Yesterday saw the (very) successful completion of our second Basecamp, this one hosted by UBS and focusing on the confluence of money, data and trust. Our hosts were Howard Kemp and Giles Sibbald.
I had worried that we would fail to match the excitement and impact of our Carbon Productivity Basecamp at the RSA on 14 June, but – in slightly different ways – they both worked wonderfully well.
The images above capture the spirit of the latest event. But it’s hard to take images when you’re one of the facilitators, which I was – kicking off with a session featuring three giants in the space: Mark Campanale, Nick Robins and Tessa Tennant. I have known all three for pushing 30 years – and between them they have helped create many key initiatives in the space.
The previous evening we hosted a dinner for 24 of the participants at Somerset House, in the Drawing Room restaurant. Extremely hot, with London temperatures and humidity pushing all our envelopes. Some sense of the space can be found here, though we had it arranged with two long tables. Great food – and the energy in the room could have powered a small city.
During the Basecamp, the Atlas of the Future team filmed a series of interviews with selected speakers, who included Mark, Tessa, Nick, UBS Global Chief Economist Paul Donovan, Jamie Arbib and Henrik Olsén of Rethinking Capital, Jeremy Openheim of SYSTEMIQ, Steve Waygood of Aviva, and Sacha Romanovitch of Grant Thornton.
Key content on the event, including edited versions of the filmed interviews, will be published shortly.
After the reception that followed the event, held in one of the UBS atriums overlooking things like a bulldozer being hoisted by a crane into a difficult-to-reach part of a nearby construction site, a group of us went off to have a celebratory dinner.
We stumbled upon The Holy Birds which, as Jacqueline put it, ticked pretty much all my boxes. Great food, including a fondue made with Hoxton Gin, delightful service, a great acoustic environment (because the place was virtually empty apart from us) and a stream of wonderful music from the Sixties (e.g. Cream, Donovan, Stones, Them, Yardbirds). And great conversations, including with Kaye Allen, who joined the Volans team on Monday.
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