Play rugby not football

I am sure you will all agree with me that rugby is a much better game than football (that's "soccer" to some of you). In particular, if we want to produce a nation of entrepreneurs then it is vital that we abandon all junior football related activity immediately and divert all attention and resources into mini-rugby.

The reasons are obvious. I observed them again first hand at the London Irish mini-rugby festival last Sunday. I spent 9 hours down in Sunbury, with 2,000 other people, coaches, dads, mums and of course the hundreds of young players themselves from across the UK and Ireland.

It's not so much the game itself. After all if people want to run around in dinky little shorts to kick a ball around that's there business. But there is a real contrast between the average junior football session and a mini-rugby match

There are four things kids will learn if they take up mini-rugby that will stand them in good stead for starting up businesses.

First, rugby is a hard, hard game. You play hard, take knocks, hit the ground hard, shake your head, get right back up and get straight back in to the game. If you writhe around on the floor shouting "Referee, it's not fair" then the game moves on and you get left behind.

Second, rugby is a team game, and it takes all sorts. Big guys in the front row. Lanky lads at Number 8. Tiny, speedy guys on the wing. It's great to see all the lads in all their diverse glory on a Sunday morning playing for the team. You don't want to be the "superstar" because the opposition will make it their business to squish you.

Third, the rules are the rules. You play by them, you play to the whistle and if the Ref says "penalty" it's a penalty and that's it. Don't mess with a rugby ref. Football refs are, well, different.

Finally, rugby dads are a breed apart. We all played rugby about 30 years ago, so we all think we know how to play now. We are all there on the sidelines, screaming away, shouting "Drive over, drive over", "take him down", "tackle him, the bigger they are the harder they fall, son" and the good old "come on, get up and get back in there you woose, it's only an ear, you've got another one haven't you?". But we never shout at the ref and we never shout at the opposition Dads.

And at the end of every mini-rugby match, no matter how hard and painful it was, no matter whether the ref was great or rubbish, no matter whether it was a friendly or the Cup Final, all the boys line up and shout "Three Cheers" for the other team and then they shake hands. Woah betide the one boy who is so upset that he doesn't want to cheer the other team off and shake hands. He will suddenly find a group of Dads and coaches telling him to get over there with the rest of the boys, after all "this isn't football you know".

So, the boys learn to play hard and bounce back from hard knocks. They learn that teamwork is everything and if you try to be a superstar you are going to get hit. They learn to play full on but to play by the rules. They learn the value of a good, hard coach and they learn to respect the opposition.

I can't think of a better set of rules for being an entrepreneur.

Mind you, when it comes to making big money, those ball juggling glory boys over in the football camp have got that wrapped up. And it's not like I hate football. After all I do support what is generally accepted to be the best team in the Premiership.

But on any given Sunday in the winter season, come rain or shine you will find me and my boy down at London Irish learning how to live life the rugby way.

How long does it take to raise VC money?

I enjoy chatting with other start up guys about their ideas and sharing my experience of the early stages of starting a new company. One of the questions that always comes up is "how long does it take to raise VC funding?"

In my experience, guys who haven't been through it before always think it will be quicker than it actually is. So, I will tell you how long and how much effort it takes to raise VC money.

It takes 9 months from start to finish. 9 months of focus, energy, commitment, pitching and negotiating. You will have perhaps a hundred conversations.

Most of the conversations will happen in the first 3 months. You hit the phones. Hit the email. Get out there. Pitch, pitch, pitch. You have to figure out quickly whether the VC you are talking to has any money or not. You would think that they might tell you if they don't actually have any cash to invest, but for some reason VCs seem to find it very difficult to say that they are skint.

The next 3 months are all about negotiating. You have got down to the handful of investors who are actually interested, a combination of your existing investors (if you have any) and new ones. You haggle, adjust, talk about pre-money valuations, liquidity preferences, management incentives as you edge towards a deal that everyone will accept. Then it falls apart and you start all over again. As you do this, the economy is changing around you and the VC industry collectively changes its mind. You do this three or four times until you get the actual deal agreed.

You're done. You're there. Congratulations. Break out the champagne! You have closed the deal. Haven't you? No, you think you have, but you haven't. You are just entering stage 3 - "Legals".

The final 3 months are a lengthy process of their lawyers talking to your lawyers. Your lawyers talking to you. You talking to yourself. And so it goes on. For weeks and weeks. Until the documents are complete. Then you send them out for signature and start chasing. Chase, chase, chase. Keep chasing until its all signed because if the markets crash, if the mood changes, if the VCs see someone new and sexier to chase after, then they will be off and you will be left standing there. FINALLY you get all the signatures back and the cash is transferred.

