Last summer (wow, a year ago!) I made a series of short films with children, under the broad banner of “Digital Britons”. We were trying to explore their perspective on an issue which at the time was exercising the UK government. I just realised I didn’t share the final short film here on this site.
Looking back at this one I really enjoy being reminded of these teenagers again, they were sparky, vibrant young people, but I’m not sure we managed to capture that here - It’s not easy! Anyway here it is:
The tech company I run, WorkSnug, has a no-flying policy. I’ve written a guest blog for TechCrunch explaining the why and the how. Check out the comments for more proof that it takes all sorts…
Last year I founded a tech company in the augmented reality space. We’re doing pretty well. What began as me, an idea and a laptop is now a company with five people, plus a small army of freelancers and contractors. From roots in London we’ve now launched in sixteen cities across nine countries and two continents. We can reasonably claim to be global.
But we don’t fly. More than that, our founding principles make a public commitment that we won’t fly in the course of our business.
Bill Gates said some incredible things at TED in February this year. Perhaps the clearest elucidation I’ve heard of the problem of energy production and climate change. No equivocation, he says:
Carbon Dioxide is warming the planet… There is some uncertainty of how bad the effects will be, but they will be extremely bad… Until we get near to zero Carbon, the temperature will continue to rise.
The conference was billed as “Business Not As Usual”, which I took to mean that we could look forward to two days of innovative thinking which could guide the next generation of entrepreneurs. The opening keynote speaker was Julie Meyer of Ariadne Capital. She gave a speech with some good advice for young start-ups but which was peppered with the sort of anti-government, pro-business propaganda which I’d expect to hear at a Sarah Palin Tea Party. It was overtly political, using politics which directly contradict my own. I tried to challenge her but wasn’t called to ask her a question. I got a touch irritated…
I then gave my own address to a smaller group, where I directly challenged some of her points, arguing that it was entrepreneurialism gone wild which had forced the government to run the huge deficit she so decried, and that the government had little choice but to bail out the banks if it wanted to keep public services afloat. I then called for entrepreneurs to worry less about getting rich and to instead address their talents to the macro-problems of the world, as I see them:
The threat of catastrophic climate change
Social inequality, particularly in the developing world
Digital exclusion: As the developed world gallops through the digital revolution, huge swathes of humanity are left behind (this was a tech session).
I stand by all of that, and frankly a conference can take a mild dispute like this, but I stepped over the line at one point.
Noticing that Shell Livewire were exhibiting, I asked the audience to question why an oil company should be present at an event billed as Business Not As Usual? The truth is, I didn’t know who Shell Livewire were, and by singling them out I did them an injustice. They’ve since contacted me to explain what they do and I’m happy to relate that.
Shell LiveWIRE is a programme which is managed by The PNE Group- a non profit- social enterprise based in Newcastle/ Gateshead. Our activities are all based around encouraging enterprise, and we have been doing this for nearly 30 years and run all manner of programmes of which some of our biggest activity is in the 3rd/ voluntary sector and Shell LiveWIRE. Like any other NPO we have great ideas and need organisations to fund them.
Shell LiveWIRE is a programme we have run for many years, and indeed we also manage Shell LiveWIRE international- which is active in around 25 countries encouraging youth enterprise. We were one of the first organisations to actively promote enterprise as a viable choice for young people nearly 30 years ago and one of the first to have an annual awards event. Shell, for nearly 30 years, have funded this activity either in whole or in part.
A bit more digging on their website and it’s clear they do much good work, I particularly like this. They’re not Shell, they’re just supported by Shell. A commercial decision which I wouldn’t have taken myself, but which I understand and which doesn’t deserve criticism from the stage. My apologies gentlemen.
As for the rest of the conference, the sessions I attended were indeed challenging and practical. I missed day two, but the Twitter feed suggests the students took a lot from it.
