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Future Workforce - The Millennial Effect

Our traditional view of the workforce is set to change as the Millennial generation
  (those born between 1978 and 2000) hit the workforce. These new workers, the children of the Baby boomers, have very different expectations and experiences and have lived in a world touched by technology all their lives. How are companies going to attract, reward and retain this new generation and how are they different?

Download the latest white paper on Millennials below:

Download Future Workforce – the Millenial effect V2

Idea Reuse - open source ideas

I was clearing out some files at home yesterday and came across one that had ‘great ideas’ written on it. The file was around an inch thick and clearly hadn’t been opened for a while and the ideas were mostly dated between 2000 and 2002. What I had here was a whole host of ideas that had been generated when I worked as head of Innovation at Royal Mail. Unfortunately not many of the ideas got off the ground and I tried to remember why they hadn’t been taken up – was it that they were bad ideas, was the timing wrong, were they unprofitable ideas or was there something else?

I thought it might be worth whole publishing a few, taken at random, on this blog to see if there is any reaction and to see if it was just timing or they are really not good ideas – so here goes:

• Address for life: this concept is based on making available personal postcodes, non-geographic postcodes that people could buy – similar to personal number plates. The sorting technology in the IMP machines has the ability to read this code and spray on to where the postmark would be the real address so the postman can read and deliver the item. The benefit of this idea is that it could be the basis of a ‘follow me’ service as it would be relatively easy to reroute items as long as 24 hours notice was given.
• Semantic Mail: Tracking of items of mail is becoming more common, particularly for high value items, however it suffers from the problem of being carrier/operator specific – being reliant on a central database. The concept of Semantic Mail, mail which understands itself, is that there would be some form of coding on the mailpiece, either in a 3D barcode or RFID type device – the idea proposed something called Microspot developed by HP. Encoded in this would be where the letter had come from, where it was going to, the class of the letter and something about its contents – this could be read by Open Source readers and therefore the letter could be tracked across carriers. One problem with this is that unauthorised people could also read the code.
• Virtual Warehouse: This idea was to build a software system that took input from all the tracking systems of all the carriers – both Mail and Parcel – and displayed this on a Map based online system. The advantage of this is that companies shipping products could see where they all are at one time. Although this idea was dated 2002 I came across a similar product developed by a guy in New York 18 months ago and tried to persuade Pitney Bowes who I was working for at the time to buy it and develop it further. Unfortunately it didn’t fit into their vision and I didn’t succeed, but at least it proved that the concept was viable although the timing of the original idea was a little too early maybe.
• Web enabled Post-box: This concept was to install a web server, powered by solar, on a number of key post box locations around the UK and in customers premises. The technology would have the ability to do image capture to ascertain whether items were first or second class, as well as just basic counting of items in the box. It was proposed that simple mobile phone technology was used to relay the information back to a central site. This idea came out of work I was doing during a strike when I was doing post-box collections. Many of the boxes were empty – others were full to bursting, however as no information was available I spent a lot of time visiting post-boxes that had little or no mail in them – wasting time and fuel. The initial cost for the unit, which was to be installed, was £5k but this was reduced to less than £500 when the idea was taken to York University Advanced Computing Group – and today it would probably be down to £50!
•  Dog Repellent Trousers: Always my favourite idea and one I could never get funding to develop. Dogs are an ongoing problem for post persons and a large number get bitten every year. This idea was to develop material that would protect against dog bites – that was cheap, attractive and flexible. Loughborough University did some initial work generating some ideas but funding through the Royal Mail Innovation Fund ran out and it never got off the ground.

 

OK so these ideas as they stand may not be of immediate interest but there are elements within them that may be usable. When I was involved with the Innovation Lab within Royal Mail we generated many thousands of ideas – less than 5% ever got out of the lab and had any development focus, however it doesn’t mean that the other ones were bad – it just wasn’t the right time for them to be good.

In the UK hundreds of companies are running brainstorm sessions almost on a daily basis, generating ideas of which many will be dismissed – wouldn’t it be great to capture all these ideas somehow and make them available to a wider audience - an open source ideas database/wiki?

Do you have a similar file?

HAve you got ideas that you think are worth sharing?

Noise 2.0

Noise 2.0

 

I wrote in a Blog a few weeks ago about the move back to analogue when I came across a guy who was spending his spare time converting all his CD’s to Vinyl to reintroduce Noise back into what he was hearing. I also talked about the decline of the digital watch – when an impromptue survey at a technology conference found that less than 5% of the delegates were wearing digital watches – although nearly everybody owed up to the fact that they had owned one at some time.

