A week of intermediate sized projects outside of the normal ways of operation. Doh!!

Another truncated week, with a sense of anticipation about all those possibly lost e-mails turning up. I am sure that, in years to come, we will remember the holiday weekend without e-mail with fondness, but for the moment.... 

First up was to try and work out what was happening about the Mandelson/Hoon electric Mini event. This had really arrived on our radar on Wednesday and had been spiralling out of control when the fog of electric calm descended on us. Basically, the Low Carbon part of BERR had arranged a meeting to coincide with the Cabinet meeting in Glasgow. They had alighted on the wizard wheeze of borrowing a couple of electric Minis from BMW and having Mandelson drive around the Knockhill motor circuit in them. Unfortunately, they assumed that they could announce that BMW had “won” our Demo competition at the same time. Although BMW are a strong contender, the complexity of the bids and the associated negotiations with RDAs and other Government departments meant that we weren’t ready to announce – but then no-one had actually talked to us. It turned out that this bit of BERR hadn’t actually talked to the Automotive bit of BERR (they were on holiday) or the DfT either. By Tuesday morning, we were on Plan “H” and entering new territory of imagination. In the end we seemed to have taken and held the high ground and people mostly agreed to our needs, but it was touch and go. We also had an interesting approach from the construction industry to consider. They had essentially built their own consortium to build some advanced demonstrators but the idea had come in out of synch with our competitions. It was a good proposal and gives us yet another reason to reconsider how we run our interventions, and how the rigid competitions process may well be inhibiting innovation. Other than that I fitted in an interview with a possible secondee from JLR (thanks Anne and Michael) and yet more discussions about Knockhill – the early evening was spent on the phone smoothing over a variety of Government people I know. 

Wednesday started with a 1 to 1 with Fearless Leader. Carefully stuffing the exercise book down the back of my trousers to cushion the blows I crouched in fear in the meeting room for a while, then had to go and get him because he thought the meeting started later!! :-) Most of Wednesday was an Emily day, the first part being a meeting with the RIGHT consortium - http://www-edc.eng.cam.ac.uk/right/- I had met Terry Young, the leader, at the Invention for Innovation meeting run by the DoH last year and he is involved in both the Assisted Living and (less so) Detection and Identification of Infectious Agents Innovation Platforms. Although the website has the requisite number of trendy buzzwords, the basic idea is to run simulations of healthcare systems and test various decision making (or do they mean assistance) tools. They have been running for a few years on an EPSRC grant and want to move to the next phase of development. We had engaged with them because of our belief that the business models for many healthcare provisions will have to change in the future and their tools give us the opportunity to carry out the think and play bits of the think-play-do model. They are on the cusp of the transition from fundamental to developmental world and I think we basically agreed that they will seek another year from EPSRC (with possibly added ESRC) but work up a project proposal that falls more into our territory to start next September. 

The afternoon was taken up with the RCUK-TSB Strategic Partnership meeting. After the ritual humiliation of those behind the pace of “alignment” with us suggested by Race to the Top, and a couple of presentations by AHRC and NERC, we went through the various programmes in the draft Delivery Programme and discussed. I am still not sure that the right level of representation gets to this meeting, since it seems to be at several levels, and the decisions are a mixture of the sublime and the other sort. Still, I guess the minutes will reflect success. 

