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Another week that was

Amy and Jack Sim Jack, me Charmian holds forth at EMERGE Sara Parkin’s foot Peter Randall Page sculptures at Said Business School

Ice was spreading across Barnes Pond as I walked home this evening after spending the day at the EMERGE conference in Oxford, my session involving a conversation with Solarcentury CEO Jeremy Leggett. Twitter stream here. Charmian (Love) did an excellent session on how-to-get-into-this-sector this morning, during which I sat on the floor next to Forum for the Future co-founder Sara Parkin – and Amy (Birchall) is involved tomorrow. Great discussion with David Grayson this afternoon on a new project we’re planning at Volans, which broke some sort of logjam in my brain.

As often happens with events in Oxford, Volans happily served as a stopover for migrating entrepreneurs – and we had a great session yesterday with Jack Sim of the World Toilet Organization (WTO).

Earlier in the week, on Wednesday and Thursday, I was in Rome, speaking at a Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) organisational stakeholder meeting at ENEL’s HQ in Rome. Italy seems to be developing quite an appetite for sustainability reporting. ENEL’s Luigi Ferraris gave one of the most engaging speeches I have ever seen as CFO do, noting that 5% of the energy company’s are now owned by socially responsible investment (SRI) firms.

Loved the stone pines lining the streets as various taxis whisked me around the city, ignoring jams by streaking down tram-tracks, the drivers vigorously texting as they screeched one-handed around corners.

Next time I’ll take my cycle, I think, though had to take that into the cycle shop during the week, because the combination of the sheer weight of stuff I typically carry around in my panniers and the increasingly aggressive potholes that are eating up the London streetscape had created metal fatigue – and a strut gave way as I sped home on Thursday evening. Love the cycle shop, Holdworth’s. Bought a tiny, resonant bell that they had lying around in the workshop for a while, which means I won’t now need to use my industrial klaxon , except in extremis.

Dublin, among other places

Carbon Leapfrog and IUCN conference Dublin: the new Samuel Beckett Bridge And in daylight Conference Centre Another electric car Inside out view Ditto Emergent uniform at SustainAbility? Chris shoots Gary Later Frances and Sam Holland Park Anish Kapoorscape

A bit of a blur of a week, signing contract for the new book, a panel discussion to launch Unilever’s new Sustainable Living Plan, chaired a panel session at the IUCN/Carbon Leapfrog conference, a trip to Dublin with flights horribly scrambled by fog at Heathrow, a Board meeting at SustainAbility, and – today – Hamlet at the National Theatre, with Rory Kinnear. Went with Carys and Mike Cooper. Quite unbelievably good. I understood the play for the first time. And the AK47s made a bunch more sense than cutlasses. Feeling like sleeping, but here comes another week; this time Rome, I think.

A reasonably intense week

The auditorium where I spoke to 3,500 people Sustenabilidade Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco followed me HSM stand Renault-Nissan Fluence Formula 1 sculpture SESI conference, before people arrive New Jersey sunset from Amtrak train, New York to Washington, DC Investors Circle conference cranks up Daedalus aircraft hangs in Dulles airport

Monday was a bit of a blur, starting with a speech to 3,500 people, then two more speeches – also of 90 minutes, each time with 60 minutes of speaking and 30 minutes of moderated discussion – before I headed out to the airport. Overnight flight to JFK, sitting next to a nice Brazilian banker – who suddenly turned to me after an hour to ask whether I was a columnist in Epoca Negocios magazine, which he was reading. With an illustration of me at the head of the piece, I could scarcely deny.

Then into the city – though with a few hiccups along the way, though cab driver managed to work his way around the jams – for a meeting of the Nestle Creating Shared Value Advisory Board at The Peninsula Hotel. Issues under discussion included rural development, micro-nutrients and sustainability. Then across to Penn Station to catch a Amtrak train to Washington, DC, where I did a panel session with David Chen of Equilibrium Capital Group at an Investors’ Circle conference at L’Enfant Plaza Hotel. Then out to Dulles and, with a fierce tail wind, home.

