Green Tea Ice Cream

I really need to edit this but that’s going to have to wait! Sleeping takes priority.

[9:15]

I suppose it’s whatever is scheduled to take place between 8:30 and 10 before the Big Keynote Speech. Actually, the Big Keynote Speeches are kind of overshadowed by the Special Guest - Sir Tim Berners-Lee, beamed in to converse via video. I’m enough of a geek to feel quite excited by this - in an audience largely comprised of people here to sell something (and why not, by the way?), he stands out like Mother Teresa at Institute of Directors AGM. Which is code for “Crikey, there are a lot more suits here than I anticipated.

Someone’s actually sat down at my table after asking politely. Do you think there are invisible “Go Away” signs on the back of laptop screens, invisible to users, that only flash on in public places?

I’d put a picture up but I’ve yet to persuade my LG thingy to talk to my shiny new MacBook.

Someone else has sat down at my table. We’ve talked about the furniture. Sir Tim looks a very long way away. Ooh, Toby Moore @ Sleepy Dog just walked past and recognised me from BucksMediaCamp08. All of a sudden, I feel very wired in.

[09:30]

The nice Conversation-About-Furniture lady turns out to be from PDD who develop products, including medical ones. I immediately get a card and threaten that we’ll be in touch about one of our student events.

Bump into my friend Lizzie Jackson who’s running a conference on children and virtual worlds on Thursday at Westminster.

[10:01]

Shepherded into the auditorium. I take a snap of the Big Screen and crowds and am promptly (but politely) pounced on by an usher who tells me “No photograpy!” This is a very, big event representing a very large investment on the part of NESTA.

[10:07]

Ladies and gentlemen…Chris Powell, NESTA’s chairmen, is introduced to the strains of “Heroes”. He gives a speech. PDD lady commented to me earlier that the word “innovation” is rather overused. Probably true. “We have to make change systemic…all we do has to be geared to demand.” Cites the Fair Trade organisation as an example.

A short film, introducing the NESTA CEO, “18 months ago, we were 300 people in Islington. Now we’re 3000 in the RFH.” Introduces the speakers. “We’ve learned 3 things - the first is all about risks…innovation flourishes when there are a committed bunch of risk takers in this country…

“Second thing is the extraordinary power of building coalitions of partnerships and collaboration…New creative combinations…

“Third and final thing we’ve learned is a huge national appetite for doing things differently…Real innovation in Britain today is not an elite activity…What we’re working with is a broad national population full of ideas…”

Vox pop movies. Timely reminder that, despite the preponderance of smart suits on display and the no-expense-spared ambience of the event, Nesta is delivering some seriously great results. “The future belongs to those with passion, with reason and with courage…” (Robert Kennedy)

[10:40] Time for Sir Tim. Intro film about CERNA and TB-L. And here he is, live from Bristol.

What follows are rough notes and highlights, not particularly verbatim:

Q: What was your reaction to the initial comment - “Vague but exciting?”

TBL: I never saw it - the original cover with the comment on it was found amongst his effects when he died of cancer ten years ago. He didn’t really say yes because we didn’t have a mandate to to it but he didn’t say no either…and a lot of people working on this now have probably got here because their bosses didn’t say no…”

In general, when you’ve got people working on problems, giving them space to think, to find some alternative ways…I spent quite a long time transferring documents from one way to another and I thought, hang on, there has to be a better way of doing this. In trying to generalise solutions…What we’re looking for is new ideas. If you tell people what to produce, you’re just giving them old ideas…

“If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research…” (attributed to Einstein). He goes on to criticise the insistence on accountability in research, of everything being justified in detail up front.

Q: Hopes for the Web?

