London Calling

Busy couple of days in London, where I attended a couple of conferences and had several meetings.

The first event was 'The Public Sector Efficiency Expo', where I almost seen Francis Maude outline the coalition Government's policy on Public Services.

I say almost because despite turning up early at the Business Design Centre in Islington the organisers hadn't anticipated how many people would want to get into the main hall and it was overflowing with people. I ended up watching the session, chaired by Ben Page, from a balcony trying to make out what was going on through a dodgy sound system. Don't think I will be going back next year.

Had a really useful meeting in the afternoon at the Department for Transport, where we discussed the development of the Highways Maintenance Efficiency Programme. The meeting was quite stimulating as the civil servants engaged in an open diaologue as to how we could communicate the programmes aims effectively, including the use of social networking.

I then went off to discuss a research project on Insourcing services that we are undertaking for a client.

My second day allowed me to attend the Sustainable Development UK conference at the QE11 centre in Westminster, whilst their were a number of interesting speakers, Phillip Monaghan was the one who I enjoyed listening to the most as he spoke about his book 'sustainability in austerity'. In the afternoon I met up with another research client to discuss a project we are undertaking on the employment opportunities created in the green agenda.