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Flew in from Gatwick yesterday to Catania. Travelling with Jules Verne for the first time. Slightly stunned by the size of the group, perhaps because they have recently been taken over any a more commercial group, though we sort of got used to it.

Then across today to Syracuse, founded in 733 BC, where Elaine, I and another woman managed to become separated from the group inside the Ear of Dionysius. Missed key parts of the tour of the ruins, but I suspect it’s because I am a natural outliers.

Fascinated by an independent visit to the Archimedes Museum, small but with some intriguing exhibits. Had long wanted to see his haunts, but interest was spurred when reading about the Antikythera mechanism. Surprised by the amount of graffiti here, though some to it quite creative.

A fairly frenetic September to date, among many other things with speeches given in:

Zurich at the Innovation for Sustainability conference on 4 September, Taking Sustainability Exponential, followed by a panel discussion with other members included the venture capitalist Steve Westly, who I hadn’t seen for some years having been on an HP advisory group with him shortly after we started Volans);

Amsterdam, at the Ashoka CircularFutures event on 6 September, co-hosted by Patagonia and eBay, where I spoke alongside Ken Webster of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation;

Bern, where I spoke at a dinner on 18 September, the night before the Swiss Energy & Climate Summit opened, meeting former German Foreign Minister for the first time since some time around 1990, when we spoke at an event in Wiesbaden; followed by a panel session the next day, alongside Urs Gredig, Editor-in-Chief of CNNMoney, Switzerland, and Anders Wijkman; and then

London again, where I was part of a panel that formed the centrepiece of an evening event co-hosted by Berenberg, Philanthropy Impact and the Impact Investment Network. Chaired by Richard Brass, Berenberg’s Head of Wealth and Asset Management UK, the panel also featured David Connor (Founder, 2030Hub, Liverpool), Martin Ewald (Managing Director & Head of Investment Strategy, Infrastructure Equity, Allianz Global Investors) and Rupini Deepa Rajagopolan (Head of Berenberg’s ESG Office)

Otherwise work continued on our New Carbon Economy Pioneers program, with Richard Roberts organising an event alongside Governor Jerry Brown’s Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS) in California, where we launched our new White Paper, Our Carbon Future, on our Innovate UK event in Exeter, and on our Tomorrow’s Capitalism program. All in the teeth of headwinds created by e.g. Brexit and looming trade wars, but we are making real progress.

Blown away on Monday by the first episode of The Innocents, the new Netflix series co-written by our daughter Hania and Simon Duric. Launched today. We attended the premiere at the Mayfair Curzon. Here’s a piece by Hania from the Sunday Times Magazine last week – and here’s a review from the New York Times. Go, June and Harry! And brilliantly well done to the entire team!

Last night marked the formal end to our first decade at Volans, the actual milestone having been 1 April, and the end of a face-to-face Board meeting involving the likes of Paul Bunje (former Chief Scientist at the XPRIZE Foundation and now co-founder of Conservation X Labs), Kavita Prakash-Mani (Global Markets Lead at WWF International), Sam Lakha and Geoff Lye.

One sad note was Louise Kjellerup Roper’s absence in Copenhagen, following the sudden death of her mother.

In the evening, I also mentioned the deaths of Richard Northcote, whose friend and former CEO Patrick Thomas spoke last night, and Tessa Tennant – with Tom Burke and Mark Campanale in the room, both of whom I had last seen at the lifetime achievement celebration event for Tessa a week or so before she died.

Also heard from long-standing friend Steve Warshal of death of another key figure from the environmental movement, though since it’s not yet mentioned on his Wikipedia site or anywhere else, I’ll not mention him by name here.

Despite the intimations of mortality, over 100 of us celebrated the first 10 years of Volans at the Wellcome Collection.

The ‘cabaret’, performed from a red-carpeted staircase, featured Geoff, Clover Hogan (whose camera took the image above), former Covestro CEO Patrick Thomas, Kavita and Paul. Went on twice as long as I had planned, and any fault was mine as the compère, but you could have heard a pin drop throughout the session.

Interesting to see several people in the above image holding copies of our new OPEN brochure, which we have been working on in recent weeks – featuring our emerging thinking around the “locked-in syndrome” our species is now suffering from. And with one of the four keys spotlighted for unlocking mindsets being the need to shift the focus from cleaning ‘fish’ (e.g. corporations) to ‘oceans’ (e.g. markets).

And below is the image I conjured at the beginning of my introduction to the evening, the photograph originating from the first visit I made with Yinka (Awoyinka) to see the Wellcome Collection Reading Room, where we held the event.

I love the upside down Antony Gormley figure, coupled with the signage, ‘Somewhere in Between’. Between worlds, between geological epochs, between our first ten years and whatever comes next. But our Board meeting over the past couple of days suggests that there could be some great things ahead …

Delighted to appear in ‘The New Ism’, a podcast by social entrepreneur superstar Mel Young and Alex Matthews. My only regret in the podcast‘s 47 minutes running time is that I said that the optical experiments in Hannover mentioned by Thomas Kuhn were from the 18th century – when I meant 19th. But what’s a century between friends?