It’s pretty strong, flexing its muscles, isn’t quite sure were the bounds are My hopes are that as it grows, it will be a responsible member of soicety. The web is a substring for humanity interacting, What’s important is that it remains neutral, should not affect the interactions people have. We need to provide power tools to experiment with new forms of democracy, science…

Q: Civility, how people speak to each other online?
You talked about the blogsphere. Blogs are one of the things called social machines. They’re invented and that creates a wide-scale social phenomenon. Wikipedia takes off and creates something huge…Blogs are just one thing. What’s happens when you get into the blogsphere is that you meet a lot of people - they have to figure it out for themselves what’s appropriate. These are growing pains, things will settle down. Wikis started out as something were anyone could write and has developed out of necessity, elaborating its own process, democratic, meritocratic process…I think it’s great to see all these new processes starting up.

Q: The web science initiative? How do you define it? Why are you channelling your energies here?

We found that people doing interesting things would tend to fall between stools, being influences by psychology, economics…The web has to be thought of as humanity connected. There are more read pages out there than there are neurons in your brain. It’s a very big system, one we depend on and we have an inter-disciplinary cognitive science about the brain. Well, the web is important as well - big, complex, not obvious as to how it works. Do we know that the blogosphere is actually stable? Will it keep a check on the press? It could switch and become that hatred spreads more quickly and we have some sort of cultural revolution. Can we show that it is stable? We don’t have a science yet. So we’re saying that we should. We have a duty to make sure that we understand it so we can take care of it.

Q: Interesting you say that it’s a duty - some enthusiasts, purists would say that charting it, exploring it would lead to it losing some of that energuy, it would lose its spontaneaity.

Understanding the web isn’t about pinning it down. It’s about udnerstanding that it’s an emergent phenomenon. It’s not like building a mousetrap. If you want to build something on the intranet, you have to set up an environment where they’ll be a trust rating for one person selling, another for someone buying…You have to set up a star rating for people trading…What happened with eBay was that there was a thinking about how people interact. And now we have this highly active market in 2nd hand goods that’s changed the world in lots of ways that no-one could have measured.

Q: What are the stakes here? (predictions that the web might collapse)

It’s not…I know what you mean about the megalapse - and [name] had to eat his words, put his article in the liquidiser)…it’s about will it be stable, will it be a force for good? Medical information on the web - the difference between the information produced by neutral sources like hospitals and drug companies. The question is will they be able to produced so much inviting information that consumers will end up believing the information produced by commercial produces? A way in which the web works fine but the society you get on it may be one you want to live in or when you don’t. The same with email, the transition to spam is the sort of large effect that you couldn’t predict by reading email tech specs - you had to understand the whole background of it - social, economic…

Q: A lot of people are assuming that the future of innovation is collaborative…It was the theme of DAVOS and much else - is it your view that its going to be a collective business from here on?

Well, I hope it will be - that’s really why I made the web. That’s how it was set up for the students I was working with…One you’ve finished and gone away, what you’ve built is meshed in, its part of it. People in a meeting room end up speaking a common language that not everyone else understands. With the Web, you can make what you;re doing transparent so that other people can weave their links into this collaborative space…The creative, thinking process is not accessible to us…Imagine that the key to one of these challenges is half in one head and the other in another head on the other side of the planet. Bringing these two halves together is what I want the web to be for…

Whew! Coffee time.

[11:36] Bob Geldorf. “It’s always a disappointment, ladies and gentlemen, especially when they play U2 before you come one…I’m really here to talk about the power of unreasonable people…” He’s reiterating some of TLB’s points. “But how do you innovate when some of our most cherished values are openly challenged by other forces. You look to change…What is progress and change and entrepreurialism? Everyone can have idea, it’s like that famous saying about aresholes - everyone can have one…

“Ideas are applicable to the needs of the moment and often because of that, business finds a way of financing that idea and so progress…But towards what? More? Of what? Of everything?

