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I’ve joined the Knowledge Hub project – here’s why

Imagine a virtual place where people who work in the wider UK public sector could find and network with each other, collaborate and publish, share anything, create and join expert groups. A place where a public servant or health worker or councillor or local government officer or charity worker or trustee could find and connect with likeminded people, extend their professional and personal network and improve their own career prospects and build employability currency by sharing and showcasing their work with and to their peers. Imagine if they could create public or private groups, invite their colleagues into them and start some dialogue. What if it was a place where people could also manage their business network properly and turn it into a valuable professional asset. And maybe show off a little bit about the great work that they or their organisation have done along the way.

Imagine a virtual place where as I start to type a free text question, the environment recognises some of the key words and starts to suggest to me other people in the wider public sector that I may wish to connect with or direct my question to, or offers me relevant content that I can easily squirrel away into my own private space, or offers me a “better” version of the question I’m asking along with a well-considered answer.

Imagine a vibrant virtual place that I can access from anywhere in the world and in a matter of minutes scan through all the important professional news of the day in a way that’s context specific to me.

It’s not Facebook, although it works a bit like that. Facebook is for my family and friends. It isn’t LinkedIn – good for filing away my business contacts (and great for head hunters and recruitment consultants!) but I still haven’t worked out if that’s worth it for the amount of unwanted and annoying approaches I receive. It’s bigger and works across boundaries better than Yammer. It’s an expert network, not a social network. I use it to make my own job easier and to make my organisation and indeed the sector better informed and more efficient.

Best of all it’s free to use.

The good news is that most of what I’ve described above already exists and is available for anyone to access right now. It’s called Knowledge Hub and you can join here – you can do that right now and start connecting and collaborating immediately. Everyone is welcome and there’s only one important rule – no overt selling allowed!

I’m excited and pleased to announce that I’ve joined the Knowledge Hub team this week. I’ve been aware of and closely connected to the project from the very early days when it was a seed of an idea started by Steve Dale at the IDeA, way back in the day. I used to work with some of the team members at the IDeA in the early noughties. I’ve joined them again now because I believe that the time has come for us all to pull together more than ever and work to make the public sector better able to deliver high quality services to the people we all work for and represent. Others agree with me and have joined in as well. So far we’re proud to count Socitm, Improvement Service Scotland, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (The Schools Network) and education research and knowhow sharing charity, Education Futures Collaboration, among our early clients.

My hope? Someone once said of me that if you cut me open, I would bleed UK local government so for me the ultimate outcome for Knowledge Hub is to build an environment and community that gives its members the opportunity to do something great for themselves and for the sector. I hope you’ll all help and support us. I’m in listening mode so I’d love to hear your views or observations in the comments below.

Three is definitely a charm – my early stage angel investments

Today’s blog is a sister piece to last month’s “Angel Investment from this Rookie’s Perspective”. Last time around I wrote about what I was looking for in early stage startup companies when I was deciding which ones to angel invest in. This time I’m going to talk about what I liked most of all about the three startups I ended up selecting and investing in.

Before I begin, let’s recap on what my motivations are for angel investing in the first place. All angels will no doubt have different motivations. I am excited by the idea of putting something back in terms of helping some new early stage startups get moving. I wanted to use some of what I’ve learned starting and scaling my own businesses in the past to help a small number of other people get through their early growth stages less painfully than it was for me. After some thought in summer 2014 following my successful exit from Learning Pool, I reached the conclusion that I didn’t want to start another new business of my own and I knew I definitely didn’t want to work for someone else as a bog standard gun for hire (much as I enjoyed my 4 month sojourn in 2014 working with the vInspired Task Squad team – they’re doing really well – check them out) but I did want to carry on working.

This made the quest easier for me as I then knew that I was looking for companies where I could add value with some hands-on involvement and I also knew then that it was important for me to pay more attention to the founder/founding team as I was going to be working with them for the medium term. Let’s face it, in a startup the team or founder is far more important than the idea – ideas are ten a penny and most startups do pivot or at least swivel a little.