Between Hallowe’en and Guy Fawkes

Halloween pumpkin in compost bowl Anish Kapor’s ‘The World Turned Upside Down’ Model of new WWF UK ‘Living Planet Centre’ Pandamonium Ditto Ivana, Sam, Patrin, Amy at 2 Bloomsbury Place Patrin, Sam’s camera

Loved the smell of bonfires as I cycled through London last night. Have been profoundly enjoying the Fall (a word I was overjoyed some time ago to find was more English than Autumn) colours as I cycled to and fro this week. One delight is Anish Kapoor’s new installation in Hyde Park, Turning the World Upside Down, which my route takes me past. Took a number of photos earlier in the week, but it was only when I rode past the work yesterday – having accidentally left a bag and camera in the office (in fact outside it, but inside the building) – that I realised that if you look inside the mirrored structure you see the world turned upside down. Colour me slow.

Highlights of the week have included visits to Earthscan, to discuss new book, a meeting of the WWF Council of Ambassadors at 30 Fenchurch Street to discuss things like their proposed new ‘Living Planet Centre’ building in Woking, and a lovely evening at 2 Bloomsbury Place, when Ivana (Gazibara) was due to turn up for a glass of wine after work – and we ended up with Amanda (Feldman), Amy (Birchall), Jacqueline (Lim), Patrin (Watanatada) and Sam (Lakha). Joyous.

One weird thing at the RSA Insurance building in Fenchurch Street – apart from having my slightly less than pinstriped look commented on in the lift to the ninth floor by two very well dressed Americans – was an installation constructed out of something like 100 old WWF panda collecting boxes, that became surplus to requirements. Thanks to televisual trickery, as you stand near the pandas, a few start to turn to look at you, and then they all do. (RSA have a partnership with WWF, see here.)

During the Council meeting, Bernard Donaghue, who chairs the Task Force organising WWF’s 50th anniversary celebrations next year, showed a slide quoting Max Nicholson – a typically striking foresightful comment from decades ago. I said I couldn’t channel Max, despite having worked with him over decades, but noted that if he had been around the table he would be totally happy with plans to celebrate, but would also be forcefully arguing for a hard-hitting assessment of progress over the past 50 years – and arguing the case not simply for a spotlighting of the really nightmarish challenges we face over the next decade, indeed over the next 50 years to 2061.

Once again, he’d be telling us to turn this unsustainable world upside down.

A day in the old Paris Bourse

Eiffel Tower from my hotel room Part of the old open cry trading floor area Jay Whitehead points out piece of old Roman city wall Mirrored Mirrored by the ceiling Ditto Later, Jay gives the guided tour again

Across to Paris, City of Lights (and contrasts), via the Eurostar late last night, to speak at the first CRO Summit in Europe.  Bit of a struggle to find my way into the Palais de la Bourse, but when I finally broke in, I was given my own guided tour by Jay Whitehead – taking in the old open cry trading area and the section of old Roman city wall in the main conference theatre. Extraordinary the imagine all those hundreds of traders in full cry, with a huge heap of sand somewhere on the floor, in which they stubbed out their cigars.

Met a whole bunch of people who are potentially going to be helpful for the new book I’m now planning. Chaired a session with Bouwe Taverne (Director of Sustainable Development at Rabobank), Manlio Valdes (President, EMEIA, Climate Solutions, at Ingersoll Rand) and Gabi Zedlmayer, VP of Global Social Innovation at HP).

In conversation with Manlio and Dirk Olin, Editor of CR Magazine and one of the other moderators for the day, we were discussing how the agenda is becoming ever-more complex for business. I mentioned that I had sometimes suggested that it was sometimes akin to C-Suite folk being put on LSD, noting that I knew of what I spake.

Dirk raced off to get a copy of the latest issue of the magazine, where his editorial is called ‘Tripping Over Work’. It starts with Timothy Leary’s six word mantra: Tune in, turn on, drop out. And the basic idea is that, while users of hallucinogens in the Sixties sometimes became paranoid or depressive, people kept in the dark by business can also suffer a form of sensory deprivation – very much akin to being put into a sensory privation tank.

Dirk quotes a study reported in the October 2009 issue of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease which found that many people isolated for as little as 15 minutes from normal sensory stimuli results in what is called “faulty source monitoring” – in which we assume that what is going on in our own heads is coming from the outside.  Companies run the risk that their stakeholders will do the same, assume the worst and “drop out”.

Streets of city wreathed in refuse, presumably a result of the ongoing strikes and mass protests. Also more people sleeping in the streets than I remember, which was a striking contrast with the luxurious surroundings of the Palais de la Bourse. And with the meal I had at Brasserie 1925, cheek-by-jowl with Gare du Nord, as I waited for my Eurostar later in the day.