Only at that point can you truely say that your funding round is finished. When you look at your company's bank account and it has risen by several million, then and only then can you say that you have closed your funding round.

And on 21st April, Garlik's bank balance increased, the bank manager burst spontaneously into song and we cracked open a bottle of bubbly.

Now, back to the real business of building a successful, innovative technology business. As an early stage entrepreneur fund raising is something that I have to do and I'm not bad at it, but I really don't enjoy it. But building the business - that's the fun stuff.

Tapped on the shoulder by the Terrorist Police

Do I look like a terrorist to you? Go on, be honest. I am told I can look a bit shifty at times. But a terrorist? Really! However it seems our boys in blue have a different view.

My first meeting in London this morning was near Green Park station and the next was lunch with a Google exec in their offices near Victoria. As it was a nice day and I had a bit of time, I thought I would take a gentle stroll to Victoria through Green Park.

As I got near the Buckingham Palace end of Green Park I was approached by Officer Kevin Moloney of the Metropolitan Police. "Excuse me, Sir" he says politely "do you speak English?"

I pause momentarily, a bit taken aback. "Yes" I say. "Many black people in the UK are almost fluent in English nowadays" I add in The Queen's English, which I felt was most appropriate given that we were not far from the Palace. Actually I didn't say that last bit, I've only just thought of it. Damn. I have got to work on my real-time, witty responses.

"Ah, that's good" says PC Moloney, Warrant Number 219635 "I didn't want to waste my time saying everything only to discover that you don't understand!"

"Very wise" I sneer (actually I didn't say that either. I just said "Yes" again. However it did occur to me that he might think I only knew the word "yes" so I started to look for opportunities to use other words from the English language to prove to him the breadth of my vocabulary).

Now we got down to business. "I have stopped you under Section 44 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act as I have seen you with a briefcase" says Officer Kevin.

"That is probably because I am a businessman going to a meeting" I say. I do actually say this. I am wearing a grey suit and white shirt, looking at least a bit like a businessman. I am feeling a little irritated to be honest at this point. And embarrased. But also slightly nervous. Do we do orange jumpsuits in the UK? I'm not certain.

Anyway, PC Moloney searches my briefcase as I stand there trying to look nonchalant and passers-by stare at the good policeman searching the swarthy looking gent in his cunning businessman disguise. I am hoping no-one I know wanders past. That would be strange and uncomfortable for both of us.

Kev asks for ID and I show him my driving licence. He takes it and starts to write something into a yellow notebook. Now I get interested from a data point of view. "What are you writing" I ask "and who does it go to?"

"It's just a record of my search. It doesn't go anywhere, it's just there in case someone needs to check back who was stopped and when. I'll give you a copy of it"

"Does that mean I will go on to a database somewhere?"

"Oh, no I don't think so. Only if there is a reason for it to. Otherwise it's just there in the files" he says reassuringly, although slightly uneasily as I seem to be taking an unusual interest now.

"So let's be clear" I probe "are you saying that it definitely doesn't go on to a database or that you don't know?"

Officer Moloney signs "If you want to make a complaint Sir" he says in that slightly tired policeman voice that is usually followed by a request to accompany him down to the station sir "if you want to make a complaint, I will give you the details". He gives me the name of one Inspector MacDonald of the Hyde Park unit and then he gives me my copy of the form.

Form 5090(X) is just a little bit of paper, but it carries a lot of information. My full name, date of birth, gender, ethnicity, height, address. Reason for stopping has four choices - behaviour, action, possession of an item, presence in area. Mine was "presence in area". It seems I was stopped for being "present in that area". Fair enough, given that it was definitely an area and I was clearly present in it.

"Search Grounds" was handwritten as "section 44 prevention of terrorism act in place...subject with rucksack (crossed out) briefcase". It was interesting that he instinctively wrote "rucksack" even though I was standing in front of him in a suit holding a briefcase!

At the bottom of the form are a series of codes. Mine were entered as T (for Terrorism s.44), J (for Terrorism s.44(2), as opposed to H which is Terrorism s.44(1) - don't ask me the difference) and I (there isn't an I on the codes, but I think/hope he meant 1 for No further action.).

The whole process took about 10 minutes but it felt like hours. I have never in my 45 years been stopped by the police before. I managed to miss the era of "sus laws". But I got a tiny sense of how it must have felt. Even though my old mate PC Kevin Moloney was just doing his job and was quite pleasant, I felt silly, embarrased, demeaned, powerless, annoyed and nervous. I was thinking to myself how is it that I can go from visiting Number 10, from attending Davos, from advising the UN on cybersecurity to being stopped and searched under terrorism laws in my own City? Do you think if I had mentioned to him that I am a Freeman of the City of London with the right to drive my sheep across London Bridge, he would have let me go?