 This weekend I was reading a piece in a magazine that was talking about the suprising increase in sales of camera film and the reneissance of the second hand camera market as photographers are moving back to analogue film to capture the ‘softness’ of the image. Fed up with the ‘perfection’ of digital and the manipulation that is needed/expected the true skill of the photogtapher is dissapearing.

 Another interesting sign is the trend of moving back to cash and away from card transactions. One of the interesting results of the credit crunch and subsequent economic crisis is that people are moving back to cash and governments around the world are having to review their production of cash – in the UK this has resulted in a rise in the demand for £5 notes. In the US a friend in a small upmarket fashion shop was having to take upwards of $5000 home everynight as the shop had no facility for cash deposit as historically the customers had only ever used credit cards.

 My thoughts, again, came back to the humble letter. If there is this huge move back to analogue then surely, with proper stimulation and marketing, there could be pheonix effect on the mailing industry. I must admit to being increasingly frustrated with the amount of email that now gets through the junk filter and on any morning I find myself having to delete 30 – 50 emails which are of no interest to me which takes 10 – 15 minutes of my time and as I have previously discussed an amount of carbon as each email is responsible for around 5 – 9 grams of carbon.

 Technology for the last 10 years has come to dominate our lives, taking more and more control of our everyday lives – whether this is through the way we communicate, our ability to create and changing our behaviour. This move back to ‘analogue’ seems to me to be about regaining control of our lives and actions – re-establishing our skills and capabilities.

 I would be interested to hear of any examples of ‘noise’ coming back into your lives.

Re-introducing Noise

At TED Global last week I was speaking to a guy who was spending a considerable time understanding how to transfer his CD collection back onto Vinyl - a crazy thing some may say but for me it raised the issue of the digital/analogue debate - is one better than the other and if so why.

The argument he presented was that with analogue there are imperfections in the music - there is noise that is imperceptible to many but to him this 'noise' was important as it provided a human aspect to the music. Digital reproduction has become so good that it filtered out most of the human factor and the 'noise' that was there in the original and just created a 'perfect' version of the music.

Speaking to this guy got me thinking about whether this move from digital back to analogue was a potentially wider phenomena and - have we got too used to the digital aspects of our life and if we have what have we lost in this move - what are the human aspects of the world we have lost.

Is it time to re-introduce 'noise' into our increasingly digitally perfect world?

At TED we heard from a range of speakers on very diverse topics and this idea of the move to analogue kept coming through in a number of presentations - the group who are mimicking the brain with a number of parallel processes which rather than throw pure horsepower at the problem are mimicking the way neurons work to create, at some time in the future, a sentient thing (I won't call it a being at this stage!). Or the Cynetics guy who is using sound to create patterns and then look at how these could be used in a practical sense, the proposal to build a wall of sand dunes across the Sahara desert to stop erosion and create habitats - none of these are 'digital' in the way we understand it rely on analogue forms of design and interpretation.

The other thing I did whilst I was at the conference was to try and count the number of digital watches that people wore. If I went back 5 years there would have been a majority of people with them, however at the conference I guess that over 70% wore analogue watches. Now I know that this could be a style thing or a design thing, but my own view is that it is easier to read - we find the analogue face easier to interpret than the numbers - we like fuzziness.

I would be interested in your views.

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Is where you think important II

I have just been reading that researchers at the Australia's National University have found that people are more creative and better at problem solving whilst lying down. They have found that being laid down inhibits the production of the stress hormone noradrenaline which is thought to inhibit flexible and creative thinking.

If true this explains why we wake up in the middle of the night with that great idea and why you can have some of your greatest moments whilst lying in the bath!.

Interesting!

TED Global 2009 - Oxford - Day 4 Session 2

The last session of the conference is entitled 'Enquire Within'.

Dan Pink - "Bidding adieu to his last "real job"as Al Gore's speechwriter, Daniel Pink went freelance to spark a right-brain revolution in the career marketplace."

Candles, Carrots and the Future. At Law school he didn't do very well - he graduated in the bottom 10% of his class.  He is going to dust off his legal skills. He is going to make a case for rethinking how we run our businesses. He showed the candle problem - I bring you onto a room and give you a candle, some thumb tacks and some matches - not of the simple solutions work - the solution is to use the box from the thumb tacks to stick to the wall and put the candle in the box.

If you want people to work reward them - but when use use this technique with the candle problem the reverse happens. If you try and motivate people to solve the problem quickly they take longer than if you don't. there is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. A similar candle experiment was done where the tacks were taken out of the box before the student was asked the question - in this situation the motivated students were significantly faster. 

The routine left brain work is being outsourced and given to machines to complete - the have a clear set of rules. What you need to solve the candle problem is a more right brain conceptual approach. " as long as a task only required a mechanical skill then rewards worked - when the task 'even rudimentary cognitive skills' a larger reward led to poorer performance - in eight out of the nine tasks we examined across three experiments higher incentives led to worst performance" (Dan Ariely 2005). " we find that financial incentives ... can result in negative impact on overall performance (LSE 2009)

We need a whole new approach to motivation. 

