Digital and New Media

The future of my web site I have had four iterations of this web site stretching back to 1998....... When I was an MP (1997-2010) my site especially in the period 2005-2010 attracted over 20,000 weekly unique readers which was going some and it helped me win three national awards. Now I am no longer an MP extraordinarily hardly anyone comes to this site; my numbers vary but not by much between 1200 to 2000 a week. Given I am slow to update even these numbers are surprising! Part of the...

I am sorry this site has not been updated for quite awhile. This has been because I have been revising for my MA exams which were last Thursday. The site is undergoing a re-think.

Letter in FT 30.08.16 Dear Sir One of the first things Steve Jobs did on his return to Apple was to close down its foundation.  Apple is sitting on $215bn of cash outside of the USA. Could the Apple Board at least consider using the interest on this to recreate a Digital Foundation for the world?  Commentators are rarely critical of Apple and its extraordinary products but this amount of cash is frankly obscene. Come on Apple why not a Wellcome Trust for...

The inaugural meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Data Analytics chaired by Daniel Zeichner MP (L. Cambridge) will take place tomorrow in the HoC.

Letter Published in Financial Times  Dear Sir The Gafa line (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) takes a different philosophical view to us poor Europeans. We believe we own our data and should be recompensed for it. They believe they own our data and frequently do. We do not yet own our own data but we would like the EU to rule in our favour so the debate can begin. Yours etc Derek Wyatt Founder, Oxford Internet Institute

What is the point of a web site? I was the creator and director of the first family computer channel in the UK (on BSkyB) which was initially called the Computer Channel and ended up as dot.tv. Our web site in 1996 had video (!) and we placed our programmes on to it though that wasn't as easy at it sounds. When I was elected to Parliament in May, 1997 it was a shock to find how far behind the authorities were and how it took to move the machinery into the 19th century let alone the late...

NISE two more years I was appointed to become the new chairman of NISE NHS IP hub in December, 2013 and I took up my post just over a year ago. There were ten iterations of these hubs in England matching the old RDA maps so NISE covers the south east - a huge area. Hubs were both started and closed down by the Labour Government despite their success and today there are just four left. My job was to turn round NISE or close it down. Throughout 2014, I met hospital trust...

Ofcom It has been five years since I attended a seminar or a press conference at the Ofcom HQ opposite the FT on Southwark Bridge. I used to be friendly with the original trio that established it - Kip Meek, Ed Richards and Lord Carter back in 2003/4. At the time I thought them to be the best three thinkers in the game and not just in the UK. My how it has changed. The afternoon was so dull and boring (Ofcom's Plans for 2015-16) that if could I would break it up to...

Ambassador Hazem’s welcome: Dear Participants to the Emergency Workshop " Technology 4 Ebola", as Secretary General of The Egyptian Agency of Partnership for Development,  it is my pleasure to invite you to  the event, which will be held from 15 and 16 December 2014 in the beautiful city of Cairo, Egypt, the World's gateway to Africa. We are determined with our partners to explore  innovative modalities to mobilize resources in a crisis situation to serve...

Day One: December 15th, 2014   8:00 – 9:00       Registration, Coffee?  9:00 – 9:30       Opening Remarks Sponsors                       (Hazem Fahmy, Fernando de Sousa, Hussein...

As chairman of NISE NHS SE hub, I have with Dr John Stedman, my CEO, had meetings with Rt Hon Jeremy Hunt MP, Secretary of State for Health and with George Freeman MP, Minister of Life Sciences. We discussed innovation, public equity and IP. 

I was a tad upset with the high bills I was receiving for my mobile. I went into an 02 shop yesterday and asked why my bills were so high. Immediately they reduced my monthly standing from £70+ to £16. When I asked them they said well you've paid off your iPhone 5 so you are allowed a reduction (!). So, I asked ever so gently why they hadn't told me and would I receive a rebate. You must be joking.......

Tim Dick, an old friend from San Francisco, hosted a supper at Ember Yard last Thursday and after my Wandsworth party I legged it there. Traffic was slight in central London thankfully - Brasil was opening the World Cup - and it was good to meet the 18 guests and enjoy the atmosphere. Tim has asked me to join his board of Advisors of StartUpCapitalPartners 2.

A Digital Manifesto for 2015 - some suggestions  There are some simple things the next Labour Government could do: 1.       When a Bill goes through Parliament the Treasury has to assess whether or not it has any financial implications; why not add another compulsory requirement which asks what the digital impact is for the said Bill. If there are none then there must be something wrong with the...

Yesterday, I met John Glen MP for Salisbury and we had a long and helpful chat about the place of innovation in the NHS.