“We can’t have more of everything, we have to rearrange things. Everything is running out. We’re running out of air. We’re running out of water and the Cassandras would say that we’re running out of time…Never have we more needed ideas and innovation…”

“Businesses find it difficult to respond to unforeseen circumstances but the way to adapt is to listen to the ideas of the moment. To social entrepreneurs. {Cites the inventor of micro-loans]. He lent 28 people $5 dollars each. He’s lifted 5 million people out of poverty this way…

On poverty. You do learn independence…

Compares UK unfavourably with US entrepreneurial culture. “But we I came here, I was allowed to get on with it. But are we allowed to get on with it today? Have we become a risk averse nation? We so fear failure that we rarely try anymore….The essence of entrepreurialism is to try and fail. We need to celebrate the attempt at trying. Failure is nothing! It’s nothing!…

“Can the institutions of the post-war continue now? We have to re-evaluate and reform them…In my view Britain has always defined itself in opposition to almost anyone else…Here is where ideas come from. More ideas come out of this tiny, packed little country than almost anywhere else. Is it fading? It feels it, you know. You can’t encourage the young to be entrepreneurial - you either are or you’re not. In a world where there are no options but address the problems of the world, we are desperate for ideas and the political body doesn’t give them to us anymore. In a world of hyper-democracy, the notion of leadership is dismissed. Decisions will increasingly be made locally. We’re changing and trying to grow a way forward into the 21st century. The essence of the web, OU, NHS was cooperation. FB widgets, open source - inter-dependence in almost anuything must be dealt with through dialogue and cooperation. I did Live Aid because the world was able to talk to each other…People came - not to come would have made us complicit in a vast horror - the death of 30 million people in a world of surplus…

“Africa is possibly moving into a post-currency world because they don’t trust their bank. The use of e-credits. In a village in North East Congo, a man arrives on a bicycle. People come out with the laptops and the man gets out his and the population upload and download their emails…

Today, the wealthiest continent is 8km away from the poorest. If China is investing millions, where are our guys? Where are these ideas of a different world, one not to be afraid of, that is possible here but is certainly inevitable. If you were my auntie in 1908 would you be forecasting the WW1? We should - we should be fire-watching! Is that happening? No. Not enough. We seem to be locked into a fear of failure. [Failure] is not to be derided, it is to be embraced. And in that way we’ll move forward, we’ll all change. And there must be a commitment to that change…”

[12:09] The panel. On collaborative innovation. Really must save some battery time at some point.

Today innovation has a different meaning, high tech. We must keep in mind that there are a lot of innovations going on at ground level. A social invention.

Am switching to Twitter for a while - http://twitter.com/innovationedge/with_friends.

[13:32] That’s the first time I’ve followed a panel (which wasn’t great in itself) in concert with a bunch of other twitterers on a back channel. And it was a great experience! Have managed to grab lunch, find a power socket and am wondering what to do next.

Key take outs from the sessions so far:

• the media has always been a social media. That’s what TLB designed it for. Perhaps we’re just now getting back on track, provided it doesn’t get high-jacked all over again.
• The best innovation is social innovation. Without a key social idea, it’s all just technology.
• The West is a culture governed by the fear of the new. A culture of obsessive risk-management.
• Environmental start-ups are an irony-free zone

Now off to the next session - Are online social networks the new cities?
(Short answer, probably not?)

Actually, no it isn’t, it’s Gordon Brown.

[14:16] Still waiting on the Prime Minister. And here he is. And he just told a joke. “I’m an enthusiast here and not just a politician.” Another story about Einstein.

“I want us to break down every barrier that exists between people with the creative talent, ideas…and their success.” I like Gordon Brown and I believe he’s genuinely sincere in the commitment he describes. But I doubt it’ll be him executing on it.

Where’s twitter gone?

Back. Ledbetter announces that the theme is the relationship between online creativity and offline built up areas. The rise of the Web and the importance of cities. So, Manchester…

Channel 4’s view of life, the web and everything? Will your main business be exploiting the web in 10 years?

Ans: Huge, transformational etc. But we’re still all watching a trillion hours of TV a year and that isn’t going to go away. But we need to innovate in the way we make and fund content. Dealing with the rise of on demand and the idea of conversational and participative media, a very different world for us needing new ways of making content meaningful for our audiences.