Thursday was the first of a couple of London days and first up was a meeting – at their request – with the evolving Electronics, Sensors and Photonics KTN to discuss engagement with Innovation Platforms. It is a long time since I went to a meeting with an KTN that didn't involve a request for money, so this was a revelation. There basic premise was that it was in their members interests to get them access to the new markets the Innovation Platforms were opening up, and they wanted to know what they had to do to achieve this end. Heidi told them about the process of building an Innovation Platform, from Government engagement through roadmap development through to the first interventions and they asked all the right questions. Occasionally, (it has become a reflex with many) they fell back onto the old KTN structure, but mostly it was brilliant, showing how far some in the KTN network have come since the plan for re-alignment and optimisation was first denounced as the work of the devil. Back to Fortress Kingsgate for a catch up on a variety of things and preparation for the afternoon meeting. One of the things we did catch up on was the progress at Knockhill. Apparently, Hoon had been fairly non-specific, Mandelson had given a brief talk and the BMW guy merely announced that they were bringing the Mini to the UK. We hadn’t been mentioned at that point. Then the Dark Lord “popped up” again to announce the doubling of our Demo programme. It was thus left open as to whether BMW had been successful in our programme or simply done it of their own accord, but since we know journalists can add numbers to letters to do maths, we are still not sure what impact the whole thing will have had, although we did have some whinging phone calls for Ford and second hand stuff from Toyota. I think we managed to blame BERR – in a friendly and partnership enabled manner!! 

I have been to the RSA many times and eyed the Adelphi building opposite. From the outside, it is an Art Deco wonder. Our afternoon meeting, with DirectGov was in the Adelphi meeting, which is partly the home of the Department of Work and Pensions, who host DirectGov in some way. This meeting had come out of the general introductory meeting with them a few weeks ago, when they had mentioned their interest in the semantic web. I had been taught by both Zoe and Andrew Tyrer to treat this as a hot button, so I asked for more information. I should start by saying the inside of the building – once past the foyer – is a real disappointment. The meeting was not. The DirectGov guys took us through the logic of Project Austin (named because they can rebuild their system) making the back end of their process for sharing documents with the public in a logical and user friendly manner using the latest Web 2.0 technologies. They have the standard government department problem that they want to do interesting and innovative things, but the system is stacked against them. Over an hour or so we described a variety of ways we think we could help them and have alighted on an SBRI-like process akin to that used for Retrofit for the Future, where we commission about 10 design studies for how it might be done, then take through a couple of ideas to more detailed briefs which they then consider for procurement – the process up to that point having de-risked their choice. We offered them a couple of days as a “cooling off” period and left. 

As I left the meeting, I picked up a voicemail from the media pied piper (that’s Paul W) offering me the chance to be on the World Service (don’t knock it, my friends in Tibet would have heard me). I duly took a short phone call from the lady at the Beeb checking that I was still available, but then nothing. I sat in my hotel room for hours, missing dinner and the company of human beings for nothing. Woe is me!! 

Friday started with picking up more pieces from Knockhill – lots of stuff about the DfT money but only passing reference to us and and our money. This means we might be able to carry out our planned launch without too any people getting déjà vu. Zahid had then trapped me into a meeting with “Stem Cells for Safer Medicine” - http://www.sc4sm.org/. The company, a child of the DoH, BBSRC, MRC, the Scottish Government and us (although they say it’s DIUS) from the public side and Astra Zeneca, GlaxoSmithKline and Roche from the private side, is focused on developing cells that would enable early stage evaluation of the toxicity of new drugs to the liver or heart. As with many meetings these days, this was about the funding needed to go from Phase 1 into Phase 2. Obviously, our predecessors had signed up to a long programme but disguised it by phasing. Inherent in the private side approach is the opportunity to pull out of things aren't working, but this attitude seems lost on the public side – and the company itself. I think there is a lot of work to do before we follow through on this one. 

Lunchtime saw a phone call from the guys at OGC that Fearless Leader, Mark and I had met a few weeks ago. They had been chewing on the idea of “retrofitting” an iconic Government building and had been in discussions with FCO and DECC. I talked through the sort of process we might use – the initial, low cost, design phase, narrowing that down to a small number of proper design evaluations and then them paying to do some or all of the resulting proposal. They still seem keen, so we need to arrange a workshoppy event with the potential estate owners (not the mindless, technology-obsessed geeks who are probably in the current loop) to hammer down the detail. 

Last thing in London was a meeting with Anne to discuss how Gravelpit II might work. With all the excitement of the day job, this had dropped from my attention of late and this was a timely reminder that we are coming up on 7 weeks since the first event and things have been ominously quiet. (I say that and got several related notes later on Friday from the teams)