Last Tuesday Crowdbnk held an investor evening at our old HQ in Shoreditch (we have since moved to Old St!) and last Thursday we held our monthly board meeting in Kensington. There is much speculation as to how the future of crowd sourcing in all its forms will develop. One potential investor did ask me whether the missing letter in Crowdbnk was an "o".....these city types.....

I drove out to Harwell last Tuesday for a staff meeting (my second). We have a talented group of people.

I attended my first staff meeting with NISE SE on Tuesday leaving early to be at Harwell by 0900. We had a long discussion about the options available to us over the next fifteen months. 

Last Monday evening, Crowdbnk held another event for sponsors and investors at the Groucho Club. It was a packed occasion.......

I attended the Eighth P&I Conference in the Attlee Suite, Portcullis House on Thursday. In the end I was called on to chair a session.....and I stayed to hear the bake off between Ed Vaizey (Lazy Vaizey as he is known) and Ed Richards, CEO, Ofcom which the latter won by a landslide. www.parliamentandinternet.org.uk

I first met Bernie Frieder at Comdex in 1997 when I was on a panel about the internet. Bernie was our tip top ICT man at our Consulate in San Francsico, a rare beast. We would meet every time  went to San Fran 

Eight years ago, I founded the Parliament & Industry annual conference as i thought there was a need to bring the two sides together.  Follow it at: www.parlimentandinternet.org.uk  It starts on Thursday. 

My old web site www.derekwyattexmp.co.uk now permanently deposited at the British Library used to have at its height 20,000 unique visitors a week. My current site which has been up for over three years has begun to attract more visitors of late and this past week notched 4,739!

We had a very good board meeting this morning. We have such a good team and our board is beginning to knit together. See www.crowdbnk.com

On Monday I had lunch with James Thellusson, a trustee at Trinity. We covered off rugby, digital stuff, the hospice and much else over a rather fine salad. I do so like Thomas Cubitt it is fast becoming my favourite place to chill.

On Tuesday, we had our monthly Board meeting and then followed this in the evening with a party for our entrepreneurs at the Pregnant Man pub part of the Saatchi and Saatchi property behind 80 Charlotte Street (which is up for redevelopment). 

(I have become involved with this Campaign) DIGITTERRA.ORG TO LAUNCH KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN CALLING FOR UNIVERSAL DIGITAL RIGHTS LONDON, UK July 4th 2013 - Digitterra.org, a new not-for-profit organisation established to promote and protect digital human rights is launching a Kickstarter fundraising campaign to develop a Universal Declaration of Digital Rights. The campaign is being launched on July 4, the date the US Declaration of Independence was launched in 1776. The goals...

This morning I went to a BSAC Council meeting. Back in 2009, I was approached by Fiona Clarke- Hackston, the CEO of BSAC, towards the end of 2009, and asked if after stepping down from Parliament whether I would like to join the organisation. I have really enjoyed my time on it and today we had a really stimulating set of presentations especially from Roger Walton on the Xbox One and then from Ralph Rivera, Digital Director at the Beeb. 

The BBC needs to be broken up. It simply isn't fit for purpose. Its Trust Board is faceless. Its management is chaotic (Tony Hall has his hands his full) and no FTSE 100 company could pay out so much redundancy to at best third rate people without better controls. The next boring round about the Licence Fee should be pre-emptied by an independent report about what a PBS broadcaster should look like by 2025. BBC3 and BBC4 have both spend £1 billion over ten years - this is an

I sent this in yesterday: Dear Sir If Internet service providers and social network sites carry rape images et al (Mumsnet letter today) then it is time we introduced a licence fee for them as we do for radio, telephony and television. The licence fee could just be an agreement to abide by UK law. If the ISPs and/ or SN sites were found guilty of carrying pornography then a yellow card with a fine attached and if it happened again a red card and take down. The UK should...

Twitter without any advance warning has taken down my automatic feed.......bear with us

I had lunch with (Lord) Richard Allan at Facebook. He was a Lib Dem MP from 1997-2005 before standing down for someone called Nick Clegg. When an MP, Richard used to be a lively member of the APP Internet Group.

Russams, the Haed hunters, invited me to a breakfast at The Athenaeum where Ed Richards, CEO, Ofcom was our guest speaker. His main point was the world was going digital and 4G was hip.

Television, radio and telephony use spectrum which is leased by the Government of the day (well at least in the UK) though satellite remains out of its clutches. Commercial players in these industries pay a rent the government for its use. So why don't Internet Service Providers pay a rent for their services? It is a puzzle to me. We pay for stamps for our mail and for our telephone calls; we pay a licence fee for the BBC but for some reason this doesn't apply to the...