Autonomy 

Mastery

Purpose - the yearning to do what we do for a greater purpose

In the twentieth century we invented management - great if you want compliance, not if you want engagement. One company in Australia task there staff for 24 hours they are given time to do anything they want - they are called Fedex days as they have to deliver something overnight. Google are famous for gibing their staff time to do things they are passionate about.  An example Microsoft started Encarta - an encyclopaedia developed very professionally and tasked etc. - later an encyclopaedia started in Wikipedia with no purpose other than sharing knowledge and data with no rewards other than the value you are creating.

We need to bring our views of motivation into the 21st century and change our view of rewards and recognition to change the world maybe!

Itay Talgam - "After a decade-long conducting career in his native Israel, Itay Talgam has reinvented himself as a conductor of people in business."

When you go to see an orchestra the only person you don't hear is the conductor but when you see the CD the picture of of the conductor. When the conductor gets in front of the orchestra when it is tuning etc. he makes a small gesture and there is suddenly calm from the chaos. When we hear a great piece of music who is responsible - is it the players, is is the audience - what about the conductor he was happy! The joy is about from other peoples stories - the orchestra, the individuals, the audience. All the stories are being heard at the same time.

Some conductors are commanding - very different from the first example he shows. Some conductors use a finger - others use a fist! The second example was asked to resign from LaScale by the members of the Orchestra. Authority is not enough to make people your partners. It is about being in control in a very special way - the individual soloists are in control of their own world and the conductor is in control at a different level.

"If you love something give it away" 

Daniel Birnbaum -  "He works to reveal the nature of contemporary art -- and to explore the way art and philosophy underlie one another."

How does the experience of art push forward. What does a curator do - he puts things on display! He is doing an exhibition in Venice a beautiful city. He talked about what is art and it was initially thought that it was what was in a frame, however there is an exhibition in Vienna of frames - when seen in isolation the frame itself is beautiful. 

The framing device in exhibition such as in Venice is maybe the city itself. In the UK more people go to museums than soccer matches. 

Brother Paulus Terwitte  - "In a world laden with distractions and complications, Brother Paulus Terwitte is leading a new generation into a simple, contemplative spiritual life."

The first question is are you a real Capuchin monk - his answer is are you real! The second question is what do you do - his answer is nothing - he is trying to find the meaning of life. He was talking to someone at TED and as he was talking the others persons phone rang and the person walked away to answer the phone - Paulus waited for 5 minutes and then walked away, he felt that he was less important than the person on the phone.  We have become dependent on machines for information - we have forgotten to find out information from people. Is it possible that people can have 300 friends (outside Facebook) - what are we looking for? We have become primitive hunters and gatherers of information. What we have - that we are. What was the step we went from primitive hunter gathers - we painted what they saw, they painted the animals. They were happy because there was a long winter and they cold look at what they had seen on the world with the paintings.

The Capuchin Monks are doing nothing to find the inner point of all the difference. We have this week seen many different ideas and concepts. When have you thought about this alone? It is hard to think about this - human beings are now taught to go away - gather all the things you can gather. At the end, no-one knows where the end is, you can gather all the things you can - you can decide what you want to do. The most important things you found were the small things that flashed by.

We have to change our mind - we can't take the whole world in our hand - we need to have the inner sense of the world in our lives. If you take 15 minutes a day for meditation, to be alone, go on holiday without your mobile, one day without the Internet - See what the world has given to you. You will realise that it is not enough to take many things and to gather many things but to see what the world truly is.

Tom Rielly - "Traditionally, Tom Rielly closes the TED Conference with a merciless 18-minute monologue,  skewering all the speakers with his deadpan delivery, spot-on satire and boundary-less performance (complete with PowerPoint, pratfalls and partial nudity)"

This the end of the TED Global 2009 - it has been a great event although my own thoughts are that it was not quite as good as some of the US ones I have attended. The presentations were not quite as deep as those from the US in Palm Springs in February this year or Aspen the year before. I will blog on my thoughts from TED and comment on what I got from it as the information filters through my head.

TED Global 2009 - Oxford - Day 4 Session 1

One of the great things about TED is the people that you get to meet in breaks and over meals. I have met entrepreneurs who are using their money to plough back into philanthropic services, a theoretical physisist who is a world expert on quantum computing, many inventors and people with amazing ideas who carry their prototypes in their pocket or on the laptop. What they all have is an innate curiosity and a passion to find out more - to expand their minds and see the world through other peoples eyes - oh and not to forget the film stars and TV personalities! I don't know where else you could meet these sort of people - this is a unique forum and a great simulative environment.