One surprising thing – I haven’t invested as part of any formal angel syndicate or group. I really thought I would but it hasn’t happened that way. That topic alone is probably worthy of another blog.

So what and who did I choose? All three startups are cloud based online platforms (a no brainer for me now that I come to think about it!), two of the three founders are female (this makes me very happy), all three founders share a number of important qualities and despite their differences they’re remarkably similar, two are companies based in England & one is in South Wales (disappointed that I didn’t find anything in Northern Ireland or Scotland this time around), all are involved with changing the way people do things – communicate, learn, organise. All three really care about their team culture as they grow and whilst they’re all focused on generating revenue and making profit, they all know that there’s more to life than making money. Finally, all three have a capacity to really scale quickly and without adding huge resource into the team.

First on my list is RunAClub headed up by fab founder and CEO Sally Higham. RunAClub has everything you could possibly need to run any sort of club or group, all simple to use, neatly packaged and stored in the cloud. Beautiful. Our customers so far are national sports organisations, local authorities, charities, community groups and individual clubs/groups. What do I like most about RunAClub? It’s such a useful product, everyone we speak to loves it and it’s so clearly scaleable. I love most things that truly save people time whilst remaining affordable and easy to use. As an investor, I like that RunAClub is scaling fast in its chosen core market but I also like that there are numerous other verticals for us to move into. An unexpected but very welcome bonus along the way has been that a really old friend has co-invested with me and this gives me a chance to work with him again.

RunAClub team last month in Sally’s kitchen in Wiltshire – you don’t have to be blonde but it helps!

I first saw Sally pitch at a Clearly So Big Venture Challenge event last summer. During her presentation she said – “what I really need in order to maximise RunAClub’s opportunity is another me” and that resonated strongly with me because I’ve been in that position so many times myself – so when she’d finished pitching I went straight over & introduced myself.

The RunAClub team is the liveliest and most can-do bunch of people that I’ve met in a long time. Their enthusiasm is infectious and I’m genuinely looking forward to spending time with them, growing a successful and valuable business.

My next is Captive Health. I love that I’ve known the founder Andrew Cockayne for years. He used to be one of my Learning Pool customers many moons ago and I’m so pleased that he’s become an entrepreneur himself and also that I can continue to work with him. Captive Health is the most mature of my 3 investee companies and in truth is more of a scaleup than a startup. The company provides the health sector with a platform that allows richer interactions with and between their staff and their patients. Staff can access information and network within their teams when they’re on the move (only 40% of people working in a hospital have access to a desktop). Patients can use Captive Health to provide feedback and information about their choices and preferences. Hospitals love the products and we already have five as customers with many more in our pipeline.

At the recent PEN Awards in Birmingham with Andrew Cockayne & Leena Shaw of Captive Health & one of our progressive customers, Jo Wood of Ipswich Hospital – I’m working on their footwear!

I heard Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England, speak at last month’s e-Health Week 2015 Summit. His opening gambit was “No industry has ever re-invented itself on the scale that the NHS needs to over the next 5 years without smart use of technology”. Captive Health’s product set offers the NHS some affordable tools with which to get ahead in dealing with their huge challenge and I’m pleased to be part of that mix.

Last but not least is Caerphilly based Noddlepod. Noddlepod is like a Slack for your learning communities. It’s a social learning platform that allows you to easily share your files and search for resources with the same degree of immediacy and familiarity. I met founder Ollie Gardener at a tech event in Buckingham Palace hosted by Her Majesty the Queen. Ollie was wearing Norwegian national dress. You can guess the rest. We’re very grateful to Neil Cocker of Cardiff Start & Matt Johnston of Digital Circle for allowing us to meet!

