The Innovation Warehouse at Smithfield in central London played host, on 23 Feb 2013, to the first ever All Street Unconference on Alternative Finance. It was a very useful event, but not for the reasons that I had expected. Nor was it quite a typical unconference (I have been to 20 or more of them) because it had too many prescribed elements, a key note speaker, and very little time assigned to Open Space.

Nonetheless, if I had to do it all again, there is very little I would have changed, …

I like cycling and I don’t do it as much as I would like to. Here’s why.
London traffic is dangerous. I know, because I live in zone 1 and I work in zone 1 and the commute is 5 miles each way. Typically I walk it in the morning and I take the Tube home at night. I have cycled both ways many times, I have used my car in both directions many times, and (rarely) I have used the bus in each direction. So far, I have not attempted …

A lucky strike! Radio 4 is, allegedly, one of the best sources of news and comment that we have in Britain, and yet I find myself literally turning it off when some of the presenters, filled with their own self importance, pomposity and misplaced belief in their own superior intellect, are outwardly rude and hostile to those they interview. It is therefore, only a matter of luck that Radio 4 is occasionally a tool which allows me sometimes to encounter worthy news and sometimes to hear valuable dialogue on current …

My son’s birthday falls in the Christmas Holiday when everyone seems to be away, and on the basis that the Queen can have an “official birthday” in June, we decided that Mark can have an “unofficial unparty” to celebrate the midpoint between two birthdays. He is now 10½ !

Wet Weather Plan
Olympic preparations seem to have taken over most of St James Park so the quiz has been shelved and we are now meeting at 5.00pm and the main venue. That also avoids the risk that the weather rains on our …

Digital Shoreditch runs from Monday 21 May to Friday 1 June 2012 and I will be there, speaking on the Inspire day.
I’ve become quite involved in the Coding for Kids trend which has recently hit the headlines in the UK, and following my son’s peformance at The London Real-Time Hackathon in April 2012, he and I decided to launch Coding for Kids Books.
And we did that because Aristotle said “consider your skills, your passions and the needs of the world; where they intersect; that’s where your calling lies”.

Our first book …