Last night, Intelligence Squared hosted Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google at the RGS. Bryan Appleyard was the chairman for the event and he did a pretty poor job of it. Tickets were £25 because though this was an "In Conversation" evening it was also to plug his book The New Digital Age which I had read earlier in the month. Schmidt had hurried back from the Hay- on-Wye festival where he had had to answer more questions on Google's tax position.  By and large Schmidt had

I worked with DesignIt during 2011-12 on a couple of App projects when they were close to The Shard. They have moved and there have been some personnel changes which Eva updated me on at No.11 on Tuesday evening. 

We had our second meeting of the new Board on Tuesday and then had a smaller meeting on Thursday afternoon. We have a lot of work to accomplish this year.

Mark Davies was at BetFair when it started and now runs his own consultancy. His Dad, Barry worked at the BBC for thirty or more years covering sport. Anyway we meet every six months just to catch up. It is always a lively discussion!

I had a working lunch with Malcolm Taylor and David Harrington at the Cork & Bottle (one of my favourite places) on Wednesday. They were very helpful to me on digital issues when I was an MP. We discussed many issues surrounding broadband, mobile et al. Our conclusions were similar: there was no political party across this key policy area. We plotted as to how we might change this scenario! 

I was an invitee to the Third Quadrennial (every four years) Global Internet and Politics Conference held at King's College, Strand Complex on Wednesday and Thursday and sponsored by eBay. I attended on Wednesday only (and the Tuesday evening official dinner).  We covered off in a long day: Political Campaigns in the US and European Responses The Internet and Political Activism in Africa and the Middle East Big Data and the Implications for Politics, Governing and...

The Digital Policy Alliance is doing good work in Parliament and on Tuesday afternoon I attended their: A Smart Future for the UK event. Once again there was no Government speaker. I could only attend the first session which was given over to the Internet of Things and the speakers were Ian Taylor, Rob van Kranenburg, Maurizio Pilu and Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino (who was very impressive). We shall be hearing  a lot more about the IoT!

I went to hear Evengy Morozov's talk at the RSA on Thursday lunchtime. It was called: Big Data Small Government and he drew much of it from his new book To Save Everything, Click Here. He covered off the new rage of spectacles and watches about to hit our stores from Google and Samsung (has Apple peaked?) which will track, rather frighteningly, all we do without any of us really knowing. They they'll sell it on. I asked him a question about when we were we going to be compensated for...

Yesterday, I attended the joint European Internet Foundation/Digital Policy Alliance conference held at Europe House in Smith Square (the old Tory party's HQ). The main theme was to examine "Perspectives for Mobile & Broadband in the UK by 2020" and we had  a number of speakers including Neelie Kroes, a EC VP who is responsible for the Digital Agenda in Europe. This cannot often be said but Europe is so far ahead of the UK government on digital policy that it is...

On Friday, I had lunch at The Athenaeum (again) this time with Ian Pearson and Ayan Mitra (www.CrowdBnk.com) and then went on to meet Dele Atanda, CEO, of Digitteria Ltd. I am helping both companies raise funding.

I had another meeting with Crowdbnk on Friday afternoon where we discussed my further involvement.

I met Dele Atanda on Wednesday morning to chat about his rather brilliant software platform which he has built. I agreed to help him find further funding.

Back in September, 2011 I started the Labour Party's: Next Generation, Entrepreneurs' Network. Yesterday evening, we had two speakers at the cutting edge of new business and start-up thinking: Scott Fletcher, Chairman and Founder of ANS Group (Manchester), who talked about his fast growing company and the changing role of technology and how this would shape future business opportunities A note on Scott - Chairman and Founder of ANS Group: One of the country's leading...

I was a guest of Sir Rick Trainor (CEO of King's) at Home House last night where we debated "The Internet is the end of civilisation as we know it"!! Other guests included Nick Lansman, Andrea Hargrave, Nick Pickles, Stewart Binnie & Justin Gayner. It was a fun evening.

I had a quiet breakfast with Nick Emery (Mindshare) yesterday at the Trafalgar Hotel.

Danny A. Davis: M&A Integration - How to do it Published by WILEY   How many times have you been involved in buying another company where the drive for you personally was in doing the deal because it pushed up your share price? How many of you found the whole "It's it on? Is it off?" routine unbelievably thrilling and yet at the same time exhausting? It is a pretty privleged club. And yet. And yet buying a competitor might well be high octane stuff but the real job...

With Ian Pearson, I met Ayan Mitra, the founder of CrowdBnk - www.crowdbnk.com which is the first crowd sourcing site to be regulated by the FSA.

Borgen is the best drama series on television. Set in Copenhagen, it is a political thriller with superb acting, great scripts and sets. What a pity it is on BBC 4 and not BBC 2.

Last night, I started a ten week week digital Photography course at he Adult Education Centre in Lupus Street, Pimlico. There are 15 of us signed up.....we started by examining all the letters and numbers on the top of our cameras and taking some fast pictures. Our tutor then set us homework!!