The first session of the day is entitled Cities Past and Future.

Eric Sansderson - "Armed with an 18th-century map, a GPS and reams of data, Eric Sanderson is re-plotting the Manhattan of 1609, just in time for New York's quadricentennial."

He grew up out west and studies landscape ecology - the study of how does the land make space for plants and animals. On his trips back he returns to New York - how does the city of New York make space for plants and animals - people like us. New York was the first Mega city. He came across a map of New York made by the British at the end of the American Revolution. There are features on the map that no longer exist. He decided to geo-reference this map and find these hidden and lost features.

He wanted to look underneath the streets and buildings and see how the city functions as an ecological landscape. He mapped the 55 different ecological landscape types - Manhattan had more ecological areas than any of the more famous National Parks such as Yosemite. He has rebuilt a map of the landscape of Manhattan 400 years ago - look at the ecosystem the animals and plants that you would find there. he showed some amazing images of how the landscape would have looked.

He is using these maps to understand how we can look to the past to build a model for future sustainability for the city of New York.

Constanza Ceruti is a high altitude archaeologist - when we think about ancient cities in South America we  think about Machu Pichu. the heart of the Inca civilisation was Cusco and the Inca Priests would start their processions from here into the mountains to perform their rituals and sacrifices. Her role is to study these high altitude archaeological sites - in very remote areas - sometimes having to walk 100 of kilometres to get to the sites. 

In Argentina they excavated an Inca platform at 22,000 - the worlds highest archeology site where they discovered 3 frozen bodies of Inca children which are considered the best preserved Inca mummies in existence. They performed a variety of non-invasive analysis - with just one hair they can find out what the children were eating in the last weeks of their lives.

Climate changes are affecting all these high altitude sites and the people who live in the areas and use them as part of their religious ceremonies are no longer to be performed.

I don't climb to be higher - I climb to be closer.

Carolyn Steel "Food is a shared necessity but also a shared way of thinking, argues Carolyn Steel, and it offers an unusual and illuminating way to explore how cities evolved"

Why are cities designed the way they are? How do you feed a city? We take it for granted that if we go into a shop there will be food available. Its remarkable that cities get fed at all as the infrastructures required to provide and dispose of the food resources is incredible. It takes 10 times as much grain to produce the meat  we eat than it does to feed a human.

• 19 million of hectares of rain forest lost each year
• Half the food produced in the US is thrown away
• It takes 10 calories to produce each calorie that we consume

As we move into cities we are adopting a Western diet. What can we do about it? 

In History it was the Temples that distributed the grain and the harvest that sustained the Cities. How did Rome feed the citizens - it had ancient food miles - Rome waged war on neighbouring countries to get hold of their grain stores. Rime used to import Oysters from London. Typically carried over the sea and rivers as the roads were longer and more prone to attack and damage. 

the way Cities were design were around the food distribution and the routes that were taken to get it into the cities. The Industrial revolution - particularly rail changed the way Cities were developed. They were no longer governed by geography and could grow. After trains came cars and then the city was no longer governed by the food distribution as we can just go to get food in our cars. We don't really value food anymore. Cities have actually distanced us from nature - for the food we eat.

Definition of Utopia - 'Good Place" or 'No Place' She has come up with a new word Sitopia = 'Food place'

What does this look like? Family centric food - we need people who can recognise food - food is part of the social part of the city. there are many projects that are trying to reconnect us with our food - particularly connecting our children with where food comes from. We need to understand how food needs to shape the cities of the future.

Bjarke Ingels 'Theory meets pragmatism meets optimism in Bjarke Ingels' architecture. His big-think approach is informed by a hands-on, ground-up understanding of the needs of a building's occupants and surroundings.'

He has investigated how can you tell the stories behind the scenes of architectural projects and he came up with the concept of a comic book - 'Yes is more' . Question the idea that the Architect is always rebelling against the establishment - rather than revolution he is thinking about evolution. Darwin is a good model for the way the designers and architect works - through a process of architectural evolution the design emerges. Gradually an idea evolves and solidifies.

Sometimes a mutant idea forms and these are put on a shelf for reuse later. How can a sustainable city enhance our lives rather than hurt it - a typical neo-Protestant view. He looked at the parallels between Copenhagen and Shanghai - both are have relied on bicycles and in the Danish Pavilion at an Expo they proposed to put 1000 bikes on the stand so people can visit the other stands - they also decide as they were both port towns and he proposed to take water from the Copenhagen harbour to the Expo so people at the expo can take a plunge in fresh, clean water.

A project in Copenhagen, The Mountain, provides a new look at an apartment block by integrating car parking and south facing apartments with gardens and outside space to provide a take on sustainable living. They used the size of holes in the cladding in the building to represent artwork of an image of Everest.