I’ve had three mid-life crises, two Damascene conversions and four dozen Big Ideas in the last few years. The doctors, rightly, call it bipolar disorder, and I have a fairly healthy willingness to being told I’m wrong, or to change direction when a wall approaches.
But two Big Ideas in the last couple of years have come and stayed. The first is WorkSnug, a company I’ve formed and which is doing well. I’m very proud of it, but you can read about that elsewhere.
The second Big Idea isn’t my idea at all, I’m just one of many millions who’ve heard the mood music, thought it through and concluded that man-made climate change is an immediate and existential threat, demanding radical economic, political and societal change. The alternative is death on a Malthusian scale, poor people first. Millions of us think like that. We’re changing our lifestyles and attempting to change politics.
So what? So I’m standing as a candidate for the Green Party in the local elections on May 6th. It’s a symbolic thing and I won’t win. The Green Party has a drive to at least have a name on as many ballot papers as possible, and their request came at a time when I was trying to work out how I can work towards the societal change I want to see. Standing to get on the council isn’t it by the way, but it’s a fun, vaguely egotistical step in the right direction.
I’m not actually a member of the Green Party, nor do I plan on joining. I’ve scanned their website and saw nothing offensive. I haven’t read a manifesto. They’re clearly a party of the left, and my political instincts are all left of centre, but it can’t truthfully be said that I’m standing on a Green Party ticket. My take, and I suppose it would be my doorstep pitch if I do any canvassing, is that now is the time to protest, and Green is the best protest vote.
The Copenhagen climate talks saw nothing binding, the media (such as a unitary thing called the media actually exists) has hyped up small-scale chicanery at UAE to such a point that climate-change denial in the UK is mainstream again. Politicians who oversaw the boom and bust are busily trying to rebuild using the same old mechanisms (growth, consumption, aspiration, debt) which helped bring us to the brink of climate chaos. We’re in the midst of two pre-emptive wars, one of which may have been illegal. The British National Party is on the rise, reflective of a second-tier working class politics which isn’t heard at Westminster, but which has mainstream currency in towns up and down the country. Things aren’t good. Protest and vote Green. If you happen to live in Whitechapel, East London, vote for me.
It’s different on a national level. The next Prime Minister will be Tweedledum or Tweedledee. On balance I guess I’d prefer TweedleGordon, and for what it’s worth, while I’m on my soapbox, I would probably encourage readers to vote Labour in the General Election. For all the flaws of this government, and they are many and huge, I can’t see that any centre-right Conservative government will ever intervene in a business versus climate conflict. Ideological free market instincts are dangerous as our planet warms. Things aren’t good, but hold your nose and vote Labour again.
So far so tactical. What about positive solutions? A vision? The truth is that I don’t really have one. Nothing coherent. I have an eye on the scale of the problem, which I voiced here in an open letter to the G20, and some sweeping statements in that letter, outlining a new approach:
…the market is based on growth, consumption, aspiration and often (though not always) greed. But there’s a problem with this. The world’s ecology can’t afford for those aspiring to Western levels of consumption to ever get there. Half the world survives on less than $2 daily, living in conditions which should shame G20 leaders. The affluent other half consumes many multiples more resources than they do. Given that today’s status quo has brought us to the brink of environmental disaster, we shouldn’t pretend that we can afford for them to become like us. This sounds horribly paternalistic, but I can’t think of another way to put it.
It seems to me that the developing world is crying out for social justice, adequate healthcare, housing, women’s rights, representative government and so on. You owe it humanity to play your part in achieving this. Pursuit of consumption levels to match our own won’t work, that will lead to environmental disaster and an extension of the affluenza epidemic. We’re selling them a pup if we pretend they’ll be happy in a society like ours. What Oliver James calls selfish capitalism is toxic; it makes us depressed. It’s no coincidence that the world financial centres of London and New York are also amongst the most depressed cities on earth.
