Matt's Investments Blog

Silicon Valley comes to the UK

Matt Mead - 17.11.2010

This is a great, innovative four day programme where some of Silicon Valley's A-list entrepreneurs come to the UK.

They come to inspire, be inspired and help us learn from looking through a window into their world. Over the next few days there are a series of events in London and Cambridge where all sorts of groups get access to the Silicon valley party - take a look at the full programme.

Morning one - Digital democracy and Royal Wedddings

Morning one was at the Houses of Parliament where the session was hosted by the speaker of the house John Bercow - there was a fantastic panel set up to consider how the digital / internet world is impacting on democracy and how governments should think about engaging with citizens through technology.  The panel included the co-founder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman, the CEO of Mozilla John Lilly, Megan Smith the GM of Google.org, Joi Ito of Creative Commons and Nancy Lubin CEO of Do Something.Org. The debate covered a wide range of areas but I was struck by how the takeaways for how government should engage with citizens are direct parallels for how digital and other businesses should engage with consumers

- Take simple steps - try things - don't plan in a vacuum

- Make sure you put yourself in the shoes of the citizen when you think through your ideas

- Disseminate views and seek feedback through multiple channels not just your own, and

- Learn from others and users - there is more knowledge outside the room than in it!

All things that may seem obvious but worth coming back to as you either build a business or run a government!

My other key take out - if Nancy from the panel is right, William and Kate commemorative plates are going to be next year's big thing!

Watch this space for what comes out of session 2 - a focus on Big Data that we are hosting here at NESTA.