On the other hand, I am very, very, very keen not to get blow up by real terrorists on the streets of London and the police and their friends in the shadows have done a marvellous job of keeping us safe over the past few years, so perhaps this is the price we have to pay. I get stopped to keep you safe. I'm sure it will happen again and I am sure I will get used to it.

But just remember, next time you see a foreign looking chap carrying a suspicious looking bag being questioned on the street by a police and you think to yourself "thank goodness they've caught that terrorist" bear in mind it might just be me on my way to lunch with a senior Google executive!

Entering politics

When is the right time for a technology entrepreneur to enter politics and what motivates such a move?

The answer, according to my wife is "NEVER" or possibly "WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER" whichever comes first. She has promised me that if, due to some mental abberation, I decide that I must heed the call of the people, then she will immediately kiss and tell. I told her that I haven't done anything worth kissing and telling about, mores the pity, but she assures me that dirty linen will be found or manufactured, and washed in full public view. She is then quick to remind me of one or two incidents that convince me that the will of the people must be resisted at all costs.

Clearly Chris Kelly has a more understanding wife when it comes to politics. Chris is the Chief Privacy Officer of Facebook and I had breakfast with him last week during his brief visit to the UK. Chris joined Facebook when it was just a handful of people and he has been part of its amazing success and growth to perhaps 175m users across the globe and nearly a thousand staff. Now it's time to move on and I was surprised and impressed to hear that he is planning to throw his hat in the ring and stand for Attorney General of the State of California.

State Attorney General is a big, big job in the USA and with a population of over 36m California is the biggest in the USA. Successful State Attorney Generals go on to be Senators, even Governors so its no mean feat even to be taken seriously in the race.

And what a race it promises to be. Just chatting to Chris about what's involved, the fund raising, the lobbying, positioning, campaigning - and that's just the primaries. It sounds like you fight like crazy to get adopted by your party and then you start all over again for the actual elections (in 2010). But Chris seems up for it and I wish him the best.

As for me, I think I will keep my dirty linen firmly in my closet. And if "the people" come calling, they can jolly well speak to my wife first.

Time to Twitter

Twitter this, twitter that. Everyone is twittering these days, it seems. I turn on the news and another civilian is out there, twittering to their hearts content, screaming at me that it's the new, new thing and if I'm not twittering then I'm a nobody. "Blogging is, like, soooo 2008 Darling".

Well, I guess that means its time to twitter.

But how to twitter?

I signed up a few weeks ago but to be honest I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to do next. I registered my phone and waited for something to happen, but nothing happened. I didn't know what to "tweet" and I didn't actually know how to "tweet". So, I left it and got on with my life.

The troubling thing was that I kept getting emails saying "So and so is now following you on Twitter". Spooky. I would spin round in my chair to catch them but no-one was there. I could sense them "following" me though, even though I hadn't twatted. Twyped? Twanged?

Finally, this evening I decided that if people were going to follow me on twitter I had at least better figure out how to use the damn thing. Once I had got that bit sorted (easier than I thought - give it a go), I had to decide what to say.

Some people seem to twitter almost minute by minute on what they are doing. Others share deep, profound thoughts, several times a day. I was at dinner with a chap who has over 20,000 followers (does that make him a religion?). He tweets constantly about practially everything he is doing. Yes, everything!

A lot of people feed their stream of tweets into their facebook updates. I'm not sure about that. If you are on the receiving end, then it feels like one of your friends just talks and talks continuously and no-one else can get a word in edgeways. It's one thing to actively choose to follow someone on twitter, it's a bit different if someone keeps sticking their head through your living room window or popping up behind you on the bus and shouting "Hi there, I'm just washing my goose" (actually that would be intriguing, but you get what I mean). So, I won't be doing that. If you are my facebook friend, you get to see my occasional, quite personal facebook updates. If you follow me on twitter, you see something else.

I notice that some folk have given up blogging and switched to twittering instead. I wonder. I think blogging and twittering are different things. They feel different to me. On the blog I can talk, share, rant, waffle, paint. I feel the need to do something different with twitter.

"I feel". That's important. I'll use twitter to express feelings rather than facts. I'll tweet about what's going on at a point in time, wherever I am, but rather than saying "I am doing...." I will say "I am feeling..." and if you follow you can decide for yourself what I might or might not be doing. Sometimes you'll be able to tell from that days blog post, but I won't work too hard to tie them together.

