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The Humpack's back
Memories of Roger Payne
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
When I came into the environmental movement in the 1960s, the emblem of what we are losing that meant most to me was the humpack whale. Later, in the 1980s, I played The Songs of the Humpack Whale - which I had bought way back in 1970 - to Gaia and Hania in the dark when they were very young, songs recorded by Dr Roger Payne. For more on all of this, see Wikipedia entry. Today, happily, The Times reports that humpback numbers are back up to around 40,000, suggesting that the magnificent creatures have managed to haul themselves back from the edge of the precipice. But climate change, by impact ingthe evailability of food, particularly krill, could still reverse the process.... more >
Mobile library
... transporting books across to Volans
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Spent the morning ferrying boxes of books from home - and from my desk SustainAbility - across the the new Bloomsbury Place offices of Volans. Nice and bright when we started out, but by the time Elaine and I got to Bloomsbury Place the wind was fairly thumping through the trees there and in Bloomsbury Square nearby. ... more >
Britain from Above
... and London
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Just watched Andrew Marr present two quite stunning programmes, on BBC1 and BBC2, the first on Britain from Above, the second on London ditto. Seeing the pulsing webs of energy, telecommunications and road, air and sea traffic reminded me of the ecosystemic perspectives on landscapes and cities that first drew me to planning in the early 1970s - and then the Abercrombie Plan sequences in the London programme reminded me of some of the reasons why I fled the discipline once I had my M. Phil. ... more >
Remobilising the Space Maggots
A night out with Wall-E
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Across to Leicester Square this evening to meet up with Elaine, Gaia and Hania and see Wall-E, the new Pixar/Disney robot-loves-robot film. Absolutely stunning and, while Elaine spent much of the film with her hands over her ears because of the volume of the Sensuround sound system, I was transported. Best of all, the grudging remobilisation of the human space maggots gave me a degree of hope that America might still reclaim its soul.... more >
Sisters
Saturday, August 02, 2008
We had our first joint meeting of SustainAbility and Volans yesterday, in which Charmian (Love), our new Volans COO, expained the progress we have been making on our visual identity (very exciting), organisational structure (clarity can be a wonderful thing) and Advisory Board (some stunning developments there, too). We are working on a range of changes in anticiaption of the Volans 'soft' launch early in September, follower by a 'hard' launch in November. ... more >
The week at Volans
And now we're flying
Saturday, July 26, 2008
A wonderful week for cycling, with sun most mornings as I biked across to Holborn, starting the days either at Volans or SustainAbility. The new office is really starting to come together now that the new desking is in, so people have migrated from the boardroom table in the front room to the large room, overlooking the gardens at the back. And the place is starting to take on the salon-like feel Sam and I always had in mind, and which is so nicely captured in the book The Medici Effect, by Frans Johansson, which I read recently - and several other members of the team consider some sort of bible. ... more >
Golden flying fish
Pez alado de sorprendente belleze
Sunday, July 20, 2008
'A winged fish of extraordinary beauty' is the translation of the sub-title above, which appears on a card from the Museo del Oro in Colombia, showing a stunning gold flying fish, which Tell (Münzing) and Ulrike brought with them when they came to lunch today. He's just come back from Latin America - and when he saw this flying fish there he thought of Volans. They also brought a dazzling array of cheeses and two wonderful wines, both from Marta's Vinyard (sic) in Mendoza, Argentina, one a 1999 Malbec, the other a 2003 Chardonnay.... more >
Gore as the new JFK - and George C. Marshall
The next giant leap for humankind
Friday, July 18, 2008
We will probably never know what it would have been like to have had Al Gore as President, but his speech yesterday - 'A Generational Challenge to Repower America' - suggests that his vision could still help us rebuild from the rubble of the Bush years. And it chimes in very powerfully with some of my reading these two weeks that I have been on 'holiday' at home. ... more >
CRO Magazine inspired by The Power of Unreasonable People
New award for CEOs
Thursday, July 17, 2008
CRO Magazine has introduced a new award for social entrepreneurship, focused on CEOs, based on the three categories of social enterprise introduced in The Power of Unreasonable People. ... more >
Demos and the business of social change
Downloadable PDF
Thursday, July 17, 2008
My chapter on the business of social change appears in a new publication from Demos, The Future Face of Enterprise. The complete book can be downloaded as a PDF.... more >
Stalking Moses
Down Memory Lane 2
Thursday, July 10, 2008
After leaving Tangmere, we wondered whether we could track down Moses Farm House, of which I have long had fond memories, the family having stayed there on our way to Cyprus in the 1950s. I had called my parents this morning to see whether it was near Haslemere, as I remembered, but they couldn't remember. So Elaine had Googled it before we left, finding a Moses Hill near Marley Heights. Then as we passed Lurgashall on our way south to Goodwood, I noted that it rang a strong bell. ... more >