After my article in The Times before Christmas about the need for a Policy Internet Institute I met a couple of executives from the BIMA board - Howard Scott and Wyndham Lewis and we chewed the fat about how best to take it forward.

This morning I was invited to breakfast at Soho Hotel chaired by Phil Hall, the ex editor of the NoW (pre-hacking) where we discussed the internet and its possible regulation.

I was a guest at the Vodafone Foundation's Mobile for Good Summit yesterday at Tate Modern. There were too many speakers and not enough focus. Most interesting fact: 80% of all Africans will have a mobile by 2015.............. Most interested case: Obstetric Fistula - work in Tanzania where hundreds of women's lives are being saved by a mobile pay system called m-pesa.

New Year's Resolution 1 I have signed up for 10 x 3 hours of a course on Photography at my local Adult Education Centre starting in January..... 

I attended our Board meeting on Wednesday afternoon at the Groucho Club I had to slip away at six but returned for supper.

Thunderer Column in The Times today The internet needs a  global leader. Let's base it in London by Derek Wyatt  Long before the Harvard academic Jo Nye published his seminal work on soft power in 2004, Britain had given birth to two of the greatest soft-power institutions in the world. In 1932 came the BBC Empire Service, now the BBC World Service, and two years later came the British Council. Soft power is all we have left in the Foreign Office.   We have largely...

The Goring Hotel is tucked away in the shadow of Victoria railway station which is undergoing a refit. In the Summer months you can sit outside and enjoy a cup of tea or glass of wine though you might need a mortgage to enjoy the latter. Anyway, I was a guest at dinner there last night. For some reason we decided to have a brandy or three......and I woke with a sore head.....

I caught up with Inma Martinez, digital expert, banker, investor et al who just happens to speak half a dozen languages......on Wednesday afternoon. We have shared speaking engagements in the past....she is seriously bright.

I was on the last panel yesterday morning at King's College on a special Editorial Intelligence conference on Health see: www.editorialintelligence.com  It had been well trailed in The Independent by Jeremy Laurence: "They could save the NHS – or bankrupt it. New technological advances that are transforming care of patients also risk crippling the health service responsible for delivering them. At a conference today, sponsored by The Independent, experts will describe

I'm moving house shortly. I am trying to tell banks and the like my new address. Here's the record so far: Sky TV - was disconnected by them after 12 minutes; called back the next day and told that  had to call in two weeks before I was moving. I then asked how the could they be sure there would be a technician to link my system in. "Ah came the reply "you have a point". Another 15 minutes later and they agreed they could take my details down and that they would call me back to...

When I was an MP you couldn't use an Apple computer so I had to buy a Dell Latitude. Since stepping down I have moved between the two but last week my lead blew up on the Dell. I went online and ordered a new one. I took four days to arrive from Holland. Unfortunately, the lead had a European two pin rather than a UK three pin so I couldn't use it. You can't change it online or send it back. You have to call a help line which is only open 9-5. I called this morning and was switched to India...

Yesterday (early evening) four of us met to convene a new Labour Digital group. We've a bit of work to do before we launch but as always watch this web site.  

You View will become another consumer must-have product by the end of this month. It has already had a soft launch to the media (4th July) and to retailers (26th July). You View (UvU??) records all television programmes on the Freeview platform and the technology is so good that other channels including Sky will soon be announced. You can set the recorder for 7 days ahead and as interesting you can dial up those programmes you have missed over the previous 7 days.  The UvU...

Last night I went along to three presentations from start ups seeking mentoring. They were: ** a company which has created an environment audit rather like a FTSE index ** a company trying to help less able (socially) students at universities break their own glass ceilings and gain access to the City, Law and other professions  ** a micro finance housing bank for India  (which I am involved in)

Tim Wilson came to speak to BSAC yesterday about Business and University (under Chatham House rules). Tim was the author of the Wilson Review where one section of his excellent report looked at the creative media industries. www.hefce.ac.uk/newsarchive2012/name,69548,en.html  

I was a guest of Dr Simon Hepworth and Dr Andrew Fletcher at Imperial on Thursday afternoon. I saw: ** their very exciting plans for Imperial West on the old BBC Worldwide site in Wood Lane ** the Business School and its Entrepreneurial Hub ** the Digital Economy Lab & Tech City I was mightily impressed.

I was a guest - missing the 200m finals - of Janet last night at the BBC. A hundred or so of us saw the next generation television system (to replace Hi-Def) which is currently called Super Hi-Vision (no doubt it will soon be referred to as "Hi-5"). Hi-5 is a partnership between the BBC, NOG and the Olympic Broadcasting Services enabled in the UK by janet (www.ja.net) They had filmed the 100m, Sir Chris Hoy's last gold medal in the keirin at the Velodrome plus Mo and Jess Ennis on...