A word on the free market. In setting it free it has run amok. We elect governments to represent the people’s interests. It’s in the people’s interests to reign in the worst excesses of the free market. As an example let’s look at the oil industry. It isn’t evil, it’s searching for more oil, pursuing growth and profit in the way companies are supposed to. But the environment can’t handle it, and notions of social justice are put aside when protecting oil interests in countries such as Saudi Arabia. This is where governments need to intervene, developing policies which protect the greater good. This isn’t about left Vs right, little Vs big government. It’s about ensuring the species survives.
So we need something else from you. A new capitalism, resting on the twin pillars of social justice in the developing world (and elsewhere where it’s lacking) and climate responsibility in the developed world. It’s difficult to describe what that might look like as we’ve barely even begun to acknowledge the need, but make no mistake: The future of humanity depends on your ability to deliver it.
What about my ability to deliver in local politics? Putting aside the fact that I won’t win there is the small matter of my own personal weaknesses. I have no grasp of local issues, and am only really interested in bigger picture geopolitical stuff. I couldn’t sort out planning regulations or tackle the litter problem. I’m not that interested. I’d be a horrible local counsellor. I know that the flip-side of my arguments is a return to localism, and I know that the Greens (and I think the Lib Dems) have much to say on that score. Not me though. I’ve got nothing to say on that score. But then, I’m not going to win.
So in short, in sum, in protest, in the absence of anything better, without much ambition in politics, for fun and because the New Economics Foundation aren’t a political party, I’m standing as a Green. Wish me luck.
On Friday I went down to Brixton to take part in the open day for the Centre for Digital Inclusion and their Apps for Good programme. I’ve got no formal relation with the programme, but I’ll probably be giving them ongoing guidance as they progress with their programme, in my capacity as “bloke who has worked in the field of kids and tech, and who has built an app.”
The programme:
We will start working with young people who are aged between 16 to 25 and currently not in full-time education, jobs or training and live in deprived areas. If successful, we will open up the programme overtime to everyone interested.
The goal being to work with these young people to build an application, probably expanding more broadly into some form of web project, that both develops news skills amongst a generally disadvantaged group, and which works to improve their world in some way. Think Fix My Street, only with resonance for this young group.
It’s a fascinating project, and I’m glad to lend my support. They’ve got challenges to overcome: Selecting the right young people; working on the Android OS, which currently sits on phones which the young and unemployed struggle to afford and; how to ensure they truly reflect the creative vision of the young people, when some heavy coding will necessarily be done by professional developers. But having met the team, realistic and determined, I suspect they’ll achieve something great.
I also got to meet Daniel Morris, someone I have much in common with by the looks of things.
My favourite part of the open-day was in chatting with the kids. I got the sense that they had attended the open-day through a mixture of exasperation with their lack of opportunities and the general sexiness associated with iPhones, apps and so on. My job was to make it real, showing them WorkSnug, and ensuring they understand that there is a route from creative inspiration to something tangible: a tool for people, a product, even a living.
The magic of Twitter tells me that the Plugg conference has just put a call-out for start-ups to hire more women. It’s not something I’ve thought about much before, but doing some Googling I see that it’s not the first time the tech industry has had this debate, with some lively stuff about a year ago.
As I’ve mentioned before on here, I’m writing less on this personal site because I have my heart, soul and eighteen hours of the day invested in my own technology start-up, WorkSnug. We’re a small core team with a large field of outsourced and freelancing talent brought in when needed. I’ve had to make many recruitment decisions in the last six months and I thought I’d share how the male/female thing has panned out.
First of all are the directors. I’m the Managing Director and we have three non-exec directors. Two are male and one woman. The two men are an experienced entrepreneur/investor in the mobile tech space - A no brainer to ask him to come on board. The second is a talented creative and design guy with his own studio, and also a long time business associate/friend of mine. The woman is both an events and international commerce specialist. Not incidentally, she’s also my long-term partner!
So that’s the core team.
