News Story

VC dinner Post Mortem (16th Dec)

Peter Scott, Monday 8 Dec 2003

Dominic was present to welcome the guests, but left when we were all there. John and I were accompanied by Rae and Fiona and worked the room quite well. Brenda&#39s partner James is an architect, but with a keen interest in technology. Brenda herself was most engaged when talking about the work of Bob Moon and his teacher-training-africa projects. I promised to find out more about what Bob was up to, and see what we could do to help. She noted that Charles Clarke has put her in contact with Microsoft (their *charitable giving* arm) to get further funding for this africa/computing work – must find out more abt this.

John Small,Chair of Chamber of Commerce, BT director. John was very complimentary about our wireless networking of MK schools – that he clearly knew about and enthused about to the VC. She was sceptical that it would work in Africa. John noted that he had two folks running around MK just measuring wires and looking into how to pick up the black-spots with wireless too. I suggested that we should touch base about this, and maybe Mark Gaved&#39s enthusiasm for wireless mapping!

Roy and Maggie Nevitt OU Hon Grad. Background in Theatre and the arts. Roy is chair of governors (or somesuch nomenclature) for the MK Theatre, so spoke about the current artistic work of both theatre and their gallery. Roy was co-founder of Living Archive with Roger Kitchen, so knew a fair bit about clutch. He is running a number of interesting school based projects that nicely mirror our interests – so I have marked him down for a visit very soon.

Dr Janet Sumner, science academic. Appeared on Science Shack TV progs and others. Janet is a vulcanologist who has recently become an AL and is keen on increasing our range in terms of media and our reach in terms of demographic – keen to extend us into a younger audience.

Andrew PeckSenior Partner, Fennemores. Chair of MK Large Employers Association. Member of OU Council. Didnt get to talk to him, so maybe John can add to this?

Anne Stevens (BBC learning partnerships) was there also and told a neat story over dinner about our potential reach out into 6th forms for a younger demographic. Anne is chair of governors at Lord Grey and is terribly keen to wire us into a language teacher-training project (I think); meeting shortly.