Noddlepod is my earliest stage investment of the three but it’s grown out of a number of years of considered reflection by the founding team on where learning is going next and Ollie has corralled some very experienced and well know global learning experts onto her Board including our Chairman Charles Jennings and fellow non exec Nigel Paine. Edtech continues to create frenzied excitement in the investor space and we’re encouraged (!) by the recent $1.5bn sale of Lynda to LinkedIn. Great that LinkedIn now has access to all that content but I wonder if they’ve thought about how to deploy it coherently to their millions of users?

With Ollie this month – outside my London Southbank “office” – having tea & more tea

Until LinkedIn or similar comes a-knocking, we’re focused on bringing Noddlepod to corporate universities and business schools worldwide. I love most that as a Norwegian, Ollie thinks way outside of the four walls of the UK in her growth plans and that she has a number of overseas investors and a pipeline already full of European opportunities.

So that’s my three. Exciting times. I’m certain I’ll prove all those people who advised me against making early stage angel investments wrong. As always I’m interested in hearing your questions, comments, observations. Check us out. Startups always need a helping hand and you all know it makes sense to work with small, growing businesses jammed full of bright, ambitious people with great tech – it helps our local economies and it keeps you sane.

Swingin’ London

This morning in the midst of sorting out my horrendous paperwork backlog I stumbled across a flyer I’d saved from last year’s Stoke Newington Literary Festival. It was for a screening of the excellent “How We Used To Live” film directed by Paul Kelly, narrated by Ian McShane and with a “swingle-y” soundtrack from St Etienne. It’s a collection of BFI footage from the years 1950-1980.

I really enjoyed the Stokey Lit Festival last June. We went for the entire 3 days. I’d strongly recommend attendance if you’re in London this June, dates this year are 5 to 7 June. There’s a real eclectic mix and the stuff I liked best ranged from a talk about our relationship with numbers to some crazy science fiction authors discussing how best to make money from publishing short e-books to a conversation with iconic cartoonists Steven Appleby & Martin Rowson to learning about Georgian London from Lucy Inglis to listening to dub poet and legend Linton Kwesi Johnson. Really good fun and hanging out in between in Stokey’s hipster coffee bars & restaurants with the rest of the truly bohemian crew.

Back to the film. There were a few things that really struck me from watching old footage of the 60s and 70s especially as that was the era I grew up in. I wrote them down on the back of the flyer before leaving my seat at the screening and I so enjoyed reading them again this morning that I thought I’d share them with you.

Sid & Johnny from The Sex Pistols Experience at the 100 Club Feb 2015

Incidentally, as a person who usually looks forward rather than backwards I’ve just realised that in the course of the last week or so I’ve been indulging in a ridiculous amount of nostalgia wallowing as I’ve watched the excellent BBC4 documentary about Joy Division & Ian Curtis, seen a Sex Pistols tribute band at the 100 Club and last night I saw Good Vibrations. I don’t know why that is.

Now that’s what I call a Mini

Here’s my list – please, please add your observations in the comments section below:

Minis were small cars, not great big things
Police cars were also small
People were thinner – but they had terrible hair, skin & teeth
People were either young or old – there was no-one in between
Men went to their work to do physical labouring in proper trousers and jackets
Mickey Most went out jogging in a brown shirt & trousers and his office shoes
Punks really were different than anything before or since
Our streets were thinner
The Tube was just as busy and everyone looked just as p’d off commuting
The Festival of Britain looked incredible; St Thomas’ Hospital recorded 2 baby girls named “Festival” and one baby boy called “Skylon” (I wonder where they are now and did they change their names?)
The Queen looked amazing
Tower blocks looked awful – even when they were new
Industry was so manual – there’s footage in the film of men operating a wrecking ball and rows and rows of men in teams physically lifting railway sleepers as part of the railway transformation programme
All the London landmarks are recognisable (Big Ben, Tower Bridge, The Monument) but there are tiny, almost imperceptible differences
Cars all looked different instead of being identical silver boxes

Glamour-tastic taste of the 70s

Reading that again this morning made me remember the fun of rushing home from school in the 1970s, desperate to catch Marc Bolan & David Bowie in full-on glam rock paraphernalia on British tv at teatime. Glorious.