So, I'm going to express feelings in my tweets. But in what form? I think I will go.........hmmm.....errr...ahhhh, got it ! I'll go all Haiku on you. I will base all my twittering purely on how I feel and I will express it in the form of badly written haiku poems.

That should drive those pesky followers away :)

Kai, Kai,Kai

There is a Nigerian phrase, or rather exclamation, that sounds like "kai". It is usually preceeded by biting the side of one's forefinger and then swishing the hand in a downwards motion, causing the fingers to slap together with a loud cracking sound. You use this whole sequence when confronted with something startling, surprising, unexpected. Kai, kai, kai.

On Tuesday evening I had a very nice meal with some interesting folk at the appropriately named Kai of Mayfair, the most expensive Chinese restaurant I have ever been to. The decor was exquisite. We were in a little private alcove downstairs, surrounded by very attentive waiters. The gentle chinese music wafting through the opening created a beautiful mellow ambiance. The food was melt in the mouth to-die for (and that's saying something from me, the ultimate fussy eater). But £11 for sesame toast and £57 for crispy duck? Kai, kai. I made the mistake of glancing at the wine menu, opening the pages at a bottle of Petrus 1990 for £5,880 and closing it again rapidly. Kai, kai, kai !

I was meeting with a few folk to share my African project idea. It's simple really. In any given population of young people, anywhere in the world 5% will fall into the category of being gifted and talented. There are something like 400m young people in Africa today. That means perhaps 20m might count as gifted of which perhaps 8m are smart enough to join Mensa!

Many developed countries have specific programmes or initiatives to identify and engage with its young gifted and talented population. UK has the Young Gifted and Talented scheme. USA has the National Association for Gifted Children. Hong Kong has the International Centre for the Gifted and Talented. So I am going to create a gifted and talented academy for Africa to see whether we can find and unleash some of that amazing intellectual talent that doesn't happen to be born into a family that can support their special educational needs.

Not what people usually think of when you think about helping education in Africa and that basic school building work desparately needs doing, but countries around the globe are focusing effort on their gifted and talented so why not Africa? Besides, I like a challenge :) Find and unleash 20m gifted young people? Kai, kai, kai.

So, I am bouncing the idea off a few folk and getting some excellent feedback on the realities of charitable ventures in Africa, where to locate the initial Academy, who to contact, how to shape it when I get chatting to the chap opposite about origins. He mentions he's from Nigeria. Well Nigeria is a big place with a population of about 140m, so where abouts? He says it's near Benin City. I am surprised as Benin has a population of just over a million and it is the part of Nigeria that my father hails from. I push again, where abouts in Benin? He says well, not actually Benin, it's actually a place called Ora.

Now it's getting wierd as you are down at the level of towns with a few thousand people in them and the area he is referring to is next door to the town/village that my Dad comes from. Which Ora town? I ask. Well, he admits, it's not actually Ora, it's actually more like Afuze but most people know Ora so he usually says Ora.

"What?" I exclaim. "Afuze is the actual town that my Dad grew up in! How are you connected to Afuze?"

"Well I'm not really" he says "but part of my family come from a tiny village near Afuze, just next door to a village called Uokha"

Dear reader, you have never heard of Uokha. There is no reason why you should have done. 99.9 % of the 140m Nigerians will not have heard of it. It's only got a few hundred folk in it, if that. It just happens to be next door to even smaller village, Ugboa, that my Dad was born in.

Neither of us had ever met anyone else inside or outside Nigeria who has any connection with that miniscule dot on the map thousands of miles away (so small that when you search for Ugboa on the mighty google is says "did you mean Ugbox")

And now we have. In the most expensive chinese Mayfair reastaurant I have ever been to, where sesame toast for starters costs £11. Kai, kai, kai !

Repelling sharks in Paris

This week I found myself in Paris attending a gathering of Cybersecurity specialists. We Cybersecurity types know a good thing when we see one, so when I was invited to this meeting at the British Ambassador's residence I jumped on Eurostar and headed across (under) the Channel.

The event itself was an interesting gathering organised by the Cybersecurity KTN Network, with attendees from across Europe and the USA trying to assess risks and responses to the rising global threats posed by cybercrime. It was sort of about keeping sharks at bay.

So it was kind of appropriate that the first picture I noticed as I wandered around the magnificant residence, poking my nose into various rooms, was Damian Hirst's "Pardaxin". It's not a "usual" Hirst (if such a thing exists) in that it wasn't an animal cut in half. It was a canvass with some coloured spots on it. 42 coloured spots to be exact. No two colours the same. Handpainted. I think it was art. Hmmmm....