Bebo? Why did you choose San Francisco?

Q (CL): Ans: Best way of saving my marriage. She’s from San Francisco. Incidentally, there’s quite a thriving web community there. Rehearses story of Bebo.

We modelled Bebo on a city - what makes a city great. We didn’t want to create a contrived city. One of the great problems - you join a social network and none of your friends are there. Like walking into an empty bar. Challenge of creating an environment that would provide a wider community…

CL: Richard - how do you create spaces in Manchester to enable creative people to work?

RL: Some of it will be organic, spaces where people want to be where they can interact and we’ll have no knowledge and no control of that. On the other hand, we still have to create spaces. But if you contrive things too much, you end up with a certain amount of sterility.

Audience Q: How can a company grow a network from scratch and it not be contrived.

Audience Q: Global vs local social networks - how can cities use online techniques to make them more local?

Audience Q: How can you create something structured that can develop and grow as people change given how so many networks seem to be split along demographic generational lines?

Audience Q: Are the silos being broken down and being more diffuse?

ML: Trying to get to the point of getting to a not empty bar is really difficult. For two months, Bebo just didn’t work until we got some little nucleus’s of activity. You can see them, you can analyse them. We designed Bebo how we liked it but it ended up being more for people in their teens and early twenties…Most people who use social networks join them to communicate with friends. And they generally know those friends. To communciate with people from school, at work…

RL: Interested in the age question. For politicians, SN gives us an opportunity to look into communities that we need to target and to understand them better…I’ve got two blogs - a political blog and a leaders blog on the council website. I can say things and deliver messages and they’re not filtered or spun other than in ways I choose to…This year we did our manifesto as a video and launched it on YouTube - not many people watched it but we got much more press. Then there was the no more leaflets initiative…

(RL is actually very impressive. Talking about long-standing social networks, historical ones.) It’s a misconception that the relationship between cities is a competitive one. Establishing global networks of cities is important for our economy…

CL: Importance of the work with diasporas. A social network in the Netherlands about looking after aging parents. But my own experience, new school in Darlington, set up a website heavily influenced by the BNP and have run a campaign against the school leadership - impact out of proportion to the network’s actually size. Social networks can be malign

Audience Q: Can online social networks be used to replace some of the everyday routine things in life?

Audience Q: Could be argued that online social networks are killing offline networks…Are people still asking that?

Audience Q: What about tackling social exclusion in this context?

Audience Q: What will the effect be of people posting their own stories online (a bit off topic, that)? Are we moving to more niche social networks?

[Are social networks networks of villages in their own right? Ning just recognises that.]

CL: What do you know about how young people use social networks in Manchester? For dealing with truancy, for example.

RL: The conversations on MSN tend to be exactly the same as the ones at school - people use social networks to engage with the people they already know. What we try to do is connect what happens in school with what happens in the real world. The curriculum is not always relevant to the post-school world…We want to make the digital world, the digital economy relevant to people in school. The equivalent of the kind of training people used to get at school…

MR: C4 have a number of initiatives in preparation for bridging the gap between the public and public institutions.

Bebo: There are challenges with trying to replace trad education with the intranet. Probably more about learning through a computer…My kids spend a huge amount of time online. On Club Penguin and Disneytown. We try and steer them in the direction of sites that are not too silly, that have some sort of constructive message to offer…I do see the power of that. Potentially you get a much more one-on-one experience. But you can’t completely replace real world education…

[I'm not sure this man is altogether engaging with education in a knowledgeable way. Possibly it didn't come out quite the way he intended...]

Aud q: Will social networks become more mercantile in future or will they remain social?

Aud q: Will social networks change the public realm?

Aud q: Lots of generalities and an evidence free zone. Any specific cases? Case of a Misouri woman being indicted for cyber-bullying - how do you manage this new environment in this context, Sir Richard?

[Too many questions being asked and not enough answers being given.]