Catch that film if you’re old like me and want to experience those strong waves of nostalgia from things long past and see you all at the Stokey Lit Fest in June.

What’s next?

Dear Friends and Readers, I’m delighted to announce that I’m joining the awesome vInspired

Photograph by Tom Phillips

team upon my return to London later this month. For anyone not familiar with vInspired, it’s a leading UK charity founded back in 2006 with a mission to provide young people aged 18-25 with an opportunity to do good things by matching them & their skills to suitable volunteering opportunities.

I’m joining as first CEO of vInspired’s brand new Task Squad service. Task Squad’s core aim is to help young people from the vInspired community with proven experience of volunteering to take the next steps into paid employment. There will be three of us in the initial start-up team including Sam Sparrow & Dan Bond although the rest of vInspired will be there to help and support us.

Our online platform is built & operational already and our first few anchor companies (Which?, Sidekick Studios and a few others) have already started posting up some vacancies. You can take a look here www.tasksquadhq.com The basic premise is that companies often need an affordable extra pair of hands for a short term at short notice and with the minimum of fuss. We have a ready supply of young people within the vInspired community who are eager to work. Our young people are able to respond to requests quickly, they want to earn some money and they want to get some work experience for their cv. Everyone wins.

My initial focus as CEO is going to be to start building Task Squad’s profile and to get loads more companies and organisations using Task Squad & posting up tasks. All of you can expect a call from me…

The project ticks a lot of my boxes personally. It makes use of technology for good, it involves young people & it’s an early stage startup – so I’ve been very lucky to be in the right place at the right time and I’m excited about getting started & getting some momentum going along with Sam and Dan. I know that many of you will know about vInspired already and will want to support us with our new initiative. For organisations who don’t have any short term resourcing needs, we’re working out a model whereby you can donate to Task Squad from your CSR budget & we’ll use your money to fund a young person to do some work at a charity instead.

Wish us luck & please send me your comments & ideas.

All change…

Learning Pool Team

In the many years I’ve worked in startup land I’ve watched other founders and CEOs hang around for far too long – hell I’ve probably even worked for a few of them – and I’ve always been pretty determined that I wouldn’t repeat the same mistake myself…so after 7 long & happy years as part of the Learning Pool senior team I’m disappearing back into the tech startup scene proper. Working in a scale-up can be great – but it isn’t for me.

In reality what this means is that I’ll continue to do some stuff for Learning Pool that I really love (strategic sales, profile building, input to long term strategy) but less of the operational day to day matters that if I’m honest with myself I don’t really enjoy. I’m going to get out of the way & give my co-founder space to build the company to the next stage with help from our very able management team.

So…what’s next for me? I’m going to return to working with (most definitely) early stage (most likely) tech startups with (most probably) quite young teams, helping out with all those things that many first time entrepreneurs find troublesome – raising finance, finding & managing investors, picking which product or version of a product to back, getting to revenue on a shoestring, determining the best market entry strategy – all the stuff I love doing.

And guess what – I CAN’T WAIT.

So how do I feel at the end of a day spent mostly on the phone breaking the news to my team and a few trusted friends and associates? Most of all I feel proud of what I’ve achieved over the past 7 years. We’ve built a robust, growing company with a fabulous community of customers, we’ve assembled a world class high performing team and we offer scaleable and useful technology at an affordable price. I also feel dizzying waves of excitement that are masking a sneaky bit of underlying sadness.