On another wall was a work by Alex Pollard which was a bit more to my liking, being a closet geek. It is called "8-bit Landscape" (named after a computer game apparently) and consisted of a large canvass with a small eraser, pencil, button, nail and a few other bits positioned on it. I counted the bits and there weren't 8, which immediately threw my brain into a mass of confusion. Was that deliberate? Can't he count? Also it turned out the items were not actual erasers and pencils, but plaster casts of erasers and pencils, handpainted to look like real ones. Cunning, eh? Hmmmm....

Next to this was a piece of twisted flourescent lighting tube, made into a sentence that says "Time here becomes space/space here becomes time" by Wyn Evans. Across the way was another piece saying "Space here becomes time/time here becomes space". I had to read the card to help me on this one. The card explained "The two sentences call to each other providing a spatial commetary which both contradicts and complements". Head spinning, I felt it was time for a nice cup of tea and a sit down somewhere quite.

The Cybersecurity meeting was opened by Sir Peter Westmacott, Her Majesty's Ambassador to France. I was soooo hoping that a butler would appear with the Ferrero Rocher but it was not to be. It was a fascinating conference including memorable phrases like "a zero-knowledge proof of knowledge", but during the break I returned to my search for a work of art that I could understand.

It was lunchtime and whilst the setting was stunning and the lunch was delightful, I was slightly put off my lunch having just seen Gayle Chong Kwan's work Babel. She has constructed and photographed a scene of the tower of Babel out of raw, dried slices of meat. Oh, that reminds me, we had Steak and Kidney Pie for lunch.

The afternoon cybersecurity session was led by the American contingent. I do enjoy American security types. They just seem so, well, like American security types.

As the day drew to an end and we prepared to leave I strolled into a very grand room with massive paintings covering the walls and finally found the picture I was looking for. There it was. As tall as a building. Commanding. Confident. In control.

"The Duke of Wellington" 1845 by Alfred, Count D'Orsay.

Now, THAT'S what I'm talking 'bout :)

The Silence before dawn

It is 5am. I am sitting in the kitchen in that calm silence before dawn. Birds still deep in slumber. Roads outside are quiet. No planes overhead descending on the flightpath to Heathrow. The house is silent. No-one's up except me. The silence before dawn. It's a quiet, restful time. The chance to prepare for a big day ahead.

I got up because I woke at about 3am and couldn't get back to sleep. I am alert, awake and very, very focused. Today I go into a series of meetings to sort out the next round of venture funding for Garlik and by the end of the day I will know what the future holds.

Being an early stage entrepreneur means that you are constantly raising money. Find some "seed" capital to get started (a few tens of thousands typically). Raise a "Series A" round from your first set of VCs (half a £million, a million perhaps?). When you've got momentum, pull in the "Series B" money (now you're in to the £millions). Then on to Series C.

Each time you go through the same lengthy process, uncertain what the result is going to be. There are so many variables. How is the business doing? Has it got "traction" (the dreaded T word) ? Did it meet its last milestones? Have the VCs actually got any money to invest? What's the overall market doing? What's the right company valuation?

A lot of entrepreneurial effort goes in to this continuous cycle of fund raising for your early stage company. For example, over the past nine months this effort has dominated my mind and focus. I have probably spoken to about 30 investors across three continents, had well over a hundred meetings and calls, been close to a deal several times, seen it vanish, then reappear and now it all comes down to a couple of hours of meetings today that will decide it.

I was sitting next to a high profile start up guy at a dinner last week in London. Very nice networking dinner at a private house for about 14 entrepreneurs and investors, a range of fine wines, none less than £100 a bottle and beautiful food. Wasted on me of course (I took the precaution of consuming a McD fillet o' fish with large fries beforehand just in case the food was too posh). When I arrived a chap in a suit opened the door. I beamed and shook his hand warmly. He looked a bit embarrased "Errr, I'm the house Butler, Sir, may I take your coat". Whoops! Anyway I was sitting next to this high profile start up guy and we were swapping stories on the sheer effort that goes into fund raising and the games people play, at crucial times for your company. Imagine if I had had 100 meetings and conversations with partners and customers over the past few months! Somethings not quite right in the current venture model, if you look at it from the entrepreneurs perspective.

So, today, we sit down, negotiate and get to where we get to. Check back here and I'll tell you how it went.

The silence before dawn. It's a quiet, restful time. The chance to prepare for a big day ahead.

Human Augmentation

As I arrived at church this morning, the priest was having a chat with an elderly lady and her adult daughter and son-in-law. "I'm so sorry to hear about your husband" said our priest. "Why? What's happened to him?" replied the elderly lady, smiling but looking slightly puzzled.

