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By Richard McKeever

photo credit: Larsz
I’m feeling very inspired.. and a little bit starstruck… having attended the excellent NESTA Innovation Edge conference at the Royal Festival Hall earlier today.

The “Inventor of the World Wide Web” Tim Berners-Lee addressed the event (fittingly via an online, yet slightly out of synch, video link). In conversation with Guardian journalist Jonathon Freedland TBL spoke modestly of the part he played in developing a tool that does not represent the interconnection of millions of bits of computer equipment – but is the vehicle for “Humanity Connected”.

After Lunch the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown delivered a brief but passionate and detailed speech  - without notes - he enthused about the importance of innovation and creativity to Britain as a nation and the importance of innovation in tackling global challenges.

The afternoon panel sessions chaired by Charlie Leadbetter managed to combine a panel discussion with an attempt at an inclusive dialogue with a huge audience plus some online twitter conversations I’m not sure it worked 100% but there were some real insights from the varied panel of:

• Michael Birch – CEO Bebo
• Jon Gisby – Channel 4’s Director of New Media and Technology
• Sir Richard Leese - Leader, Manchester City Council

It is no suprise that innovation edge has been widely reported on several other blogs and, like many of the other people there, for me the most inspirational part of the day was Bob Geldof’s keynote address. Faultless in his passion and challenge he led an articulate trawl through history, geography, politics and rock and roll to illustrate his campaigning message (…with the occasional profanity to make sure people were listening!). Sir Bob’s presentation was well very recieved in the hall.

I was particularly taken with his points on how risk aversion can stifle creativity and innovation. “We so fear failure that we rarely try anymore”.

He had a powerful message about leadership “in a world of hyper-democracy the notion of leadership comes to the self, we take responsibility and so dismiss traditional leadership from our politicians.” He went on to say that Live Aid for all its success had left the world fundamentally unchanged – “we couldn’t move the underlying structures of poverty which are political and economic … you don’t die of drought, you die of politics”

A thought provoking day.

Tags: bob geldof, innovation edge, innovation edge 08, innovationedge, innovationedge08, nesta, rfh, social innovation, social leadership
Posted in Communication, Innovation, Inspiration, Leadership |

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Communication, Innovation, Inspiration, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.