I’ll leave you today with a quote from Alexander Graham Bell “When one door closes another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

Watch this space! I hope you all have comments 🙂

Interactive art doesn’t have to be 21st Century

Yesterday I joined one of the National Gallery’s tours. The excellent Steven Barrett, one of the National Gallery’s lecturers, took us on a whistlestop tour of the gallery & showed us 5 significant paintings. The one I’m going to focus on for the purpose of this blog is Holbein’s “The Ambassadors” painted in 1533 and depicting two French dignataries visiting the court of King Henry VIII. My reason for choosing it is that the painting is one of the earliest examples of interactivity in art and because of that I find it incredibly interesting.

Hans Holbein’s The Ambassadors, National Gallery London

Placed in the bottom centre of the painting is a strangely distorted surreal looking object which is an anamorphic skull. The artist has used perspective to carefully distort it so that you can only see it as a skull when you view it from the right hand side of the painting with your eyes about 1.5m from the floor – from that perspective the skull pops into view & the rest of the picture disappears.

We think Jean de Dinteville (he on the left in the furs) hung the painting on his staircase back in France and the skull would jump out to people descending the staircase when they reached that crucial point and give them a shock – reminding them of their own mortality.

So – this is an early example of interactivity in art. The way the artist has created this piece requires the viewer to do something & shift position to a different stance in order to fully experience the painting, to see worldliness disappear & the memento mori spring out.

Interesting eh? I like also the contrast between the forensic detail of the rest of the painting and the distortion of the skull at the bottom. Don’t miss the strangely angled crucifix in the top left corner.

Loads more written about this painting online including a couple of the National Gallery’s videos on youtube that explain the geekiness behind how the artist did the distortion accurately with the instruments he had available to him at the time. The National Gallery is free to visit and a wonderful national resource. I’m sure many of you pass it all the time, rushing to & from other places. You really should take 15 minutes out & go and look at something beautiful or thought provoking.

For those that are interested, the other 4 paintings we saw were:

Paolo Uccello “Battle of San Romano” – an early attempt to create an illusion of 3D space

Carlo Crivelli “The Annunciation with Saint Emidius” – another early example of improved perspective in Medieval art

Joseph Wright “An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump”

Vincent’s “Sunflowers” – beautiful now but so controversial when it was painted.

I enjoyed the complete immersion in the hour long tour and listened to every word that Steven said. It was possible to do this despite the crowds on a busy Saturday. Thoroughly recommend it.

Pure Irish Gold…London 2012 Paralympics Celebration

Last night I was lucky enough to be at the newly opened & absolutely elegant St Pancras Hotel to celebrate the achievements of our 49 Irish Paralympians. Here’s the entire team – looking good.

Paralympics Ireland Team 2012

For a tiny little (bankrupt) country on the periphery of Europe our athletes seem to have done overwhelmingly well in the London 2012 Games (8 gold medals, 3 silver & 5 bronze) over the past couple of weeks.

I apologise right here & right now for being biased towards my own tiny corner of the island of Ireland but 5 of those 8 golds are from 3 Northern Irish athletes including our local Eglinton man Jason Smyth. Here I am snapped with Jason and his two (very heavy) gold medals at last night’s party.

Jason Smyth with me

I think he couldn’t believe it when I mentioned to him about us being based in Clarendon Street in Derry. I also told Jason about being in the Olympic Park last Saturday, watching him pick up his gold on the big screen as the Irish anthem blasted out in the evening sun & about how proud I was. I didn’t tell him about hiding my eyes from the friends I was with so that they wouldn’t see my tears.

Great to see everyone plus their families and friends enjoying themselves last night; having a few drinks & dancing the night away. It was also interesting to hear from Paralympics Ireland CEO Liam Harbinson about how sponsorship for the team had increased from a single sponsor in Beijing four years ago to 18 sponsors for London 2012.

The Irish dancers take the stage

Chatting to a few people over the course of the evening the Irish team are already thinking about Rio in four years time and as so many of them are very young indeed, we should be well placed to pick up more than our fair share of medals.

