Last Thursday night Bill Grimsey gave a talk at the Nottingham Business School. It was the second time I had been back the ‘The Poly’ in a week. The impressions from the Art Show were still fresh in my mind as I got to the amazing Newton Building.

Bill is hugely supportive of the suggestion that we could collectively write this business plan. And I met some people afterwards who are keen to be involved – it looks like this might actually have legs! If we can draft something collectively it will have so much more impetus and credibility. Ownership would be by us all – making delivery so much more likely.

But hearing Bill speak again reminded me of some things – and allowed me to re-focus a little. I had missed a number of key points – so before I forget (!) I should get them down here.

The first is that we need to change. Bill quoted Eric Shinseki the 7th United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs, who said,

“If you dislike change, you’re going to dislike irrelevance even more“

We have to guard against becoming irrelevant in our Cities. They need to reflect what society wants – we can’t tell people what they want – that doesn’t work!

The second is that we must take a long term view to re-align our Cities. But we must start to act now. This is because the pace of technological change is growing exponentially. He referenced ‘Moores Law‘ which claimed that technology doubled in speed and size every two years.If you apply that we might see that on-line shopping overtakes bricks and mortar shops in the next few years!

We must wire our Cities up. We have to make sure they are wi-fi enabled. That is going to be critical. We have to grasp technology.

And finally – we need to know what we stand for as a place. That’s not an easy question to answer – but if we can identify it, rationalise it and stand by it – we may just be onto something?

Key – making a place we will be happy to work, live and play in….

Update – todays’ Nottingham Post report on the event is here.