The daughter looked sad and pained. "We have told her that he died last week, Father, but she just can't hold on to it".

When the priest announced at the start of Mass that it was dedicated to her husband who passed away recently, I saw the look of upset and surprise on her face, with just a twinge of "this is something I know already, I think" buried in there somewhere.

How incredibly sad.

A few weeks ago in Davos, I attended a session on Human Augmentation. It was probably the most interesting session I attended, looking at how technologies can directly augment human ability, physically and mentally. I am also aware of research projects into areas such as "memories for life" that augment memory by capturing and storing everything you do. I find this a fascinating area of research and it really makes you think.

For example at the Human augmentation session, one of the speakers had two false legs, below the knee, which he revealed halfway through his talk after striding confidently around the stage. He joked (I think) how he was sorrry for the other folk on the panel who only had normal human limbs because as time passes and technology advances his legs keep getting better and better whereas theirs just get weaker and weaker.

Another chap spoke about mapping the human brain and eventually being able to manipulate the neurons and pathways to augment intelligence. You want an IQ of 168? No problem, Sir!

(oh, by the way, it appears that lots of the funding in the USA for this type of research is coming from Military and Defence pockets. Watch out for technologically enhanced, super intelligent GI's coming to a battlefield near you!).

Memory is an interesting aspect of this type of augmentation. It is interesting what all this digital storage is doing to our memories. Capturing, storing and making instantly accessible things that would have faded into the deep recesess of our memories in days gone by. Imagine if every time you blinked a snapshot of that moment in time was stored for later retrieval. Is that good, bad, scary, exciting? I don't know yet but I sense that we are moving in that direction.

Just think of those of you that Twitter away constantly. I know folk who tweet 10-15 times a day, every single day. What they have just done, what they have seen, eaten, felt, thought. Imagine if they keep that up and have that available to explore in ten years time. Wow!

I am trying right now to recall my earliest memory. When you reach back that far, it's difficult to tell what's a memory and what's a story that you have been told and are just replaying. However I feel as if I remember being a baby, sitting on a sofa (or at least high up) watching a group of other babies and children playing. I also feel as if I remember being pleased or even happy. I am told that I was a few months old when that all took place. Do I remember or not? I can't tell.

What makes it feel like a memory though is the element of "feeling" that I attach to this situation or event. And as I reflect on other events tucked away in my memory banks, it is the feelings that make a memory special. The feelings of joy, of pain, of fear, of laughing so much that I truely understood the phrase "split his sides laughing". Those are my real memories. The "facts" are secondary.

Over the next decade and more we will see huge leaps forwards in our ability to record everything we do, every place we visit, every word we utter, every image we see. But will we capture the emotions that went with the moment?

A tale of two schools

Today I got the excellent news that my son has been accepted into the secondary school that we had hoped for. He will be starting this September and by coincidence it is exactly 30 years this year since I finished secondary school (well 5th form anyway). Gosh. 1979. That's a long time ago.

Actually I went to two secondary schools, not one. The first half of my secondary school career was here in London. The latter years were spent in Nigeria. It is fascinating, as I am very involved in secondary education now though various charities, to compare what my old schools were like verses todays high tech temples of learning. But it's even more interesting to compare my two old schools to each other.

My first school in London was a State run, comprehensive, all-boys day school. The second in Nigeria was a private, all-boys boarding school (although I and a few others attended daily so were known scathingly as "Day Goats"). The schools had just two things in common. Both were all-boys. Both had a brilliant, inspirational maths teacher. Apart from that they couldn't have been more different, and in some unexpected ways!

Perhaps I was just drawn towards maths teachers as it was a subject I found I could consistently get A's in without trying too hard. Whereas french, for example, was a mystery to me and all I learnt how to say was "The boy sat on the bench" which when translated into bad schoolboy french had the capacity to almost kill silly little 1970's London 11 year old boys with laughter (if you know why, please comment for others benefit. I can't type it out without giggling and risking the French teacher rolling her eyes and saying "Oh for goodness sake, Ilube, grow up").

I wish I could remember the names of my maths teachers. The London lady spotted me really early and got me doing all sorts of interesting stuff when I could easily have spent my time disrupting the rest of the class. Most of my friends' reports said "XXX would do better if he didn't sit next to Tom Ilube". They say there is always one teacher who really inspired you and you remember. She is mine. I must find out her name.

