I am interested in the nexus of design, business and technology, which is where real innovation takes place. My work combines the complementary activities of Communication (writing, speaking and broadcasting), Facilitation (programming events and interactions), Research and Consultancy (focusing on online publishing and design strategy, and collaboration models).

For more detailed updates on my activities (writing/posting/comments, events attending, what I am reading, photos and other activities) see my Jaiku | Nico Macdonald feed.

17 March The next Innovation Reading Circle will be on Energy futures, discussing Energise! A future for Energy Innovation by James Woudhuysen and Joe Kaplinsky [Amazon.co.uk] and will take place on Monday 6 April [was 9 March] in London. See Future events.

12 March Our next Innovation Forum, Conferences Redux, takes place on the evening of Tuesday 24 March. We will bring together people who attended or spoke at some of the key idea led conferences of the spring – TED, Lift, ETech, and SXSW – to report on the event themes and highlights, and what they learned. All at a new venue, The Sense Loft in Soho. Do join us. Future events are planned on the Web at 20 (in early April), the future of the book, interaction design beyond the GUI, and creative strategy and the future of business.

5 March 2009 Presented a ‘thought for the day’ on innovation beyond the crisis at an Editorial Intelligence Network Breakfast at One Alfred Place. I have published a Facebook Note on based on my contribution.

March 2008 NESTA has published my counterblast on corporate open innovation [shared bookmark]. The article critiques the current boosterism for open innovation in companies and the damning of old style ‘closed’ innovation. It was inspired by a workshop with Berkeley professor Henry Chesbrough that took place at NESTA. I am keen to receive critical feedback on the article, which will inform whether a second part is published. The page includes a comment section.

February 2009 Presented a round table introduction at We Are Names Not Numbers 2009, a new international ‘thought leadership’ Symposium focused on individuality and creativity in business and society... [Communication]

28 October, 2008 Chaired the New Media Knowledge panel event on the future of newspapers entitled ‘What Happens to Newspapers?’ in London, with a very experienced panel and savvy audience. More information...

23 September 2008 Chaired an ‘RSA Thursday’ lunchtime talk at which Michael Hanlon talked about his book Eternity: our next billion years. Audio of event the event will be made available shortly. Information about the book can be found on the Macmillan Science site (UK) and the Macmillan site (US). It can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk.

23 September 2008 Chaired an RSA talk at which Richard Watson spoke about his new book Future Files: The History of the Next 50 Years. The event was fully booked, and more copies of the speakers’ book were sold than at any previous RSA talk. The talk was streamed live via the RSA site, and the video of the talk has been published. I have published notes on the event, including the questions and answer from the ‘in conversation’ element of the event. Information about the book can be found on the Future Files site... [Facilitation]

2 July 2008 Chaired the Who Needs Government Anyway? panel at 2gether08, a two-day conference on ‘solving bigger problems’, programmed by Steve Moore of Policy Unplugged and sponsored by Channel 4 and others and hosted at the Rochelle School, in Shoreditch. Panelists were Paul Hodgkin, Chief Executive of Patient Opinion; Sháá Wasmund, of Smarta.com; MT Rainey, Chief Executive of Horsesmouth; and Paul Miller, co-founder of the School of Everything. Overall the conference was stimulating, and stimulated me to begin to critique some of the vogue but flawed ideas presented... [Facilitation]

I programmed and produced the Media Futures Conference, a one day exploration of the dynamics and trends shaping the future of media. Attended by 250 people representing a cross-section of disciplines and roles, it hosted thought-provoking presentations, panels and lively debate, while showcasing innovative projects. We will document the event as usual and contact interested people accordingly. We hope the outputs will be stimulating. Please contact me if you would like to be referred to the documentation when it is ready.

11 June 2008 Presenting at the Made in Brunel Pecha Kucha on the theme ‘People & Inspiration’ at the Business Design Centre in London... [Communication]

30 May 2008 Chaired the first day of the ‘Future Flux Design in an Era of Continuous Innovation’ student conference for Central Saint Martins on Monday 9 June, with speakers including Peter Day (BBC), Saul Albert (The People Speak), Anthony Rowe (Squid Soup), and Rosy Jones. The event was programmed by Bob Cotton, author of Futurecasting Digital Media, and included an OnTrial debate around the contention that ‘Designers can save the world and make money too’.

