The Innovation Edge

The Innovation Edge, Nesta's 18 monthly conference, took place on 20th May 2008 at the Festival Hall. Jonathan Kestenbaum, Nesta's Cheif Executive, was determined to show just how far the organisation has moved on under his stewardship by reflecting on the difference between this gathering and the last one at The Business Design Centre in Islington in 2006, shortly after he took the reigns. I am not in a position to comment on whether Nesta is a very different beast to its previous incarnation, but if the key note speakers on show are anything to go on then they certainly seem to have moved up a league.

The key note session was chaired by Jonathan Freedland and began with Jonathan interviewing none other than Sir Tim Burners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web. Sir Tim appeared every bit the modest unassuming and selfless socially motivated scientist that you one might expect from the person who invented arguably the most important innovation since the industrial revolution. He jokingly reminisced how his initial proposal to create the www was described by his manager at CERN as being 'vague but interesting' and how he was only able to work on it in down time between his important work.

Sir Tim was followed by Bob Geldof (no hyper link required) who stole the show with a witty, invigorating and critical speech that seamlessly bridged the conference theme of sustaining UK innovation with a call to arms on how innovation can do so much more to help people in Africa work their way out of poverty. He made the point that Europe should do more to use its innovation capital to help Africa. He reflected despite the fact Africa lies just 8 miles off the southern coast of Spain and Europe remains the richest continent in the world, China is investing so much more in Africa that European nations.

The afternoon began in similar big hitter style with none other than Gordon Brown providing 10 minutes of surprisingly relaxed informal comment and even a couple of jokes in support of UK innovation.

If Nesta is able to become as good as the speakers on show in effecting positive change and sustaining innovation then they really will have moved a long way in the last 18 months. I look forward to seeing how they appear in another 18 months time.

Developers and Designers at NMK: a Thought-Provoking Evening

I had great fun being on the panel at the New Media Knowledge Developers and Designers Event in London a couple of weeks ago. There was lots of very informed conversation, but something one of my fellow panelists, Chris Heilmann said really struck me. He said that one of the big problems that we face is that people don't really understand the internet. And made me think that I want to understand it better.

And by "understand" I don't think he meant knowing all about TCP/IP and HTTP and all that. I think he meant that many people who commission websites don't have a good understanding about what websites do, how the people who run a website interact with the people who visit the website.

Some people are sniffy about the phrase "Web 2.0", implying that it's nothing more than a re-hashing and re-branding of the internet of the pre-2000 dot com bust. But the truth is, it's a very different animal. The phrase "Web 2.0" covers some truly amazing ideas such as permanent beta, folksonomies and the Google-ization of the web. Nobody really fully understands them (may not even Chris!). There's shouldn't be any shame in admitting that either - none of this stuff existed at all 12 years ago! But the more we understand, the more we can communicate our understanding to our customers, the better.