Tangmere
Down Memory Lane 1
Thursday, July 10, 2008
R.J. Mitchell and Supermarine Prototype K5054
After Goodwood, we continued south to the old RAF airfield at Tangmere, where we visited the Military Aviation Museum. I have always loved the name, whose origin is uncertain. 'Mere' implies a pool rather than a grand lake, according to Wikipedia, and 'tang' is thought to be of Norse origin meaning ‘tongs'. It could be that Tangmere was the pool at the fork, or junction of two ancient paths. The pool was later filled in to form a small village green. When I mentioned that Tim was shot down nearby (West Wittering) on 16 August 1940, the team at the Museum couldn't have been more helpful, fishing out the records for us. They also noted that Tangmere - which is where Tim was based during the Battle of Britain - was bombed on the same day. ... more >
Looking up sculpture in the Sussex Downs
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Today, Elaine and I drove down to Goodwood to visit the Cass Foundation's Goodwood Sculpture Park, somewhere we had meant to go for ages. As the photos show, the range of exhibits is quite remarkable - and the fitfully sunny weather lent a fleeting, evnaescent quality to some of the encounters. Hard to pick favourites, but mine would include Catamarans on a Granite Wave (which put me in mind of Sutton Hoo), DNA DL90, In the Beginning, Paparazzi, System No. 19, and the one I would hauled away if I could have done so unobserved, Wendy Taylor's Sycamore.... more >
After the Recession
More thoughts on Wave 4
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
Here's a post I did primarily for Volans:... more >
Around the corner to Sutton Hoo and Easter Island
Visiting the neighbours
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
Early on in our two-week holiday, which we are spending in and around London, Elaine and I went in to see how things are coming on with the new Volans office in Bloomsbury Place. Then we had lunch with Sam, before returning to the office to screw legs on to a new sofa. Then Elaine and I visited the neighbours in the British Museum, which is some three minutes walk away. We particularly wanted to see the Sutton Hoo hoard, after reading the book The Dig, but were struck by the standard of the exhibition design throughout. Then a raid on Waterstones and the old Virgin record store in Piccadilly on the way home. ... more >
Gilgamesh
The Oldest Story in the World
Monday, July 07, 2008
Among the most beautiful things I have ever seen were the cuneiform tablets we were shown in Syria a few years back. This morning I finished a book I had meant to read since I began to write The Good Afterlife Guide over 15 years ago, subsequently abandoned because Elaine said I would be the subject of a universal fatwah: Gilgamesh. ... more >
Praise be to Boris ...
... and the spirit of the much-lamented Routemaster
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Stamped out - but No. 21 lives on in the imagination
When I met him recently, fellow cyclist London Mayor Boris Johnson and I very much saw eye-to-eye on buses - particularly on the need to get rid of the bendy nightmares and the potential for rehumanising this city's overground public transport by reanimating the spirit of the much-loved, much-missed Routemaster. Now he has joined Transport for London to launch a competition to design a brand new bus for London, inspired by the Routemaster.... more >
Helmetless under a blue London sky
Friday, July 04, 2008
One of the great joys of cycling in London is the sky views overhead. Stopped several times today to take photos of the aerial extravaganzas overhead.... more >
Chatham House Rule in the Chef's Dining Room
Thursday, July 03, 2008
One of Britain's finest contributions to the art of well-informed conversation is The Chatham House Rule. Frustrating, too. Had dinner this evening at the Chef's Dining Room, Mews of Mayfair. Others around the table included the CEOs of well-known companies. The conversation revolved around climate change in general - and, in particular, the conclusions of Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund in his new book, Earth: The Sequel.... more >
Ganesh in Bloomsbury
Making trunk calls to our god of innovation
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Ganesh carving from Nepal
Some inventors and innovators have claimed to be under divine inspiration when making their breakthroughs. Among five gods of invention flagged up in The Observer Book of Invention, that came free with today's paper, is Ganesh - the elephant-headed god who Hindus see as the harbinger of success, prosperity and wisdom. He is known for putting obstacles in front of those who need slowing down and for removing them ahead of people who need speeding up - and celebrated as a champion of new ventures. ... more >
I play Jack Nicholson
Friday, June 27, 2008
After a brown-bag lunch with Diana Verde Nieto of Clownfish today, a group of us continued talking for a while - and then I asked Alexa (Clay) to take a few photographs. Nice enough of the girls, but it strikes me that I come out looking a bit like Jack Nicholson in one of his less salubrious roles - perhaps The Witches of Eastwick, launched the same year as SustainAbility. ... more >
Diana's crow
Friday, June 27, 2008