The Nigerian maths teacher was pretty special too. In the morning all the teachers parked their cars under the high trees in the shade because the sun was hot, but he parked away from everyone else. By early afternoon when the sun was fiercest, the shade from the tree had moved across the carpark, nicely covering his car and leaving all the rest baking hot. It was the same every day. We smiled to each other about this.

I noticed the difference in attitude towards academic achievement very quickly. At my London Comp it was generally best to act a bit dumb. No one wanted to be some sort of brainbox, teachers pet. So act tough. Mess about. Head for the back of the class. Don't answer questions. But do enough work to get decent reports and to make sure you didn't get chucked out of the top stream (we were streamed by ability in those days).

I went to Nigeria and was immediately surprised to find that if you were smart you were supposed to act smart and even you school mates respected you for it. One day the maths teacher set a test in our Additional Maths class. we did our best but a lot of the kids complained because he had included some questions that he hadn't taught, although he claimed they were in the book. After much moaning he agreed to give everyone an extra 10 percentage points to be fair. This meant, however, that I ended up with 104%.

The next day when I arrived and was walking past the three story classroom block, boys from all year groups came out on to the balcony and started waving their arms and chanting "Addiko, Addiko" (a sort of nickname for someone who had mastered additional maths). Practically the whole school came out because word had got around about the 104% and for ages afterwards I was often referrred to as "Addiko", until I was assigned a new nickname when I went to University (hopefully not know to any readers of this blog!).

In my experience this respect and excitement about brainpower or as they say - people who"know book" is very strong in Nigeria and other parts of Africa and still very weak in our schools here. That's a problem. I could have scored 200% at my London Comp and all that would have happened is that someone would have kicked me and said "smartarse".

Discipline was another matter though. My London Comp was no soft touch. We had some tough boys (think Chelsea supporters, 1970's style) and the teachers knew how to handle them. Our sports master wielded a mean gym shoe back in the days when caning was still allowed. Our Deputy Head used to be a Borstal (Prison) Warden and when he barked it stopped you in your tracks.

But the Nigerian school took things to a completely different level. My first direct experience was for the offence of talking in class. The teacher called out "Ilube, come here and kneel down at the front of the class". My jaw dropped and I look incredulous. "Naaah" I said in my London drawl "I ain't kneeling down for no-one".

"What!!!" she screamed "Kneel down, kneel down". Suddenly the whole class joined in "Ilube, kneel down, what's the matter with you, don't disrespect the teacher, kneel down". Finally in tears I went to the front and knelt to a cacophony of laughter and jeers from the whole class. Then for my disobedience, the teacher commanded the whole class to form a line in front of me and one by one they walked past and gave me a hard knock on my head. Some of my friends delighted in giving me the hardest whacks! That's standard classroom discipline, Nigerian style!

Once, a year or so later, I was sent to see the Head for some misdemeanour. I went in to his office and as I looked to my left I saw one of my friends clinging to the top of a cupboard, where he had been left to hang after a caning and ordered not to drop down. He nodded at me sadly and I nodded back. By then the surreal scene didn't seem like much of a big deal. Can you imagine if that happened in London today!

The one thing I completely didn't expect though was that I would change colour when I moved from London Comp to Nigerian Private. I'm mixed and in London that means black. No one had warned me that in Nigeria that basically meant white!

So on a bad day at my London Comp in the Seventies, there was a little song the lads would gather around and sing to me. It went something like this

"Golly, Ilube. Wogs the matter? Feeling a bit browned off? Didn't have your coon flakes? Nigger mind. Go black to bed. You'll feel all white in the morning". This was followed by much laughter and goading to try to get me to pick a fight with someone.

And on a bad day at my Nigerian Private, there was a little song the lads would sing. It went something like this

"Oyibo pepe. If e eat-e pepe, you go yellow more more" (roughly translated "white man, pepper, if you eat pepper, you'll turn yellow"). This was followed by much laughter and goading to try to get me to pick a fight with someone.

Bearing in mind that I was a boy in my mid-teens going through my adolescent years, seeking to understand who I really was and I think you will understand why I am the poor messed up soul that stands before you today :)

(oh, by the way, I was a rough little rugby playing lad and quite able to stick up for myself so generally the other lads had to be pretty careful before they decided to start singing - just in case you were getting the wrong impression that I was bullied or anything. I refer you back to my University nickname!).

Secondary schools are fascinating places. That's why I love being involved with them today. I am a Governor/Trustee of two UK secondary schools and am busy leading a project to build another high tech secondary school in London, and I am working on my project to build a really interesting Academy for Gifted and Talented young people in Africa. I actually loved my time at both my secondary schools, with all their failings and I hope that my lad has as brilliant a time as I did.