15 May 2008 For Designer Breakfasts I helped programme, and chaired, an event entitled ‘New talents for a new economy: What does it mean?’ which took place at Momentum in Clerkenwell. The event was hung on the DCMS proposals in the recently published Creative Britain – New Talents for the New Economy report. We had excellent contributions from a number of key people working in this field, and the discussion was great. The event was reported in Design Week (Design still needs to prove business case, say experts, 24.05.2008) and I have written up the event in Nico Macdonald Reporting, and Design Week will publish an Analysis piece on the event. We will be pursuing the discussion online, and Ben Terrett of The Design Conspiracy has proposed programming a follow-up event... [Facilitation]

2 May 2008 Reported on the World Press Freedom Day Debate: New Media is Killing Journalism? at the Frontline Club with Andrew Keen and Kim Fletcher for the motion and Robin Lustig and Nazenin Ansari against, moderated by William Horsley.

29 April 2008 Took part in a panel entitled ‘Translating your brand values online’ in the Business Editorial strand of the PPA annual conference Magazines and Business Media 2008: Fit for the Future at the Grosvenor House Hotel. I will be talked about overall approaches to the design of online publication, while the other panelists – John Welsh of CMPi, Kasper de Graaf of AIG London, and Graeme Palmer and Jody Wllis of Abacus e-media – will focused on case studies. The panel was chaired by Giles Barrie of Property Week. Other speakers at the event included Stephen Grabiner of Apax Partners and Carolyn McCall of the Guardian Media Group. See my talk outline... [Communication]

April 2008 In November, as part of the bbc.co.uk Service Licence Review being conducted by the BBC Trust, the BBC (not the Trust) commissioned a number short essays from ‘leading thinkers and practitioners in the new media space’ and I agreed to contribute a piece on ‘The BBC’s distinctive role in the internet space in the next 4-5 years’. The piece was submitted as part of the Review, and it was subsequently decided to include it in a book with a broader focus, entitled Public Service Broadcasting and the Creative Community, which will be published in May. I will have copies to distribute to anyone interested in the publication. Please contact me if you would be interested in receiving a copy... [Communication]

28 March 2008 The Innovation Forum event I co-programmed with Tobi Schneidler of Maoworks, Flaneurs: The network is the city, at the BOX space at the London School of Economics worked out very well. It was a creative workshop on mobile urban services for the 2012 Games and attracted a smart group of people, who developed some though-provoking concepts. We also had wonderful and engaging presenters, and an interesting dynamic was created between the participants, who came from disciplines across innovation and industries around mobile services. We are working on how to document the event and outputs. Photos can be found on Flickr with the Upcoming.org event tag.

25 March 2008 My piece on design and social networking for DCM (the UK Design Council magazine), reporting on and analysing developments, and presenting some forecasting, has now also been posted this site... [Communication]

18 March 2008 I chaired a lunchtime talk with Clay Shirky at the RSA, at which Shirky spoke around the themes of his new book Here Comes Everybody: the power of organising without organisations (Allen Lane, 2008). Shirky’s book considers the ‘online social explosion’ and ask what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organisational structures. (More on the book on Shirky’s site.) The talk was more than full and provoked a lively discussion, which we sadly had to curtail due to time constraints. You can find further information on the event on the RSA site. Video of the talk is now available in the Vision section of the new RSA site. Links to reports on the event can be found in the Comments section of the event entry on Upcoming.org.

14 March 2008 My response to the iPlayer hack story has been published in the Guardian letters page, though my copy has also been hacked.

29 Feburary 2008 Spoke at an Icelandic Marketing Association conference in Reykjavík on ‘Real innovation in the Internet age’.

22 January 2008 Gave a talk to Swiss at Precision Diagnostics, a consumer diagnostics company formed as a joint venture between P&G and Inverness Medical Innovations.

November 30, 2007 Reporting on the What is the Creative Workplace conference at the Central Saint Martins in London (see Nico Macdonald Reporting).

Friday 30 November 2007 Chairing a panel entitled ‘Evaluating the delivery system’ at the What is the Creative Workplace conference at the Central Saint Martins in London. (See Nico Macdonald Reporting)... [Facilitation]

16 November 2007 I am reporting on the 2007 London Media Summit entitled ‘Future Media Technologies: Disruption or Opportunity?’, which took place at the London Business School. It was a surprisingly interesting event considering it was programmed by LBS students (clearly a talented bunch), and both the audience and speakers were smart. You can see my notes posted during the event, which will form the basis for my review.