Jimmy Wales was the guest speaker yesterday afternoon at London House (City Hall) and I was one of eight additional guest support acts. Jimmy talked about Wikipedia which now has 490 million users a month, his failures in the tech space before he stumbled on a free, crowd sourced online encyclopedia and his for profit company: www.wikia.com   He concluded with four recommendations for London's ICT world: ** Failure can be a positive ** Being an entrepreneur is a force for...

I was one of eight support speakers to Jimmy Wales opening remarks yesterday afternoon at London House (City Hall). I said:   ** it was an outrage that Whitehall had overspent by £79 billion in 15 years over computer and data contracts yet no-one has resigned or been held to account.  ** that we have a real shortage of ICT people and therefore will need to import talent in the short-term from India and China but this has been made more difficult by the...

I went to a meeting of BSAC - Chatham House rules - where for a couple of hours we discussed a number of issues which might be included in a White Paper. We have more meetings next month.

Would anyone have split his empire into two and added value immediately to the share price? Well Rupert Murdoch did a couple of weeks back and now he has stood down from the newspapers side which must have been a wrench considering how much he adores them. Will he sell them? I doubt it but if he is removed from chairing either company by shareholder revolts he will sell the newspapers. It's never over till it's over.

I was on the first panel this morning chaired by Peter York and Carla Buzasi (Huff Post UK) which tried to examine Ideas & Identity in a Mobile World. Our eclectic panel included Caroline Daniel (FT), David Erasmus (Givey), Nick Harkaway (Author) and MT Rainey (TH_NK). Follow the arguments at www.editorialintelligence.com and www.commentconference.com  

The BBC has spent over £2 billion of the licence fee on BBC3 and BBC4. IN the past year its sports department has lost nearly every bid for live sport. NHK, the BBC's equivalent PBS broadcaster in Japan has two terrestrial channels and two satellite channels - an equivalent BBC1 and BBC2 on terrestrial and a Sports and an Educational channel on satellite. There's a message here for the new DG. 

I was asked to offer some mentoring to a UCL post grad student - Gal Moore - and we have ended up trying to put the flesh on his idea for a micro-financing housing bank for India. On Wednesday, we worked on our Board, our Advisory Board and an appropriate Hindi word which would encapsulate the spirit of the enterprise. We're still very much a work in progress but we will soon be out bidding for funding.

I had an hour with Jim Dawton of www.designit.com the Copenhagen based design company yesterday. 

I met my old friend Dr Ahmed Elmagarmid and two of his colleagues Dr Abdellatif Saoudi and Dr Ihab Ilyas of the Qatar Computing Research Institute, part of the Qatar Foundation (sponsors of Barcelona), yesterday to talk through a couple of projects.

I went to spend some time yesterday at Hub Westminster which is on Floor 1 of New Zealand House at 80 Haymarket, SW1Y 4TE. It was opened in October, 2011 and supports start ups. Check it out at www.hubwestminster.net   

I went to the PICTFOR annual drinks reception in the House of Lords last night. The speeches were longer than necessary but the event was a great success.

Al Wayne who runs his own media sales agency in Cambridge came down to an Old Etonian evening and stayed the night. I am Godafather to Rosa, his fabulous daughter.

I first met David Hooper when he was our lawyer for Spycatcher back in 1986-7 when I was a board director at William Heinemann. We have remained firm friends ever since and on occasions his libel knowledge has saved me and a number of friends from serious trouble. On Thursday we had a mellow time at the Cork & Bottle and plotted!!

I saw Mark yesterday for a catch up on his plans for: www.ideaspaceglobal.org

We had an Editorial Intelligence board meeting last night at Somerset House. We have a full programme over the next few months. www.editorialintelligence.com  

My old college at Oxford - St. Catherine's - held a party to celebrate its fiftieth year at the Danish Embassy last night thanks to the kindness of its Ambassador HE Anne Hedensted Steffensen. You might ponder why this Embassy? Well Catz (as it is better known) was designed by Arne Jacobsen (1902-71) who also happened to have designed the Danish Embassy on Sloane Street....... I had a long chat with Lord Raymond Plant, a former Master, and we agreed to have lunch soon....

I had an hour with Nick Emery, CEO, Mindshare just off Tottenham Court Road. Neither of us could remember when we last met....but my sense was at least ten years - that's what happens when you are confined to Westminster....We talked about digital, programme making, Leveson et al.  See: www.mindshareworld.com

This morning I am at a BSAC Get Creative conference where the chat is almost exclusively about the Leveson Inquiry and whether Jeremy Hunt will survive as Secretary of State (no-one said he would). In the first session: Do we have the brands, virtual networks and infrastructure?  I asked Kip Meek, a panellist, whether the rise of litigation against Ofcom demanded a resolution which might be a Court of Arbitration on the lines of the Court of Arbitration for Sport in...