Ideas evolve from one project to the next and develop into new concepts.

Magnus Larsson - He hopes to build new structures in the desert -- by using bacteria to turn shifting sand into a solid mass.

He is proposing a 6000 mile wall of compressed sand across the desert of Africa. 1 Billion grains of sand are born everyday from the mountains and sandstone's of the world. Dry areas cover 1/3rd of the worlds surface - we are facing desertification af many lands, particularly Africa and China and it is threatening the lives of many people. This leads to forced migration and border disputes and wars the Sahara is swallowing arable land at 1 metre per day currently. Sand dunes only cover 1/5th of our deserts. Green wall Sahara is a project to plant a wall of trees across North Africa to stop this desertification, however the challenge of this is that the people who live there are so poor that they chop down the trees to raise an income.

His proposal is to create a solidified wall of sand - one challenge is how to glue the sand particles together. His proposal is to a bacteria to stick the grains together and creates a form of sandstone. How much with this cost - for each cubic metre of concrete it would cost $90 - if we use the bacteria it would only cost $11. These new solid 'dunes' can be habitable and also provide a home for shade and food plants and trees. His wish is to build a long narrow city in the desert.

"Nothing is built on stone, everything is built in sand but we must build if the sand is stone"

TED Global 2009 - Oxford - Day 3 Session 4 - Worldview Rethink

The fourth session of the day is entitled 'WorldView Rethink' and the four speakers are Parag Khanna, Geoff Mulgan, Rory Bremner and Karen Armstrong.

Parag Khanna "is a Geopolitical expert who foresees a future where American influence is waning, and the new powerhouses (and threats) may not be the players you'd expect." He was asked to bring a map and point out the things that we do not see.

Do we live in a border-less world - a contemporary political map shows over 200 countries. 90% of the world economy lives in one of 40 'places' in the world. Border conflicts can define how we live and how we see the world. In 1945 there were only 100 countries in the world - as we move to 1989 there were 50 new countries created. At the end of the cold war and this provided a further 20+ countries - toady there are over 200 sovereign states. Russia is the largest and China is the most populous - what we don't see is that Russia's population is concentrated in the Western side of the country and only 40 million people live in the East of Russia.In the Russian far east which is twice the size of India there are only 6 million people, however this is where there are many mineral deposits which China is mining by buying the land.

Every single year 600,000 move from China into Russian Mongolia to take advantage of the resources that are there - they are not conquering it they are leasing it. How is China re-establishing itself in the far eastern region there is ever stronger trade links with Japan, Korea and Australia - it has signed military agreements with local countries - it has become a centre for Diplomacy.

In the Middle East countries are very uncomfortable about the borders left by the colonial ancestors, For 3000 years the Kurds have been fighting for independence - today they are trying to control the pipelines that cross their territory - if they control these then they control the transport of its oil. It is landlocked and therefore it has to remain friends with its neighbours.

In Israel and Palestine what is needed here is infrastructure a link from Palestine to the sea could provide viability for a separate state. 

If we look at the former soviet union the 'Stans' - many of these are oil rich and it is very important to them as it is to us. For many countries in this area having a oil/gas pipeline is about being part of the global energy market. the new 'silk roads'. 

In Europe the borders were in place to keep Germany in its place - on average it has grown at an average of 1 country per day - 12 countries and 450 million people. the former Soviet Union countries are not part of the Eu yet however many use the Euro as a currency and are reliant on the EU for trade.

Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iran - the post colonial changes is changing very rapidly and it will only continue apace. In the Arctic Circle Greenland voted themselves self Governing rights from Denmark and will benefit from the oil and gar resources beneath the arctic.

We need to focus less on the borders and look to become a border-less world.

Another short talk from the Richard Bernstein - TED is al about sharing ideas - "The empires of the Future are the empires of the mind" - Sir Winston Churchill.

Share and Share alike - an effective bridge between businesses and the genuine causalities of societies. The idea is for companies to create and give shares to charities where they can sell the and raise capital. He has given £90,000 of shares in his company to charity and had a huge affect on the charities that have received them.

Geoff Mulgan  "is director of the Young Foundation, a centre for social innovation, social enterprise and public policy with a 50-year history of creating new organisations and pioneering ideas in fields as varied as aging, education, healthcare and poverty reduction."

Talking about Mamon and Capitalism - his presentation is called CTRL+ALT+DELETE - what is the landscape on the other side of the crisis and what can we expect. As a student at Oxford University a lot of his fellow teenagers were facing growing unemployment - they had no hope, no jobs and no prospects. Why is capitalism so good at some things and so bad at others.