One of the saddest monuments in London is the memorial fountain to Diana, Princess of Wales, which I pass on my cycling journeys to and from SustainAbility. Stripped of the people - particularly the children - who used to paddle in its rivulets, it now seems a desperate waste of space. But today I spotted a crow playing there, which in the dark light of the Ted Hughes plaque I saw at Highgrove a few days back made me think there must be a dark, feathery thread running through all of this somewhere.... more >
WWF at the Institute of Directors
Thursday, June 26, 2008
After a day in the office, I made my way across to the Institute of Directors, to celebrate Christopher Ward's last day as Chairman of WWF UK. Quite humid, but good to see people like Christopher, David Nussbaum, Tessa Tennant, Camilla Toulmin and Bob Worcester. Then, as I walked home by Barnes Pond, I snapped this - which rather caught the slightly Bocklin-like 'Isle of the Dead atmosphere. Somewhere a woodpecker was calling.... more >
Hughes plaque at Highgrove
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Elaine and I drove across to Tetbury this morning, albeit with difficulty - there was a long tailback before we got on to the M4, because truck had hit a car, or vice versa, the ensemble blocking two lanes out of three. We ended up having to drive significantly faster than I would have liked to get to the Calcot Manor Hotel in time for me to begin my speech at 11.00 at an event organised by executive coaching firm Praesta. After an excellent lunch at the hotel, we were all coached across to Highgrove to see what Prince Charles and his gardeners have achieved there. ... more >
Blank canvas
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Yesterday was my fifty-ninth birthday, which Demon chose to celebrate by cutting off my Internet connection, so I had to spend much of the morning calling various points in India. In the afternoon, Elaine and I went across to the Medici Gallery in Cork Street, where my sister Caroline has exhibited - and where today we bumped into one of my favourite artists, Paul Slater - and his wife Sophie. They were in the process of helping to hang a new exhibition there, including a number of Paul's paintings. Oddly, I had emailed him a couple of days earlier, to see if a painting he had done for the Financial Times colour supplement was available for sale, but it had already gone. Showed a woman in a diver's suit, with a giant octopus behind, and she was drinking a glass of champagne, underwater.... more >
Away Day 2
Friday, June 20, 2008
Day 2 of our Volans team retreat continued in the spirit - and at the pace - of Day 1. The sense of team and organisational identity, purpose and action priorities is building apace. Another example of serenedipity today when we met someone else in the building who had come across our work from a very different angle, had decided to get in touch, but had no idea we were now neighbours. Rather more pictures of me today than is normal - or perhaps desirable - because Sam got hold of my camera. In the evening, we invited Will Rosenzweig of Physic Ventures to join us for dinner.... more >
Our Magic Garden
Thursday, June 19, 2008
A dozen of us (Charmian Love, Sam Gray, Martin Hartigan, Pamela Hartigan, Sam Lakha, Mark Lee, Geoff Lye, Astrid Sandoval, Kevin Teo, Sophia Tickell, Elaine and I) spent the day at 2 Bloomsbury Place, our new Volans office, the first of two Away Days. Part way through, Elaine spoke to someone from the Prospect office on the floor below - and discovered that, in addition to the building's own garden, we have access to a quite extraordinary magic garden at the back, which - among many other delights - contains two elephant sculptures, presumably left by the people who were in our space before us, The Elephant Family.... more >
Decoding Bucky
How R. Buckminster Fuller conjured his own myth
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Ian Keay forwarded me a fascinating New York Times article a couple of days back on R. Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller. Fascinating to see how Fuller wove his own myth, consciously or not. Ian had introduced me to Fuller's work in the early 1960s, building geodesic domes out of matchsticks in his bedroom in Icomb. Given my enthusiasm for these structures, our home in Barnes was lucky not to sprout a truly geodesic extension, since experience shows that they often leaked when put up by non-experts. ... more >
Keys to our future
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Wonderfully, Sam was finally able to pick up the keys for the new Volans office this morning, at 2 Bloomsbury Place. Estate agent has been typical of the breed, one of the rare life-forms one would gladly see nudged into extinction. Has taken quite a while getting to this point - given that our initial visit with Elaine featured in an 18 March blog entry - but my sense is that having our own platform will make a significant difference for the wider Volans team. ... more >
Human Smoke
Sunday, June 15, 2008
One of the books I bought in San Francisco recently was Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker, subtitled 'The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization.' When one of the venture capitalists I was working with in Palo Alto asked me what the heap of books I was carrying included (I had turned down a bag) and heard this title and the book's theme, he asked why on earth I would want to read another book on WWII? Because, I said, it's healthy to explore different perspectives on a period of history you think you know quite well. ... more >
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