My sister Trish chatted to one of the coaches as we were leaving the party. He had been coaching 10 athletes for London 2012 & all of his team had attained new personal best times in London. He told Trish that was his equivalent of a gold – 100% success with his team.

Jason Smyth and Patricia McVeigh

Here’s Trish with Jason too.

Cherry on the top news at the party was that Michael McKillop (also from Northern Ireland) is to be the recipient of the prestigious Whang Youn Dai Achievement Award as the male athlete who best exemplified the spirit of the Paralympics at the Games in London. McKillop was selected because of the work he does with schoolchildren in Ireland. Two great guys, room mates & friends as well. Lovely to see them both last night being so gracious and generous to all the people who wanted photographs with them & to have a bit of chat & craic & to examine their gold medals etc.

Gathering watches celebrity accordionist

Thanks Team Ireland for making us all so proud and for coming out for fun with us last night despite the fact that all of you must be exhausted after a month away from home and thanks to everyone who organised such a fabulous party (but especially Andy Rogers & Cat Casey). Final special mention for Cat for being able to get up & do a bit of Irish dancing – no mean feat in the stratospheric heels she was wearing!

Rio – Bring It On.

Titian and innovation

Titian’s Diana and Actaeon

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend a private, curator led view of the Metamorphosis Titian 2012 show at the National Gallery. My reason for writing this blog is twofold. First it’s to encourage anyone who’s in London between now & 23 Sept to call in & see the exhibition. It’s free and as it’s small it won’t take you long – although you may find the paintings so mesmerising you’ll stand in front of them for longer than you realise.

The show is a multi arts project and if you’re interested in finding out more the link is here www.nationalgallery.org.uk/metamorphosis For the purpose of this blog I’m going to focus only on the three Titian paintings, exhibited together again for the first time in over 200 years. Two of the paintings entitled “Diana and Actaeon” and “Diana and Callisto” were purchased recently by the Gallery from the Duke of Sutherland for around £100m for the pair, thought to be about 1/3 of their market value (that’s about £100,000 each for each year that’s passed since the artist died).

When I entered the gallery I thought at first the paintings were recently painted reproductions of the originals, the colours are so remarkably bright and vibrant. Titian from his 16thC base in Venice had access to amazing pigments and the Gallery has been able to determine that the blue pigment in these sister paintings originated in Afghanistan. It’s no wonder that Lucian Freud described them as “simply the most beautiful pictures in the world”.

Colin Wiggins of the National Gallery’s Education team

My second reason for writing the blog is to share with you the massive difference it made to me having a knowledgeable guide explain the background to the three paintings. It had really never occurred to me to join a gallery tour before but the additional enjoyment that Colin Wiggins brought to the experience was unbelievable. He explained to us the stories depicted by the three paintings, made the link to Ovid’s writings without losing me or losing my interest (attention span of a fruit fly I’m afraid), gave us the background to how the paintings were commissioned by Philip II of Spain and how Titian delivered only two of the three to him (choosing to keep the Death of Actaeon for himself as he approached his own end of life) and he added a personal touch by telling us the story of seeing that painting himself on a school trip. At the time the National Gallery were raising funds to buy the painting but Colin wouldn’t contribute any of his pocket money as he “hated its brownness”. Now, of course, he loves the painting. Appreciation of art no doubt improves with age – a bit like eating olives & anchovies…

He also talked about Titian’s innovation as an artist and stepped us through how he had paved the way for Rubens, Delacroix, Pollock, Bacon and Frank Auerbach to follow in his footsteps. Fascinating to think about how an individual artist can leave a legacy with a halo effect that continues on for 500 years so far. I wonder if Apple will be able to match that?

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the story, Actaeon accidentally stumbled upon Diana bathing in the forest surrounded by her nymphs. He glimpsed her naked body & she splashed water in his face, turning him into a stag who was then hunted down & torn limb from limb by his own pack of hunting dogs who no longer recognised him. Some may say quite a harsh punishment.

