Innovation Edge
Earlier this week Laura and I attended NESTA’s Innovation Edge conference, held at the Royal Festival Hall in London. I suspect like a lot of people going I wasn’t sure what to expect.
For those that haven’t come across NESTA before, it’s the National Endowment for Science, Techonology, and the Arts, and is a National Lottery funded body that has a remit to foster and encourage innovation in the UK. The theme of Innovation Edge was to look at how well both NESTA and innovation in the UK in general were doing. Speaking were many luminaries, the most notable of which were: world wide web inventor Sir Tim Burners-Lee talking about how he had demonstrated innovation by inventing what is probably one of the biggest change to the developed world since the industrial revolution; Sir Bob Geldof gave a very interesting and inspiring talk about both innovation in the UK and how innovation was needed more than ever to help both us an the developing world; and the Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave a brief speech pledging government would get out of the way to help assist innovation.
Although Bob Geldof was by far the best speaker, I have to confess Gordon Brown impressed me by being a very good and charismatic orator. He even managed to deliver a few jokes, including some at his expense, whilst at the same time making his point strongly. I suspect in comparison to Tony Blair he comes over a bit staid on the media, but in real life he was quite animated and enthusiastic. Alas, I was too intent listening and didn’t manage to photograph him smiling.
I actually found seeing the Prime Minister speaking gave me pause for though. My initial reaction was – of course he’s going to say these things, and I was quite blasé about it all. But towards the end I questioned that a bit, and perhaps the fact he interrupted his welcoming of his Jamaican counterpart to come and deliver the message says more than the words. I’m not sure, but regardless of political views, it was very good to see him speak.
After a morning of speaking were a set of panels, of which I only saw a subset, but these too were generally well done, particularly the one on Social Investment, which was quite educational. In the other panel on Social Networking I saw what my brother thought was the most important person of the day, Michael Birch, founder of Bebo – I think speaks volumes about our generational difference :)
There’s some pictures of the day that I took here. Overall the day was a success from my point of view – I saw some interesting/thought provoking/inspiring talks, I learned some interesting things in the panels, I met some people and made new connections, and I had a good time.
And all I had to do to get all this was sign up for the event for free on NESTA’s web site. Quite amazing really – so I wish NESTA continued success with their mission, as they certainly did well here. NESTA regularly hold interesting events open to the public, so if you’re interested you should check out their website.
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