11 November 2014
One of the joys of being out in the wild is that I meet a wider variety of people and learn more – and from a different perspective. Several recent conversations have caused a number of ideas I have run into over my career to converge. The final trigger was a presentation on “subtractive” manufacturing – it was about advanced machine tools. That we have to rename the past to accommodate a potential future struck me as worth thinking about.
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06 July 2008
It must be that time of year, but I have spent 2 evenings at the Royal College of Art. They set other events in the context of their end of year SHOW – I say that because it says SHOW in 20 ft high letters outside the RCA as you turn up.
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30 April 2008
Yesterday, I got to take part in the launch of the Resource Efficiency Knowledge Transfer Networks report on “Materials Security” – available here. Followers of this blog will know that Materials UK has a long-standing interest in this subject and so, it didn’t take too much effort by Arnold Black, the energetic Director of the KTN, to persuade me to say a few words. The meeting was fairly crowded with a cross-section of MPs, Lords, public servants and businesspeople, and the resulting discussion, chaired by the host Barry Sheerman was spirited and informed. I hope the KTN is suitably proud.
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20 December 2007
Anyone who has been anywhere near Materials UK over the last year will know that I am a big fan of the work of Tom Graedel. I first met him at an American Chemical Society meeting in Washington several years back. His down to earth approach and rigour of analysis made a large impression on me.
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16 December 2007
Earlier in the week I went to one of the always excellent NESTA Breakfasts to see Henry Chesbrough talk about Open Innovation and its effect on policy. Followers of this blog will know that I have talked about Open Innovation before and I continue to be fascinated about the use of models to explain organisational behaviour. Since I had actually eaten breakfast at the hotel, I was able to engage in discussion with Henry beforehand (everyone else had a mouthful of croissant) about how his “brand” has become more associated with open sourcing of technology for companies that have a profound understanding of their markets rather than those who have developed major “technology platforms” and require insight into new markets – sort of “Open-Out Innovation” rather than a more commonly cited “Open-In Innovation”.
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16 December 2007
I had a really interesting meeting at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) yesterday. This was a result of a combination of meetings over the last year when they have engaged with us on the concept of the Materials Property Validation Centre. It culminated in a discussion after the last Board Meeting and an invite to go and discuss our ideas. I have written about the MPVC before. It is a complex problem and one that requires a lot of thought before action. Our choice of materials increasingly takes account of many parameters, but rarely that of total environmental impact. The route taken to get to the “pure raw material” is often not clear and therefore determination of the imbedded energy or imbedded carbon is not unambiguous. To take account of the equivalent “onward” numbers is even more fraught.
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27 November 2007
Last week, within a day of one another, I received 2 e-mails. The first was from an old American colleague (old in the sense of I worked with him many years ago rather that he is old!). In addition the standard catch-up data on where out mutual friends were, he asked for some contacts as he was helping organise the Fall Conference of the Association of Industrial Metallisers, Coaters and Laminators AIMCAL. He had discovered the William Lee Innovation Centre and was asking if I had any specific contacts there – especially in the area of electroluminescent fibres.
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30 September 2007
Last week, from at least 3 different sources, I was referred to the work of the Lords Science and Technology Committee Sub-Committee on Waste Reduction. What I found intrigued me. Their question set demonstrates huge insight into the problem, and manages to take several different views of the subject.
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29 June 2007
I spent a large chunk of today as part of the review panel of a project being conducted by the UK Centre for Materials Education, working on behalf of the Higher Education Authority to evaluate the student learning experience in the discipline of materials science.
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28 June 2007
It’s been quite a week for nanotechnology. On Monday the University of Surrey launched yet another task force in the area, on Tuesday the Times had a nanotechnology supplement and there was a series of meetings about public engagement in the area at the Institute of Physics organised by the NEG and Demos. Looking back, however, am not sure I have learned anything useful for all of this activity.
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