I urge you to go and enjoy this exhibition. Thanks to the National Gallery for having the patience and wherewithal to buy these beautiful paintings, thanks to the curators & collaborators on this project for assembling such an enjoyable show and thanks to you Colin for sharing your experience and insight.

Living legend Buzz Aldrin at Soho House in London…alive, well & talking a lot of sense

Buzz Aldrin speaking at Soho House during the London Olympics

Here in the middle of London Olympics fever it’s easy for me to identify my favourite moment from the Games & I’m afraid it isn’t sport related. It was 2 August when my goddaughter Olivia & I went along to Soho House for an audience with Buzz Aldrin – yes that Buzz Aldrin – second man to walk on the moon & one of only 9 human beings still alive who have walked on the surface of our closest space neighbour. And let’s face it – he’s the one we’re all familiar with as only one decent photograph was taken of poor Neil Armstrong on the moon.

To say we were excited doesn’t even come close. Walking there I told Olivia the story of watching the Apollo 11 moon landing in July 1969 as a child. My sister had already told her the same story many times. As children we (with tens or even hundreds of millions of others) watched Apollo 11 blast off and felt we were there every step of the way with the 3 astronauts as they sped towards the Moon.

When it was near time to land, we were horrified to find that landing time was way after our bedtime but our dad promised us faithfully he would wake us in time to watch it live & he was true to his word. He woke us up at 3.30am & carried us both downstairs wrapped up in blankets. It’s something I’ll be eternally grateful to him for as those 8 days still go down as one of the most exciting periods of my life, even now over 40 years later.

I’m lucky enough to meet a lot of unusual & interesting people in the course of my work and life but I never thought I’d get to meet Buzz Aldrin in a million years. To see him so vibrant & fresh at the age of 82 and with his adventurous spirit intact was a complete joy. Anyway – enough old chat – here’s some of the interesting (to me anyway!) things he said on the day:

When asked why he wore his Omega Speedmaster on the Moon’s surface he said that it had been a personal gift from his government & being a watch man, he elected to strap it onto his wrist. He did however go on to comment that when on the surface of the moon, the ability to know the local time in Houston, Texas was not that pressing. He got a bit of a laugh with that comment.
On coping with fear he was very clear. He said that unforeseen events can happen to anyone at any time but especially in combat situations (he was of course a decorated fighter pilot before becoming an astronaut). His advice (maybe easier said than done for many people) is to stay calm & save your energy for when something happens & you need to do something about it.
He constantly reminded us that the Apollo missions had been a team effort involving hundreds of thousands of people all working towards a shared goal. In terms of the USA putting a man on the moon, the goal was one publicly declared by the leader (JFK) and his specific order was that it was to take place before the end of the decade. In 1963 everyone thought the goal was impossible but nevertheless “no-one was interested in failing” – what a priceless attitude.
His mother’s maiden name was Marion Moon. I thought that was pretty weird – it isn’t that common a name.
He was given exactly the same name as his father at birth – Edwin Eugene Aldrin – and as a result was known as “Junior” when he was a child although his sisters called him Buzz. He finally formally changed his name to Buzz in 1988 (quite an American thing to do I thought – but loveable – how awful to have the same name as one of your parents). (I can say that with some authority…)
Buzz Aldrin wearing his Omega Speedmaster on board Apollo 11
He’s passionate about STEM & talked about its importance in the school curriculum not once but twice. He commented how disappointed he is that the US government does not, in his opinion, invest anything like enough money and attention into encouraging young students to study STEM subjects. It’s the same in the UK.
Despite having a degree in aeronautics from MIT he wasn’t accepted onto the space programme the first time he applied as he hadn’t trained as a jet pilot; he persevered & once in the programme, was known to his peers as “Dr Rendezvous” because of his thesis work on “orbital space rendezvous”.
He was the first astronaut to use his experience as a scuba diver to train underwater; he went on to train others in these techniques (he showed us a recent photograph of him swimming with a whale shark in the Galapagos & advised us not to try this as it’s dangerous – the man’s 82! He recently visited the site of the Titanic in a French submarine and he’s been to the North Pole in the last couple of years).
He wears a ring on his right hand in the shape of a planet and a crescent moon – you can see it in this photo – and check out his tie whilst you’re looking.
He was last man to board the command module and says he watched the sun rise as he climbed the gantry on 16 July 1969 and as he climbed, he reflected upon how wonderful his life had been; when he left the Eagle to begin his descent onto the Moon’s surface he closed the hatch over but didn’t shut it completely – I love that.
Being an engineer he loves computers (and his iPhone) but said that computers can make us lazy about reading books and he’s nervous that pretty soon a lot of people won’t know even the basics about how things (like cars for example) work.