I caught up with Dominic Rogers yesterday. We met at an editorial intelligence dinner which I hosted.

I had breakfast with Michael Hayman of Seven Hills group this morning. It was a first for both of us but after an hour we had half a dozen projects we wanted to work on.....if only every meeting was as productive!!

Martin Smith was one of the main speakers at the UCA event at the Work Foundation ten days ago and so we had a catch up at Ingenious yesterday and chewed the cud.

Aldeburgh's Town Council loves to see the prices of its houses match those of Chelsea (as if but they aren't cheap) because it receives a higher rateable value in return - never mind locals have been completely priced out of the market. But what takes the biscuit is its refusal to allow a mobile base station with an attenna on its water tower or church as a consequence it is impossible to find a signal. Hello Aldeburgh this is 2012!  

Never underestimate Rupert Murdoch for unusually for media magnates he always thinks long term. He knew his stable of newspapers - The Times (a goodly read), The Sunday Times (tired and in desperate need of a complete overhaul) and The seven day Sun - were struggling. In contrast, BSkyB was a licence to print money. The plan must have been that once he has secured all the other shares for BSkyB to merge the two operations. This way he would have been able to bring the much stronger...

Amber Digital Consultancy Ltd 1 Maunsel Street London SW1P 2QL   30th March 2012     UCA Work Foundation Discussion Group   Where’s the Money? What do creative businesses need to do to become finance ready? Derek Wyatt & Ian Elwick     Prince of Wales Trust www.princes-trust.org.uk Make it happen book The Prince’s Trust has published its first business start-up guide, "Make it Happen: The Prince’s Trust Guide to Starting your own Business". The...

I spent a couple of hours as the guest of the R&D department at the BBC, winners of 8 Queen's Awards!! (which was mightily impressive) on Thursday. I saw their work for the iPad and some mobile applications.

Tim Dick was in town from San Francisco and we always try to hook up.........we had a dleightful lunch at the RAC club where I bumped into (lord) Stephen Carter and saw Sir Stirling Moss with his original Jaguar C in which he won Le Mans.

It is hard to read Rupert Murdoch's tea leaves. He must have wanted to buy the Sky cash cow so he could back News International into it and allow the rather better Sky management to take over the rabble that has led NI. Then, all hell let lose and News International feels headless and lost. RM is a newspaper man through and through. He loves print. He loves the power it brings him. Television, film and online fail to give him the same pride or smell. He hates what has...

Check out: www.ideaspaceglobal.org and see what you think.....as I met Marc Ortmans, its founder, yesterday. I agreed to become an Ambassador...... We also talked through www.geo2012.com which is in Liverpool for the first time in early March.

Inspiring Commerce: The Business of Creativity The Work Foundation 21 Plamer Street London SW1H 0AD 30th March 2012 For more details go to: www.creative-forum.org.uk I am speaking on micro-financing.......

I chaired one of the two sessions on Data last night at Denton's in the City. My panel included: Dr Rob Reid, Which? Steve Taylor, entrepreneur Donna Whitehead, Microsoft and Nick Graham, Lawyer @ Denton's We tried to help the packed audience unwind whether the existing legal framework was fit for purpose (it isn't). There will be a fuller account (!) on the BSAC web site at www.bsac.uk.com.

"This is to Certify that Mr Derek Wyatt a Freeman of The Worshipful Company of Information Technologists was admitted and Invested with the Livery this eighteenth day of January, two thousand and twelve" And so it came to pass......

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/913043d4-d221-11e0-9137-00144feab49a.html#axzz1juD5pjWo

For the past two years BSAC - the British Screen Advisory Committee - has given me free membership. As they put it to me "You have a different way at looking at things and we need that voice"...... Yesterday, I attended a Q&A chaired by Richard Hooper who has been charged with examining the feasibility of a Digital Copyright Exchange and has called for Evidence. So our session was to see what exactly he wanted from our members. I spent much of the two hours just...

Published in The Guardian 26.12.11 Dear Sir Why isn't it possible to pay for anything online by an automatic transfer from your own account to the account in question? There are no charges this way. It's probably out there somewhere but if not, maybe there's an opportunity for a third party to offer such a service via an App. Yours etc Derek Wyatt

I have now tried over 30 times to make an order on the River Cottage web site but each time it refuses to accept my voucher number..........