October 25–26, 2007 I chaired a thread at the InterSections07 conference, sub-titled ‘design know-how for a new era’, which took place at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in NewcastleGateshead... [Facilitation]

www.flickr.com More Flickr photos tagged with Intersections07

17 October 2007 My letter entitled iDesign wasn’t the first digital design conference in Design Week calling on the London Development Agency to under-write a year-round festival of design by the simple expedient of... supporting proper coordination and sharing of information around design events.

15 October 2007 I was invited by David Wilcox of Designing for Civil Society to a BBC Trust event about how blogging could extend the Trust’s engagement with the public in the review of bbc.co.uk, and in the Trust’s other work. I guess I was invited as someone 'with a strong interest in Public Service Broadcasting’. I have written up my thoughts in my Future Media Journal in a post entitled In the BBC we Trust.

24 September 2007 Appeared on an edition of Claire Fox News on the theme of design on 18 Doughty Street TV with IT consultant Angus Kennedy, Martyn Perks of cScape, and Blueprint magazine editor Vicky Richardson. The show lasts just under an hour. The visual element isn’t strong, and it can be listened to as radio.

18 September 2007 Presented at and took part in the Metamorphosis of Design Management seminar chaired by Naomi Gornick and hosted by the London College of Communication. Documentation may be published online in due course.

July 18, 2007 Took part in a panel at the Sichuan Media & Journalism Programme run by the Oxford University Department For Continuing Education, presenting to Chinese executives on a UK study tour. The panel was on ‘New combinations of media: TV, mobile phone, internet blogging and the finances of internet delivery’ hosted at the The Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London. The text of my talk will be published shortly.

3 July, 2007 My review of the Institute of Design Strategy Conference 2007 has been published in Core77. I am also writing a fuller, annotated report on this event. Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing the report... [Communication]

3 July, 2007 Issue 165 of .net magazine (August 2007) for a feature on social uses of the Web... [Communication]

June 27, 2007 Presenting at the Second Kendra Cross Media Summit on content description, visibility, search and discovery at the Frontline Club in London. My presentation is entitled ‘Debating Standards’.

13 June Took part in a panel at the NMK Forum 07 (sub-titled ‘What Comes After Content?’) in London, looking at how traditional media companies are managing to integrate aspects of social media interaction into their activity, including around debate. The other panelists were Jem Stone, BBC Future Media & Technology; Tom Bureau, (soon to be former) UK Managing Director, CNET Networks; Meg Pickard, Guardian Unlimited; Adam Gee, New Media Commissioner, Factual, Channel 4 Television; Paul Pod, co-Founder, TIOTI (Tape It Off The Internet); and Ashley Norris, co-founder, Shiny Media. The Forum is one of the best UK events on the future of media and is well worth attending. See my position statement on my Future Media journal.

30 May 2007 My lettter in response to a vox pop on the Guardian’s home page redesign has been published in Design Week. While I am positive about the re-design, I argue that “[a]s we embrace fresh news models around syndication, blogging, story-rating tools and customisable portals, newspaper home pages become increasingly unimportant”. Jeff Jarvis, in this week’s Media Guardian, makes a similar point in his column ‘Home pages, such a quaint old-fashioned notion ...’.

25 May 2007 Participated in a panel entitled ‘Web 2.0 and Social Innovation’ at the RSA Conference The Social Impact of the Web: Society, Government and the Internet... [Communication]

23 May 2003 Took part in the POLIS Future of News Seminar entitled Citizen or Consumer – the politics of online journalism, chaired by Charlie Beckett. The event has been written up by Beckett, though I need to clarify my comments.

17–18 May Reported on the Institute of Design Strategy Conference 2007 in Chicago (see my notes on Nico Macdonald Reporting). Anyone interested in a fuller report on the conference should contact me.

April 16, 2007: My letter in response to Jonathan Freedland’s article on the issue of civility in online debate has been published, in edited form, as the lead letter in the Guardian ‘Democracy in cyber-space’... [Journal]

29 March 2007 Chaired the paper session on ‘Interaction and instructions’ at the Information Design Conference 2007... [Facilitation]

19 March 2007 My article ‘London: still stuck in a jam’ has been published in spiked Environment, which reflects on its failure at the level of policy and imagination... [Communication]

03 May 2005 Programmed and chaired an Own It panel event, entitled ‘Value your work – make more money’. Notes on the discussion have been posted... [Facilitation]