The last of his quotes that I’ll leave you with is my favourite. When asked what was the strangest thing he’d seen or felt in space he said “You know, when you’re on the Moon pretty much everything is unusual”. Love it.

Olivia in the Soho House garden

Thanks Buzz for being a complete inspiration all of my life and for being better in real life than I dared you would be. Thanks to Alex Donaldson and Isabella Macpherson of Arts Co for squeezing Olivia & me onto the packed guest list and thanks to Ben Cackett of the Mayor of London’s office for organising such an amazing cultural programme to run in parallel to the London Olympic Games 2012 and for being such a wonderful host over the past two weeks.

Also – if you get an invite to a party at Soho House accept it at once. It’s the coolest party venue in London and probably in the world. Olivia & I believe it really is “Through the Looking Glass” & that footman on the front door really is a White Rabbit. We checked the white flowers everywhere to see if they’d been painted…

Folks – there’s a lot more I didn’t write because it would have made the blog too long but if you ask questions in the comments I’ll do my best to answer them. Buzz Aldrin answered 15 questions from the audience and he answered them thoughtfully & with considered & coherent lengthy answers plus I have a lot of notes.

Grayson Perry – an unusual man with an unusual view of the world

Today I spent 4 or 5 hours in the British Museum. It was wonderful. There’s something there for everyone. I have to admit to behaving today a bit like an accountant & a person who without fail always counts their lengths when swimming. I grabbed the brochure entitled “A History of the World in 100 Objects”, picked out the 20 that interested me the most & then mapped out a route to view them. I did my “objet” viewing on either side of the main reason for my trip – Grayson Perry’s exhibition “The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman”. All I can say is it’s on until 26 Feb (extension by popular demand) & if you haven’t seen it yet, you need to get down there, pay your tenner and consume this visual feast.

I know there’s been a lot already written about this exhibition, and photos were not permitted, so I’m going to keep this short. It’s a mix of artefacts from the British museum which the artist has selected & then sometimes juxtaposed next to his own work (10 or so of his famous ceramic pots including one featuring Mark E Smith of The Fall entitled “Grumpy Old God pot”, iron sculptures of people, a coffin containing his ponytail from 25 years ago, needlework and huge tapestries, a tower he built out of stones he found on the road outside his squat in 1983, outrageous costumes he’s created & then worn, and of course his famous motorcycle – there in my photo, complete with Alan Measles riding at the back in his box).

What I liked most of all was some of the stuff Grayson had written here & there. These are my favourites:

· Reality can be new as well as old, poetic as well as factual and funny as well as grim;

· Next to a selection of exquisite tiny portable lacquered Japanese shrines from the 1700s he tells us that the modern day equivalent of a portable shrine is the photo album we all carry about on our smartphones – I love that

· The suggestion that CCTV is the modern version of carvings over cathedral doors depicting the Last Judgement & the damned going to hell – hahaha

Beautiful, just beautiful. Don’t miss out. Post up your comments if you’ve been along & enjoyed it as much as I did. I look forward to reading them.

Mary McKenna's Blog

Come ramble with me…