Venture Capitalists say the funniest things

It's not often I pick up the Financial Times, read a headline and burst out laughing. But thanks to my venture capital friends I had a good belly-laugh this morning.

Get this. Apparently UK venture capitalists are lobbying the government to throw them a lifeline by bailing them out with £1 Billion!!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.....

No, seriously. Their pitch is that if the Government doesn't give the venture capitalists £1 Billion to play with, then hundreds of technology start ups will go to the wall. They are doing it for us. Not for themselves. For me! The VCs are lobbying the Government for £1 Billion for ME!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.....

Oh, darn it. I've gone and cracked a rib, laughing.

On the record, off the record

It's a bit unclear at Davos when a session is on the record and when it's off the record. In years gone by (I am told) part of the magic of Davos was the opportunity to hear the thoughts of global leaders off the record. But in the digital age of bloggers, twitter and YouTube the dividing line is less clear. And I think that is a good thing. Davos is much more transparent now.

The place is awash with bloggers and "tweeters". Folk like the legendary Michael Arrington and Robert Scoble, Loic Le Meur of France and Richard Muirhead of Tideway in the UK broadcast continuous updates to their twitter followers running in to the tens of thousands around the world.

However, sometimes you get caught out. I gave a presentation on the emergence of the semantic web as the next generation of the web, and to grab the audiences attention and make the point that this shift to the semantic web is a quiet yet incredibly powerful revolution I started off by performing a bit of Tai Chi. Little did I know that moments later it would appear on YouTube (cringe).

Some old campaigners are far more astute. At yesterday's British Business Leaders lunch, Lord Mandelson was told that it was being held under the Chatham House Rule. Looking around and spying a few high profile journalists in the audience, he didn't fall for it for a moment, particularly when one of the journos ask "Lord Mandelson, do you think the pound has fallen enough?"

Some sessions are definitely on the record though. Many sessions have an official rapporteur whose job it is to try to summarise an often complex, fast moving hour long dialogue into a pithy one page summary. This morning I spoke at a session on whether the Internet itself is at risk, alongside Dave DeWalt, CEO of security company McAfee, Mitchell Baker, Chairperson of Mozilla Foundation, Professor Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School and Andre Kudelski, Chairman of the digital security Kudelski Group.

We had a lively conversation, including contributions from folk in the audience such as Craig Mundie, Chief Research & Strategy Office of Microsoft and Howard Dean, former Chairman of the USA Democratic National Committee. Acronyms flew in every direction - identity theft, routers, botnets. The poor old rapporteur came up to me afterwards asking for a card "...in case I have to clarify anything."

"....oh and by the way" she continued "you have nice dimples".

Davos is full of surprises!

Green shoots pushing through the Davos frost?

There is a lot of gloomy talk about the recession but there is another conversation here that perhaps points to some green shoots desperately pushing their heads through the Davos frost.

The narrative goes something like this. Yes, we are facing one to two years of recession followed by a slow recovery. But during this period the opportunity exists to make major strides in certain areas, the main one being climate change initiatives, and that's getting people excited. It’s giving people something to focus on and when two thousand global influencers focus on the same thing, you get the sense that something might just happen.

You hear this narrative in the speech given by Valerie Jarrett, Senior Advisor to President Obama. You hear this in the venture capital lunch where early stage investors talk about where the money is going next. You even hear it in the shuttle buses that ferry groups of participants between the conference centre and the hotels dotted around Davos and Klosters.

Lots of unexpected encounters and serendipitous conversations happen in these little vans as delegates are thrown together at random. This evening returning to the hotel, I got chatting to Professor Daniel Sperling of the University of California, Davis, a leading international expert on transportation and energy, a key player in shaping California's thinking in this area. He was quite upbeat about the direction things were going in and when I asked whether the automotive companies were playing ball he pointed out that they are, after all, seeking huge amounts of support from an energy conscious administration at the moment. Green shoots out of the frost indeed.

Speaking of unexpected encounters, I had one of those surreal "Davos moments" today. I had just finished chatting to Stelios, founder of Easyjet, who asked whether I was going to the Prince Andrew hosted event. I said no as I was heading back to my hotel. Kofi Annan, Former UN Secretary General, was dropping his coat off and we nodded at each other as I pulled my snowboots on. Then David Cameron came though, paused to chat to Kofi briefly and carried on down the corridor, stopping only when he came face to face with Boris Johnson heading in the opposite direction. As they chatted, Tony Blair whisked past with his minders, again pausing to exchange pleasantries with Kofi Annan.

Head spinning slightly, I trudged off to the shuttle bus through the Davos snow, keeping my eyes peeled for green shoots.