To every complex solution there is a simple solution - and its usually wrong. The longer you commute the less happy you will be. Another phase of unemployment is with us today where there will be over a million unemployed teenagers on the market this year.

There is a proliferation of things like Urban Farming, alternative currencies and other way to use the resources that are becoming spare. Much of the work that Governments do is about fixing the past not building for the future.

What will be the biggest sectors in the next 10 years - it wont be the sectors that have received the handouts it will be healthcare, education and environmental resources. We know our societies need to radically change - it is only through experiment that we will learn how to run an environmental efficient city, take care of an older population etc. We invest in science but there is no similar investment in social issues. 

You should also take No as a question and not as an answer

We need to use Social Innovation to change the world. All over the world people are coming together to create social innovation - we need to do this as well as technology innovation. The US have just launched an office of Social Innovation. What about a new goal of generating a Billion extra years of life for its citizens. Value comes from what you do with others and not what you sell to others. The future will be very surprising for many people - the future will be about society and not about the economy.  The crisis is deepening around us - are we just peddling furiously to get back to where we are or to reboot and do things differently.

Michelle Borkin - the way to see things not unseen.  ring radio astronomy and radiology together you can start to see new insights that allow us to see new things. Should you be an interdisciplinearean - YES! You don;t know where you get your next idea from.

Rory Bremner "One of the UK's sharpest funny men, Rory Bremner exposes the lunacies of modern politics with devilishly clever political satire and spot-on impressions of leaders from around the world."

Rory did an excellent and entertaining diversion from the deluge of information and thoughts that we had had during the day. Using observations of our political leaders mixed with thoughts from the last 2 days of TED he managed to get everyone laughing - although some of the jokes I think went over the heads of the non-brits. An excellent session

Karen Armstrong  " is a provocative, original thinker on the role of religion in the modern world."

TED Global 2009 - Oxford - Day 3 Session 3 - Revealing Energy

The first session of the afternoon is on revealing Energy and has talks from Ross Lovegrove, Nick Veasey, Steve Cowley, Eric Giler and Bertrand Piccard

The first session is a musical event based around the Theremin played by the niece of the inventor - Lydia  Kavina - who is based in Oxford and is accompanied by the radio science orchestra. She played three pieces which relate to the past, present and future.  The second song was one written by Thomas Dolby to celebrate the Sputnik - the first satellite in space 52 years ago. The third piece was the theme from Doctor Who which I guess was the first experience most people had of the Theremin although they probably didn't realise how the music was being played. A quick search on Google reveals that there are many kits available to make your won machine and even a Wii application to use the games platform as a Theremin!

Ross Lovegrove is an industrial designer known as Captain Organic - he embraces nature as the inspiration for his free design - each object he creates - be it a bottle, chair, staircase or car - is reduced to its essential elements - his pieces offer minimal forms of maximum beauty. Ross comes from Wales and where he was brought up the beach was covered with amazing designs in the forms of fossils. He walks, he dreams and he thinks. He is rarely in the now.

He demonstrated Lovegrove Genesis meaning an origin or renewal of something. He works through association and she showed an images which he has either designed or things that has inspired him and he uses associations of these objects in association to create new things. He wants to share with us some principles:

1. Organic essentialism - He takes the objects which are associated with this and associates them to think about things in new ways. He designs on computer and tests things out on everyday objects like tables and chairs. In nature most colour comes from surface texture rather than pigment.
2. Lightness - Again he forms a neural pulse where he takes objects which are related - he  developed the worlds lightest suitcase at 1.3kg. The case has no lining as it would add 400 gms to the weight the case has a feeling of pressurisation - it looks as if it has been inflated.
3. Netification - the idea that you can reduce the mass of objects by reducing the supporting structures. An example he used is lighting in Japan which is a cross fluorescent light
4. Natural Energy

Unfortunately Ross went over his time and had to be pulled off the stage - not literally.

Nick Veasey "Logging countless hours behind an X-ray machine, Nick Veasey illuminates the labyrinthine secrets hidden beneath the exteriors of everyday objects" Revealing the energy of the X-Ray.

He showed a number of x-ray images including an X-Ray of a bus including all the  people on it - it was just one person replicated in the image. Using large scale X-Rays using cargo scanners. He is inspired by nature. He has a new purpose built X-Ray shed - where he uses a lot more radiation than you would normally used in hospitals. He still uses film as the digital world hasn't caught up yet with the large format X-Rays. 

Colouring adds another level of interest to the images. the most difficult things to X-Ray are the lightest things. A commercial application of Nicks work is the advertisement for Lucozade below.