I was a guest yesterday lunch-time at a rather good gathering of engineers where we discussed "Smart, Fast, and Mobile" for the best part of 2 hours. www.theiet.org

I was on the UofCA entrpreneurs panel at Coin Street Neighbourhood Centre on Friday afternoon. I spoke about the need to create a national micropayment bank.

I met AP Parigi in Mumbai in 2008 when he was CEO of Times of India; we met again later in the year when he visited Parliament to tell me about Absolute Radio which they had purchased from "Virgin". And then as so often happens, we lost contact.... except except...... On Friday we had lunch at the newly refurbished Sanderson Hotel and chewed the fat free vegetarian Malay menu. AP has moved on and we plotted how we might work together.  

In 2006, I approached Helen Milner, CEO of UK Online, with an idea I had been trying to find a home for, for over five years but had seemingly been defeated by endless Secretary of States of the "Good project but why not find the funding elsewhere?" mentality, the BBC and Ofcom. She loved it and we set about finding a date in 2007 and looking at what it would entail. One Digital Day for the Nation was repeated in 2008, 2009 and 2010 but this year it is much more ambitious and will be...

I had a pre-order for Julian Assange's autobiography but on Thursday Amazon sent me an email telling me it was no longer available notwithstanding the serialisation rights in The Independent and the mountain of books already in Waterstones. Then, I went back on the site to see that it was available afterall..........   Anyway, it has been a hard read and hardly a page turner. I think it a muddle of a book and that is probably because of the haste in which Canongate, the...

We had quite a beano at Oxford over the past two days: first with five celebratory lectures at the Said Business School on Thursday for two hours, followed by a dinner at Balliol College and then a Board meeting on Friday morning. We inaugurated two award ceremonies: (i) Internet & Society Awards for the Public Good and (ii) Internet & Society Lifetime Achievement Awards which were well received.  I started the ball rolling on the Oxford Internet Institute

Paul Allen is the lesser known co-founder of Microsoft (the name is derived from microprocessor/and software) who has had poor health on a couple of occasions and in the first instance it led him eventually to a parting of the waves with his schoolboy friend Bill G. Most of the first half of the book has been documented by Bill G so it was good to read the other side. The second half of the book is as illuminating. Paul gradually some of his stock in Microsoft and has probably stopped...

BSAC organised what could almost be described as a "private viewing" of Stephen Carter, now resident in Paris. The former head of NTL and Ofcom before taking a peerage and writing the Digital Britain report which was then embarrassingly pasted by his own government in the wash-up just before the May, 2010 general election. Stephen was in outstanding form.

The red hot news tonight was that the hot red top News of The World has offered an unconditional apology to a number of politicians and celebrities for having hacked their personal mobiles. NewsCorp cannot be allowed to own BSkyB outright until the whole truth about these cases have come to court. Meanwhile, an independent investigation into the Met Police's relationship with NewsCorp must be announced tomorrow morning.

I was a guest last night at the LG sponsored YouTube film: Life In A Day which asked people to film their lives on 24th July 2010 and send them in via YouTube. Hundreds of thousands of people replied and the team led by director Kevin MacDonald has been busy putting this extraordinary film together.

Rupert Murdoch is about to be given the green light by Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State at DCMS, to buy the remaining shares in BSkyB which he doesn't already own. The matter will NOT be referred to the Competition Commission despite Ofcom's and the beleaguered Vince Cable's recommendations when he held the brief. So we all have a lot to thank the two Daily Telegraph journalists for screwing this up following the release of their tape recordings of Vince at a confidential advice...

The Guardian's Media Section every Monday used to be a must-read in the Communications industry.....but not any more. It is limp, behind the times and needs a revamp or a shelving.

I attended the NESTA debate on their new report: Creative Clusters & innovation yesterday at Portcullis House. The report is published at: www.nesta.org.uk

Wikileaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy by David Leigh and Luke Harding (Guardian Books). The Guardian was one of five papers - El Pais, New York Times, Der Spiegel (a weekly) and Le Monde - to eventually agree a deal late last year with Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, to release secret US tapes covering Iraq and Afghanistan and much else besides. Wikileaks is the first of maybe half a dozen books which will be out over the next three months which...

I am back in India on business with Tribal with visits to New Delhi and Mumbai. I first came to Bombay, as it was then, en route to Hong Kong in 1955 on SS Chusan where we were to spend three idyllic years as children with my parents (Dad was in the Royal Engineers). We came back in 1958 on the last troop ship and again stopped off in Bombay where my Grandfather had been with the Royal Artillery. After our voyage home (4 weeks on a floating hotel) troops to the Far East were...

I attended the BSAC Council Meeting yesterday - www.bsac.uk.com. When an MP I was invited to attended as an Observer and now I am not they invited back as a Member.  I really enjoy the meetings which are well attended and usually consist of  a number of different presentations across the industry under Chatham House rules.    We heard from Creative Scotland and Creative England and had a session on Micropayments. All good. 

