday mode though and thought this would be cruel at the time. But a hardened hack might not be so charitable, particularly if the conversation is about something more juicy than data.

I'm sure there's loads of examples of overhead conversations on trains but it's similar to when you present at an event now, remember it's not just to the 30 people in the room or in the carriage you're talking to!

Innovation at the Innovation Edge Conference?

I attended the above conference today to hear what the presitgious speaker line up had to say about innovation. Here are a handful of comments from the likes of Chris Powell, Jonathan Kestenbaum, Tim Berners Lee (what a nice guy), Sir Bob Geldof, Sam Pitrada, Helen Alexander, and Rt Hon Gordon Brown. You choose which ones you support!

Chris Powell, Chairman, NESTA

Innovation is a necessity to address the social and economic difficulties faced today
Need to stimulate and push innovation

Johnathan Kestenbaum, CEO, NESTA

Liberate innovation in the UK
NESTA is the source of authority on how innovation can flourish in this country

Quoted Rober Kennedy "The future belongs to those with passion, reason, courage."

Sir Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the world wide web

Took his inspiration from a book called 'Enquire Within for Everything'
Commenting on him journalist Jonathan Freedland said "he's done more to change the world than any politician"
TBL said the following:
Give your people innovation time. Most ideas come from the boss not saying yes but more importantly not saying no!
Technology should be neutral and not intefere with how people want to interact
I want the web to support society and democracy
There are more web pages than neurons in your brain
I made the web to solve working in dispersed groups
Innovation is a collective rather than about individuals
It's about collaboration

Sir Bob Geldof



This is a small crowd for me as I'm a global megastar (tongue in cheek - he'd just arrived from Germany where he'd played to millions)
Necessity must be the mother of innovation. A mother's desparation is the father of necessity.
We are running out of everything, air, water, food, so never more than before innovation is everything
Poverty is shit
Has Britain become a risk averse nation?
We so fear failure no one tries anymore - the essence of entrepeneurialism is to try and fail
Innovation is about collaboration
The political climate doesn't give it to us anymore
Political and social paradym must be about dialogue and cooperation
You don't die of drout you die of politics
We need our social entrepeneurs to be innovating and progressing, our politicians and financial institutions supporting it. Is this happening? No.
All change comes from the self

Sam Pitroda, Chairman, National Knowledge Commission, India

India has 10m new phones every month
Invention is for mankind
Innovation requires a lot of collaboration
Innovation is creativity, curiosity and collaboration
There's too much greed in this world

The panel, when asked the one thing Gordon Brown should do, answered as follows:

Sam Pitroda - encourage risk takers, visionaries
Helen Alexander (CEO The Economist Group) - get out of the way......clarified with get the 60 year olds out of the way, be less institutionalised
Bob Geldof - all of the above plus - to put his intelligence to find a political rhetoric to match the absolute needs of this country in words that make sense

Rt Hon Gordon Brown, Prime Minister

I pledge to you that we will do our best to break down the barriers that exist [to innovation]

Tech news links 17/05/08

Google's Friend Connect launched this week with big claims to socialise every website, from BBC Online

Did Twitter break China earthquake news?, from BBC Online

Techcrunch confirmed Comcast bought Plaxo this week

Disqus and Seesmic launch video comments, from a VC

Twitter app Twitbuzz

Facebook raises $100m to expand servers from Mark Sweeney at the Guardian

Interesting take on our generation of Web heads, from Readwriteweb

Engaging post on Web 2.0/social media by Dennis Howlett who works entirely "in the cloud"

Jack Dangermond of ESRI Inc gave a keynote speech at Where 2.0 this week on the future of GIS, here he is interviewed on Government Technology earlier in the year giving his vision

Our virtual lives

We went to watch an amazing performance this week at the Tobacco Factory in Bristol that merges dance, theatre and video. If you get a chance to see it or the theatre company, Precarious, it's well worth it. The production seamlessly merges video images within the choreography and acting of the troupe, providing an artistic reminder of how intertwined our real lives are with the virtual world. The video above gives a taster. Wait until two minutes or more in to get a real idea of how the projections are used including the woman's dance in a birdcage.