Steve Cowley "Steven Cowley directs the UK's leading fusion research center. Soon he'll helm new experiments that may make cheap fusion energy real on a commercial scale"

He is talking today about Nuclear Physics - when are we going to get Fusion? When it was explained to him that we are eating up our resources he got very worried - energy today is dominated by resource. Countries that have things buried beneath them have things that people want - mainly energy sources. We are using energy faster and faster today - we need to make energy in the future is from knowledge - not resources.

The UK Government are going to out in 16 Nuclear power stations in the coming years - Nuclear Fission. What we really need is a small source, no environmental impact and no harmful waste. The most stable nucleus is Iron - Deuterium and Tritium come together and they briefly make lithium⁶ and that releases Helium and a Neutron - what comes out of this is energy. Tritium doesn't exist in nature so you have to make it. How much fuel have we got left - oil has somewhere between 10 - 60 years, Gas 10 - 600 years, however Lithium we have 1000 - 30 Million years basically held in sea water..

How do you hold something at 150 million degrees - by holding it in a magnetic field. There is only one machine in the world which can make fusion and that is JET which created 16 megawatts of power in the 1960s. They is a new project to build a new facility which will be switched on in 2013 to prove whether Fusion is a realistic source for power in the future.

Eric Giler runs a company that has developed a method for transmitting power wirelessly. We humans love electricity - and we love batteries which we dispose of 40 billion batteries every year. Wires suck - batteries suck when we dispose of them they disintegrate and then they go for landfill and pollute the land. MIT Physicists created WiTricity in - the first experiment lit a 60w bulb over a 200m range. This used resonant energy transfer using an oscillating magnetic field around a resonant coil. This is a non-radiative power transfer - uses magnetic near field which are about the same as the earthy magnetic field.

They have developed a wide range of applications - electric cars that park on a mat that charges the car, robot vacuum cleaners, medical devices and heated dog bowls.

Jason Sol is a TEDster that does card magic - he envisaged card flourishing - the fanciful manipulation of playing cards. The art flourished via social media - a youtube video teaching people how to do it has had over 300,000 views.

Betrand Piccard circumnavigated the Earth in a hot-air balloon. Now he wants to circle it in an airplane powered only by solar energy.

The last speaker of this session is Betrand Piccard circumnavigated the Earth in a hot-air balloon. Now he wants to circle it in an airplane powered only by solar energy.

He starts with what can he tell us other than hot air and wind! Like in life balloons are pushed by the winds - if we want to change our direction in life or in balloons we have to change altitude. In balloons when you change altitude we drop ballast - we should see this as a metaphor for changing our lies - our ballast is dogmas paradigms our baggage. We need to explore all the ways we can go, all the ways we can think before we choose the direction we want to go in.

He has believed these things for a long time but had to go round the world in a balloon to get invited to talk about it! If you get at the wrong altitude you may go faster but end up in the wrong direction - "Do you want to go very fast in the wrong direction or slow but in the right direction!"

His next project is a solar powered plane that he plans to circumnavigate the world in the next few years. the plane is a symbol - it will never carry passengers but this is a start, an example - a symbol of what we can achieve, when we believe the impossible can be done. 

They are getting invited to speak around the world by leaders and governments to talk about the solar project - this alone is creating a belief that the impossible is possible.

Which is the ballast you wish to throw overboard - which is the altitude you want to be at and what do you have to do to get there?

TED Global 2009 - Oxford - Day 3 Session 2 - The Shadows

The second session of the third day is on the topic of 'The Shadows'. Speakers for this session are Taryn Simon, Misha Glenny, Loretta Napoleon, Emmanual Jal.

Taryn Simon "With a large-format camera and a knack for talking her way into forbidden zones, Taryn Simon photographs portions of the American infrastructure inaccessible to its inhabitants."

Ninety percent of her photographing is not taking photos but is writing letters trying to get into places to be able to take photos. Following 9/11 she wanted to look not outside of America but inside the country - the hidden and unknown. 

She has an amazing ability to capture the unseen and unreachable. 

Another project called the 'innocents' - she travelled across the US recording people who had been convicted wrongly for things they hadn't committed. She aimed to understand how photography has been used to wrongly convict these people. Photography can be a distortion and our eyes can be easily deceived.

Misha Glenny  "Journalist Misha Glenny leaves no stone unturned (and no failed state unexamined) in his excavation of criminal globalisation"  

His book McMafia shows tenacity and perseverance. He is talking about organised crime - in the last 2 decades it has seen unprecedented growth - it is now responsible for 15% of the worlds GDP. Going back to the collapse of communism in Europe - when 425 million people were allowed to choose their own government he was ecstatic. After the revolution people who had had power prior to the 'revolution' continued to want to retain their power.

It wasn't just communism that collapsed it was also the states that collapsed - the police etc. This encouraged the rise of private security companies - the Mafia. In Bulgaria there were 14,000 people who had previously worked for  the security services were now out of work. He started in the Balkans - it had turned into a transit zone for illegal things from around the world - drugs, prostitution and illegal migrant labour heading for Europe Union.