When all we had was a cool idea, a lot of hard work ahead and a tiny dose of seed-funding, I decided to bring on an intern. Advertising through the normal channels I got dozens of CVs from tech graduates, peppered with acronyms I didn’t understand and mostly from men (almost boys). Only one stood out, a young Russian woman who liked the sound of the varied work we could offer. She was the only person I interviewed and I brought her on because we got on well personally during that interview. She did an excellent month of intern work for us, then a short period of paid work afterwards before moving on to a full-time position elsewhere.
Our application tech development has been done by all-male teams. There is a limited talent pool of augmented reality developers out there and I recruited on the basis of personal relationship and overall cost. In truth, there was no gender decision to make.
Similarly, our ongoing web development (we’re still in Beta) has been done by an all-male team. When looking for a web dev team I prepared a brief, circulated it amongst the members of The Hub (a large coworking community) in which I work and selected from the responses. In the responses there wasn’t a woman in sight, though the Hub itself, aimed at social entrepreneurs, appears to be slightly more than 50% female.
Last month I asked an experienced community manager to write us a community management strategy document and plan. She was a she (that sounds like a mantra - I like it), selected because her past experience, with TripAdvisor, was directly relevant to WorkSnug’s user-generated content requirement, and because it was clear she understood what we’re trying to do. We hoped to take her on full-time but just lost her to another company, mainly because our product offering is not yet in a position to move into full-blown community management. We’re sad about that, she’s great.
Then there are the local teams. We send small teams of paid reviewers around big cities to review libraries, coffee shops, coworking centres and similar places, to see if they’re suitable for mobile work (we then share this data on the web and in an augmented reality app). We’ve done this in London, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco, Brighton and many more are on the way. WorkSnug has a no flight policy - No WorkSnug employee gets on a plane because of WorkSnug - It’s part of our views on environmental responsibility. Because of this, I recruit these review teams using a mixture of CV’s, Skype video calls and trust.
A weird thing has happened here. Only the Barcelona and Amsterdam teams have been men. All others have been women. Though I hadn’t considered this until today, I suspect this is because I inherently trust female applicants more than male. I can certainly recall strong male candidates, but time and again I selected the women. Was there subconscious sexism at play here? Did I see women as more suitable for a subtle, intellectual role like reviewing a workspace? I’m not at all sure. Incidentally, the trust thing has worked out well - We’re yet to be burned, and I’m really happy with the quality of the reviews (but should confess that we ask our reviewers to take a photo of each place they visit, so there is a built in safeguard there).
So there we have it. The WorkSnug board of directors is 25% female, all of our tech development has been male, and what could be described as the softer-edged work, community and reviewing, has been overwhelmingly female. I’d hazard a guess that this makes us slightly more female than most tech start-ups, but still subject to the normal accusations of sexism. We may even be guilty of sexism, but if so I’d say it’s systemic sexism, not something based on conscious prejudice. I’m open to other views.
Because I’m proud of the broad-based global team we’ve put together, we made this short film - Plenty of female faces, women outnumber men by five to six, but this is because many of the men ignored my requests to do a short piece to camera!
I’ve been involved in the Augmented Reality world over the last 12 months or so, with my own AR startup WorkSnug. AR is currently rather limited by being tethered to devices - WorkSnug works on the iPhone - But there are more ambitious projections for the technology. Are we witnessing the start of a revolution in how we interact with our environment? Perhaps. And perhaps it could get ugly. Check out this eye-opening film from Keiichi Matsuda. A brilliant vision? In his own words:
The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.
A film produced for my final year Masters in Architecture, part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality.
At the recent Workplace Trends conference, one speaker dared to ask: “Do we even need an office these days?” I thought I’d pick up this contentious ball and run with it.
What would happen if a large multi-national company, which I’ll call Company X, sold its real estate, dished out laptops and went completely mobile? Their new offices would be at homes and in connected ‘third places’, all around the city or town.
I’m only talking about knowledge workers here: those whose work could be done with a laptop and phone. If a worker actually makes something, it’s a fair bet Starbucks isn’t the ideal place to do it.
The tech company I run, 
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