I’d forgotten how nice the drive up the M40 to Oxford can be. Its a shame, then, that it was preceded by a queue on the M25. 25 minutes to move one junction, how do people tolerate that on a regular basis?
This years Venturefest was at the Said Business School, next to the station. I remember being intrigued by the building when I was living in Oxford, but never having a chance to see inside it. It attracted some controversy when it was first built, blood money buys some fairly fancy architecture – they seem to have taken a list of things that all the other colleges have and ticked all the boxes, theres a couple of quads, an amphitheatre, etc.
The conference itself seemed a little smaller than last year, but maybe it was just a bit more spread out – in my efforts to miss the traffic I missed a couple of the early morning talks. There were a few presenetations by companies seeking investment, who all seemed somehow doomed in their own ways, covering ground thats been explored before. But maybe they’ve got a new break on it.
Zigbee looks like an interesting technology, though I wonder about the wisdom of giving it a Hayes AT command set, easy to program for sure but most of us can handle HCI style abstractions without too much difficulty.
The highlight of the day was the keynote speech by Tim Smit, of Eden Project fame. Since I found out about the Eden Project I’ve been interested in the potential it has – it has always seemed like a very welcoming place when I’ve been there (admittedly only four or five times), built on a good set of values. And hearing Tim talking I started to understand why. He is a very disarming person, naive about business and project management, but not afraid to have a go. In some ways hes a bit of a hippy, but in many ways he’s not the kind of hippy I was expecting, he’s very pragmatic but within the framework of his ideals.
My respect for him went up while he was talking – and I already liked the things he has produced.
A worthwhile day out, though I was only amusing myself with the talk of hockey stick graphs and increasing ARPUs rather than actually getting involved in any of the business proper.