Aud q: issue of disengagement with children? Any chance of parenting skills being taught on the internet? Experts on how to deal with certain questions?

CL: Never believe anything an American tourist says about a European hotel.

[Lots of questions being taken from the floor, some good ones, a lot of pretty banal ones. Lots about education. Little interesting output from panel. Energy level plummeting.]

OK. Battery getting low. Must…find…power!

I’ve dutifully trudged into “ Are our educational institutions living up to the innovation demands of the 21st century?” but I’m struggling.

Does the panel buy into the idea that there’s more to learn outside of the traditional school system? (Struggling with the wi-fi down here.) A lot of platitudes and generalities. Perhaps the audience has more of a notion?

Aud: What does the panel think about the University League Table. The OU isn’t in any league tables whatsoever.

Ans (Julia): Problem is that tables are based on trad methods of measurement like A-levels so Birkbeck, OU would do very badly.

[Facilitator is pretty sharp. Ah - it's Stuart Cosgrove]

Q: Structural barriers to innovation in education? (from Cabinet Office)

Aud: What would your answer be to your own question?

Q: We focus too much on examining kids, on summative exams rather than formative - would be better if we focused on peer-to-peer and collaborative learning…

SC - Are there some core skills that cannot be conceded from some disciplines?

Aud: Most businesses are working through distributed tech - but schools don’t use them. Teachers don’t use them. They’re scared. Our education system won’t allow kids to use the tools that are out there that everyone else is using. We don’t need to develop new ones…

[I do agree with this - why create complex, heavy-handedly administered VLEs when one could just set up a wiki?]

Aud (someone from alternative education qv?): Schools are trying to meet targets and that’s getting in the way of education and innovation - who’s fault is it?

SC: Let’s apportion blame for three minutes!

Julia: If you wanted to make the biggest change in the edu system, you would put money into nursery schools. This is where the utter lack of aspiration sets in…Kent has very poor communities, very low edu aspirations…

Aud (Cambridge assessment): In this country, exams and testing have become a shorthand for assessment. But we’ve had a very impoverished scope applied in this country. It’s the form that’s wrong [great point]. A lot of this is wrapped up in how you go about changing the value system -how do you go about changing it when despite all the criticism you here (lacking in team work, problem solving…) yet the primary measure they use is the assessments produced by that very system.

Aud (head of an educational charity): The system is awash with initiatives. It’s in concept antediluvian. It’s out of date, no longer fit for purpose. Someone needs to stand up and recognise it, say what they want to do with it…Recognise that we are part of a global system now. Third (I missed the first one) I’m a mother of twin teenagers doing their own A/S levels…I’m not going to let go of the mic till I’ve made my point…Across the board what is happening to them is completely contrary to innovation. My children don’t have the time to be curious - they are learning up to the test - in a way, it’s too late for them. They need to be opening their minds and under the current system, it’s impossible.

Panel: Teachers are conscious they need to compete with the school down the road so they don’t share…If we encourage competition in schools with the league tables, they won’t share with others…

AUd (design teacher): Without the league tables, teachers would feel much freer. Dreamlab learning - 80% of employers would be happier looking at portfolios than CVs and application forms…

Panel (Nick Starr): We do definitely live in a society that believes that what can be measured can be managed and that you should only manage that which can be measured. And we’ve heard all round the room that this is not just the case…Maybe we should just chill out and relax a little more.

Panel: We’re at the end of a cycle now - the real challenge is to make sure that we go off on a high road. At the heart of it is a value shift, a cultural shift - lifting the curtain and help people but on a different pair of spectacles and put on a spotlight and build faith [this is the most torturous metaphor I have ever heard. Ah - it's the Tory MP]…

Panel (Paul Roberts): Go and spend the lunchtime with the nursery teachers considering and recording their observations - a brilliant example of how you can assess without measuring. Reflects the importance of the student voice…

OK, that’s it. I’m all in and I’ve got bloggers elbow. Wonder what’s happening on Twitter?