Journal

Snow outside, cameras inside

Big Thinking

Filmed today by Mark Seddon and Andrew Psarianos for Big Think.

In the Museum of Brands

Quality Nerve food Stampede Black tie 1 Black tie 2 Normal tied 1 Normal tied 2 Green tie: Geoff (Lye) sandwiched between Geoff Kendall and his brother Gary

My sister Tessa’s fiftieth birthday today: we spoke ahead of her flying to Abu Dhabi. This evening, 15-or-so of us were all trucked across to the Museum of Brands for the SustainAbility Christmas party this evening in a fleet of hybrid cabs, albeit in a sometimes near-solid-state traffic jam, caused by the wrong sort of snow. Joint session with Volans, though with others currently overseas (on holiday or, in Amy’s case, marooned by snow in Munich) Volans was down to Sam, Jacqueline (Lim) and I. Founded by Robert Opie, the museum is fascinating, a maze of displays of a total of 12,000 branded products that have been and are the environment for generations of Britons. Wonderful evening.

Four sessions with Tetra Pak

Tetra Pak 1 Tetra Pak 2 – my zone Copenhagen airport

Flew in last night for a series of four sessions today with some 150 top executives of Tetra Pak. Great fun and subject to confidentiality agreement, but no great secret to say the area I did my sessions in was ‘floored’ in grass, which added an interesting fragrance to the proceedings.

On the flight back to London this evening, much delayed, we turned in over a spectacularly moonlit city, like something out of Avatar (like the eye in the second photo above), and the stewardess said ‘Wow!’ and came and sat beside me to watch the spectacle unfold.

Had an interesting email exchange from a speeding Mercedes crossing the Great Belt Bridge from Sweden to Denmark with Wu Qing, where she asked me how Elaine was. I replied that she was fine, but felt that I had my foot trapped on the accelerator of life. Wu Qing thought I literally had my foot stuck on the accelerator on the bridge. Happily, though, the Tetra Pak was my last major engagement of 2010 – and a quieter period now beckons, in which I start writing the new book.

Hard drive story

It’s a short story, really, but it means problems with blogging. My MacBook Pro’s hard drive had been a little wobbly for a while, so I took it in to the Covent Garden Apple Store, where they said come back in 5 days – and, typically, the hard drive died after 4. Had lost everything, but it turned out that Sam had installed trial version Carbonite a few days before the catastrophe happened. After a couple of days of restoring files, it looks as though most things are back, though not yet music (which only works when you pay), PowerPoint presentations and photographs. Amazing how crippled one is when IT goes down in this way. Am pondering getting a Mac Air, one reason being that my back is a bit of a problem and doesn’t need the weight of a 15″ MacBook pro, but also because the Air’s flash memory may be a bit more robust (no moving parts) when transported in my bike’s panniers.

With police helicopter hovering overhead

Forum 1 Forum 2: me, Sam, Alex (Nick) Forum 3: me, Sam, Alex

Across this evening to the Forum for the Future Christmas party, co-hosted by Interbrand in the Strand. A police helicopter hovered overhead, its spotlight beaming down towards Trafalgar Square, where the student protests were continuing – huge numbers had streamed past our office during the afternoon, down Southampton Row. very much struck by the fact that those who founded and led the environmental movement decades back are now moving into the mainstream, while a new angry generation is surfacing in the streets.