Chugged around to a fine event this morning at the RICS, courtesy of Deverill Smith Recruitment. The London Olympics Forum with Sir John Armitt speaking followed by a panel with the lovely Liz Peace of the BPF; Dan Labbad, of Lend Lease and Vernon Everitt of TfL. The panel most admirably chaired by our own Damian Wild who was in his investigative journalist mode: rather searching and a bit irreverent. Damian has developed into the most comfortable and authoritative chair, it is just a joy to see him doing his stuff.
So it is All Over. MIPIM 2012 is now history. And we survived (although I did spend this weekend rubbing ibuprofen cream into my poor knees and ankles and Dr Evans has returned from the Sud de France with tonsillitis). Needless to say we had a massively successful outing for UKR and our partners, launching our Nottingham pilot - our "game changer" - our new and radical way of working.
And we find we're not alone in wishing to change the game. There is a real feeling of fin de siècle around the industry and the sense that we need to do things differently. Giles Barrie in Property Week has been making waves about how few women are represented in property (not a new theme, of course, but I believe he is getting much more traction this time around), and there are concerns being raised about the aging nature of the industry. This is on the heels of Chris Grigg having made those sterling remarks about lack of representation from black and ethnic minority groups in property, earlier this year. And there is a consensus emerging that we need to change, perhaps to be more people (or consumer?) focused, certainly to embrace more in the way of diversity.
Another prevailing theme at MIPIM (as I had picked up in this blog well prior to flying out, on 29 February) was that of the social impact of the property sector. My first experience of this was on the Wednesday at the (rather bonkers but nonetheless useful) debate at the Mayor's Round Table, reported in the blog 8h March, where a number of these themes began to emerge. But the real running was made at a lunch put together by the BPF and Real Service entitled "Broken Britain: the role of the property industry in mending our society and economy" which brought together some of the biggest (and most commercial) hitters in our field to debate a series of very fraught topics in the wake of the social unrest of last summer. Liz Peace and Howard Morgan are to be seriously commended for this brave and necessary initiative on the part of the mainstream of the industry. It is extremely timely. And I was not surprised that Damian picked it up in his editorial on Saturday's magazine as part of the "Build a Better Britain" Campaign.
"You've had a mayor of a morning" quipped David Bishop of Nottingham City Council on hearing my torid tales of being a moderator at the Mayors Round Table event at MIPIM on Wednesday (this joke seems a bit obvious now but I sure as hell wished I'd thought of it first!). And certainly we'd had a somewhat riotous couple of hours round at the Majestic. My own round table on the subject of "Social Return on Investment" boasted the mayors of San Paulo, Copenhagen, and Gant and...er... Nipegon (this last "city" comprising some 49,000 souls 1500km out of Toronto; Mr Mayor there is Richard Harvey, a thoroughly charismatic First Nation north American with a twinkle in his eye and a front-foot attitude. He has just managed to replace the last of the wooden sewers in Nipomo! Seriously, I did not make this up, together with the leader of Derby and the lead member for Bath. I fell in love with my entire table but the boys from San Paulo and Nipomo (two less comparable cities would be kind of hard to invent) stole the show between them. And I now have to visit both cities (in any case I've been to all the others). We were pretty overrun with Canadians through the room altogether (six round tables, on different subjects at that event) with one of the Canadian mayors, at 93, being the oldest mayor in the world. Well, naturally, we salute her. As we do all the progressive civic leaders doing their darndest for their municipalities. Feisty mob.
I was rather thrilled to be able to put out a press notice that my old friend and long-time colleague Bernard Hughes - who, for well over seven years, has been head of public affairs at ASDA - has succumbed to our amorous advances to become the chairman of the Big Society Task Force for UK Regeneration.
And he's willing to make a start in February! Even Dr Evan's sense of urgency is assuaged.
Bernard and I were student politicians together in... er... 1706 (I think it was), well before he became the first-ever public affairs manager in the retail industry. He joined Tesco in 1991 and worked closely with both Ian MacLaurin and then Terry Leahy during his early days as chief executive.
I was with him in the corporate affairs team of Tesco for nearly three years and he and I worked together on the homes-above-shops movement; the advent of the in-town formats (the Metros and the Expresses); and our Section 106 agreements on new stores for local jobs and training.
Bernard left Tesco in 2000, when he went to Edelman before joining ASDA as head of public affairs in 2003. He was instrumental in formulating the supermarket's response to the Competition Commission and always very clear and resolute about the benefits of the downward pressure on food inflation to the less wealthy in our society (of which ASDA is the leading exponent, of course).
Well, as I was telling the lovely Ken Dytor and the rest of the BPF regeneration committee only yesterday, the very future of regeneration is hanging in the balance. We needed a real hitter for our work on Big Society. To secure the services of a professional of the calibre of Bernard Hughes to head this vital body for UKR is a terrific shot in the arm for us.
The Loud Lanky Lad is studying economics at AS level and his teacher seems to have a rather marvellous off-the-wall take on the subject. I have been reading LLL's course books, one called "Free Lunch" is particularly enjoyable and - well behind the rest of you I do appreciate - I have finally caught up with "