In Mexico 6000 people have been killed there in the last 18 months as a direct result of the Cocaine trade. It is the Western desire to consume which is the prime driver of organised crime. What were people doing with all the money they were making from this illegal trade. There was massive money laundering going on with both offshore and onshore banks. 

Looking at Narcotics - there are many Mom and Pops cannabis farms in many places around the world. The global narcotics market has exploded over the past few years but there has been no similar growth in the law enforcement resources available to tackle them. 

The recession - organised crime has adapted well to the recession. They have shifted the operation to cyber crime and counterfeit goods. The key to Cybercrime is social engineering - or in other words 'there is one born every minute'!  It is amazing how easy it is to get information from people with the promise of Sex and Love.

Organised crime is now getting into counterfeit drugs and goods and we need to take it very very seriously.

Edward Burtynsky is the next short talk speaker. He takes large format pictures of industrial landscapes. He has  just finished a series on the landscape of oil - there is extraction and refinement, how we use it the final section is the end of oil, tyres etc. His photos look at how we use oil as a society and hopefully makes us think about our impact on the planet.

Loretta Napoleoni "She made her name following the dollars in terrorist networks, but now Loretta Napoleoni is on the trail of something far more sinister -- the gray zone where crime and unregulated credit meet."

Aim to show us how terrorism interacts with our daily life. Fifteen years ago she received a call from a friend who was looking after the Red Brigade who were in jail and was asked if she wanted to interview them. One of the Red Brigade leaders had been a childhood friend of Loretta. She wanted to know why her childhood best friend had turned into a terrorist and why she hadn't been recruited - she was too single minded and too focussed. The terrorists life was not ruled by ideals but by economics as they are constantly short of cash.

When she interviewed the leader of the Red Brigade she realised that terrorism is really business. She felt she was talking to a business man, an economist or a banker and she decided to find out the economics of terrorism. She found there was a parallel economy run by organised crime - it has followed the same path as western capitalism and has followed the following:

• State sponsorship of terrorism
• Privatisation of terrorism
• Globalisation of terrorism

Very often these organisations ran some of day to day infrastructure - in Northern Island the IRA effectively ran the taxi services across the country so every time we used a taxi we were effectively finding the IRA.

Organised crime/illegal economy is worth about $1.2 trillion dollars. Prior to 9/11 most of this money was in US$ - a vital injection of funds into the US economy. Since the late 1960s there was a growing amount of dollars leaving the country illegally - in suitcases, containers etc. This was organised crime. 

After 9/11 the 'war on terror' introduced the patriot act which includes an anti money-laundering clause which effectively stopped them to monitor any transaction in dollars aound the world. There was a subsequent move of activities and economy to the Euro and into Europe as there was no similar legislation in Europe.

How can terrorism affect your pockets and wallets - the so called war on terror has cost $7 trillion and it didn't have the funds available so it used government bonds to raise the money. So in order to be competitive you lower your interest rate which is what has happened - 6% on the 9/11 and 1.25% at the beginning of summer of 2003. this created the ideal conditions for the sub-prime market and was the genesis of the current recession. there is a world that goes beyond the headlines of the news media - you need to question everything including what she told us today. 

Emmanual Jal "Emmanuel Jal's hypnotic voice rises from hellish origins as a beacon of hope for those caught in seemingly endless cycles of war and despair." A rapper for peace.

He tells a story of his life - he was a child soldier. He is doing this for an old lady in his village who has no way to project his voice to the people of the world. He was born in a war - he saw his village burnt down, his aunty raped when he was 5 - seeing people die every day - all this made him think of himself as a war child. He became a child soldier and he wanted to kill Muslims and Arabs - he wanted revenge for all the killing he had seen.

He realised it wasn't the Muslims or the Arabs that were causing the problems it was someone somewhere that was manipulating the system in the name of religion for the oil and diamonds that the country had.

What energised him and kept him going was his music - his therapy, where he can se heaven and be a child again. Music is the only think that has power to enter your mind, your spirit and influences the way you live without knowing it. The power of music is compared to the power of love although music does not see colour.

THe importance of education to Emmanuel he is willing to die for and has for the last 252 days has been donating his breakfast and lunch to a charity he has set up and is only eating dinner. the charity is aiming to set up a school is Sudan for ex child soldiers. The only way to help Sudan is to educate the woman and the children - he wants to celebrate Emma an aid worker who rescued him from being a child soldier. He sang his song 'what would I be' asking the audience to dance along although most of them seemed very uncomfortable!!!!! 

Lunch today is in the Randolph Hotel where the Simulcast lounge is.