Went across to Amsterdam on Wednesday, to take part in the fifth GRI Global Conference. Spoke at a panel session on Wednesday afternoon, featuring the new GRI Technology Consortium, which I now chair.
That evening, we had a dinner of Consortium members on the top floor of a glorious restaurant, Restaurant Incanto, with lashing rain and a wonderful lightning storm raging all around. GRI Chief Executive Michael Meehan and I both both did brief welcomes. Sat next to – and had a great conversation with – Ernesto Ciorra, Head of Innovation & Sustainability at Enel Group, the Italy-based international energy company.
On Thursday, I serendipitously had a glorious lunch with GRI co-founders Bob Massie and Allen White (now of the Great Transition Initiative), thanks to Felipe Arango of BSD Consulting. Extraordinary to think back to the early days of GRI, when Bon was still at CERES and, as Bob reminded me, I persuaded the founding group to go triple bottom line, rather than just environmental.
Then keynoted the third primary session, before many of us took off on a low-slung, glass-tipped boat through the canals, to the West-Indisch Huis, the original headquarters of the Dutch West India Company, a poorer relation of the Dutch East India Company. But the building is lovely, arranged around a courtyard, where a harpist played. Various comments about colonialism, but a joyous evening nonetheless.
On the boat I had a mind-spinning conversation with Liv Watson, once a skateboarding champion, among other things, and now at Workiva. She has been a longstanding champion of the XBRL reporting language – and is now immersed in Blockchain. At dinner, I sat next to Roberto de Ocampo, a former Finance Minister in the Philippines. Great conversation.
Came back early today. Intensified security in Schiphol after the news that another EgyptAir flight has gone down, this time in the Mediterranean, again likely to be terrorism.
Leave a Reply