Another intense week, taking in Zurich, St Gallen and Brussels. A great call with Covestro from Terminal 5 on my way out on Monday. Enjoyed speaking and engaging the students at the oikos International FutureLab 2015 event in St Gallen, travelling there from Zurich on a train with Alex Barkawi and Peter Zollinger, both long-standing colleagues and friends.
Wonderful dinner with Alex and Peter at the Zum Goldenen Schäfli, with sloping floor, ceiling and soup (a fact echoed in the design of their website).
Then took the train back to Zurich and a flight to Brussels, to speak at a dinner heralding the first baseEUcities conference, organised by Daniella Abreu, formerly of Skanska.Was due to speak after the second course, but Jeremy Rifkin spoke for over 45 minutes between the first course and the second, engagingly – but taxing the patience of some audience members.
After that, I felt I shouldn’t speak at any length. Instead, taking the microphone, I asked those taking part in the dinner (perhaps 50-60 people) whether there were any comments on what Jeremy (who had by that time headed off to bed) had said?
The first comment came from Jørgen Randers, who I noted had been giving me life counselling before the dinner started. So, I said, this provided a welcome opportunity to take him by surprise. Jørgen welcomed the opportunity, but expressed extreme irritation with the Rifkin approach, even if various of us could see considerable areas of overlap.
Part of the problem for Jørgen seemed to be Jeremy’s constant name-dropping: he had just come back having worked with the Russian Prime Minister that morning, for example; he had been responsible for turning Angela Merkel on to the third industrial revolution; he is advising the Chinese government and they are spending tens of billions as result; and so on.
It’s also interesting that Jeremy seems to find it difficult to genuinely engage an audience in conversation, preferring his (admittedly impressive) extended solos. A zero marginal cost version of Eddie van Halen?
I then asked whether there were any other views, and Frank Schwalba-Hoth put his hand up. (I hadn’t seen him for many years, but had given him a warm hug when we met before the dinner began.) He now tore into Jørgen, who luckily enjoys cut-and-thrust, saying that Rifkin was an “eagle,” while his critics were “rabbits, sheep, worms.”
Aha, said someone, so what is John? “A nightingale,” Frank flashed back. So now we know.
The conference the next day had its flaws, but the speakers (including a Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium, Jeremy, Jørgen, Grame Maxton of the Club of Rome, and various business people) was an interesting opportunity to listen at close quarters to some great people. I summed up the day at the end of the event, which meant that I had to listen intently throughout.
Sitting still all day, and then heading home in a very cramped (and delayed) Eurostar (our train had to make its way around another that had stalled somewhere on this side of the Channel), then followed by a very noisy and late Piccadilly Line tube home, all helped ensure that that I developed a violent attack of leg cramp in the night, waking up howling.
Totally unlike any nightjar I have ever heard, but jarring in the night, certainly.
Then, on Friday, we had a brainstorm for the Friends Life Stewardship Committee of Reference, in the Aviva building at 1 Poultry. All a bit of a rush, as it happened. because the previous day I had looked at my diary on my BlackBerry, while on the Eurostar in France, and it had given a start time for today’s event of 11.00. But it was actually 10.00, something I realised only when I was 20 minutes late starting off.
Still, the Tube worked very well, and I was just 15-20 minutes late for what was slated to be a 4-hour meeting. And a very productive meeting it was, too, under Julie McDowell’s chairmanship.
Then back to the office, where Sam and Richard took one look at me and sent me home.
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