I gave a talk last week in nottingham for WREN – the . I’m not quite sure how I managed to be talked into the gig – but I did. And the subject was one which I feel passionately about.

We managed in 30 minutes to cover The Grimsey Report and what that means for Nottingham.

It is a big subject area – and the audience being primarily girls (aka professional shoppers) this had me slightly worried. But I think we were on the same page! There was an interesting debate after the ‘death by powerpoint’ part – and I think people are starting to understand what we need to do.

Some of the points made were that the growth of the small, quirky independent has a real future part to play. The competitive shelf life of products is getting shorter – our boredom threshold is low! The physical space for retailing needs to differentiate itself – this is key. Retailing needs to be treated like theatre – its a show – act up!

The Grimsey report made mention of the importance of connectivity in technical terms. There is a necessity to embrace technology – we are constantly playing catch up. I was interested to see a statistic appear in the week which suggested tha internet users in China now number now 1.5 times the US population!

In some of the research I was doing for the talk I came across the Boston Tea Party coffee shop – this is a social hub which sells great coffee – but it mixes in art and artists performing. They also support local organisations. You can’t help but ‘like’ this sort of operation?