On Monday, I spent the day in Copenhagen with Jim and Kathryn from www.designit.com (UK branch!). We visited their other working halves to discuss the Internet Policy Institute and their work on the web site. We travelled Easyjet for just under £50 return..........

I went to the RSA for one of its many lunch time debates and/or discussions it has held every year for the past couple of decades. These last just an hour so many Fellows and friends are able to pop in during lunch-time to hear a current topic being thought through by a couple of experts. Today, there was a lecture followed by a Q&A by Evgeny Mozorov entitled The Future of Wikileaks - you can catch it on www.thersa.org/events/listen-live. Evgeny has written a book: The Net

I have asked Ed Vaizey, the Culture Minister, to step in and save these papers for the Nation should they be sold to an overseas bidder: From Christie's web site: "Lot Description TURING, Alan Mathison (1912-1954). A collection of Alan Turing's offprints formed by Prof. Maxwell Herman Alexander Newman (1897-1984), 1936-1954, comprising: TURING'S FIRST PUBLISHED PAPER: 'Equivalence of left and right almost periodicity.' Offprint from: Journal of the London Mathematical Society, vol....

Vince Cable was right to ask Ofcom to look at the bid by NewsCorp to buy the remaining shares of Sky which they do not own. Ofcom has given a deadline of 19th November to register views on the proposal. I wrote to Vince Cable last month asking him to refer the bid to the Competition Commission.

I'm back in Cairo after a 13 year absence. When I last visited I came with CAABU and some legends as Jon Trickett MP, now almost back in the shadow cabinet, and Phyllis Starkey. This time it is a visit for the Tribal Group where I work as an Associate. We've businesses across the Mid East - in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE, Jordan and Syria - and we're actively pursuing others. We're here to examine opportunities for Education which is one of our three specialisms.   The...

I said on 23rd August on a piece about the BBC that the Licence Fee should be able to be accessed by C4. At the GMEITF in Edinburgh yesterday Michael Grade commented: "The BBC should compete for a share of the licence fee with Channel 4."

On Friday, the great and the good from the television world will gather again for the Edinburgh International Television Festival sponsored by The Guardian. Because it is sponsored by that newspaper, other media have become more reluctant to report it and as a result it has become less important in the television year for the "Suits" to attend. This year, the head honcho at the BBC, Mark Thompson will explain why his salary is three times larger than the PM's and why his Pensions and...

Wednesday 6th October 2010 9.00am to 4.00pm Venue: Rich Mix. 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA Digital Unite are sponsors and delivery partners in a Government event called See IT in Action. Places at this event are free for representatives of local authorities and their civil society partners. We are also presenting one of the workshops, so if you register please come along and see us. It is a must-attend day for all those who commission or manage local public services,...

I have been writing and speaking about the need for an Internet Policy Institute since April, 2010. Subsequently, I have had a number of companies and individuals who have offered to help me in thinking this through. This afternoon, I am meeting another group who represent major clients in the internet space and I am hoping we can move forward to a meeting of Internet interested organisations in the academic, business, political and consumer space within the next six weeks. If you

Apple iPhone 4 executive quits Mark Papermaster is no more - well, no more at Apple. He was Apple's senior vice-president of, wait for it, devices hardware engineeering............

RIM, the makers of the Blackberry, have caused a desert cloud in the UAE if not beyond. When it was formed back in the mid-1990s, RIM created a Network Operations Centre (NoC). These are hosted in Canada for the Americas and one in Europe to cover Europe and Asia. Any company that wants to use the Blackberry has to install its software which can then communicate with one of its NoCs. Consequently, RIM's security is better than anyone else's especially when it comes to email with...

Yesterday, Sam Wolfe, of FOSI (she was working for them in DC but shortly she'll be working for them in Paris) came by my house to collect me and my crutches to make sure I made it to the House of Lords for the launch of their GRID see: wwwfosigrid.org.   I was glad she did. I had said to myself that I wouldn't go back to Parliament until October but hey this was the penultimate day of term so what the heck. The GRID is the brainchild of David Miles, the EMEA Director of FOSI,...

For a company that have a hold on the letter "i" - as in iMac, iPod and iPhone - I watched from the sidelines with amusement when Apple set a hare going on their new "tablet" a year ago. I gave up on the number of classy pundits who guessed wrong. I called it the iFad and in the end was only a letter out.  The iPad as it is better known has been another Apple phenomenon. It might have happened 20 years ago when Apple played with a hand held device called the Newton but then the...

MyMP relaunched today with three MPs from the three main parties (well 2.2) now added with a further 17 expected to be up and working on the site between now and Christmas. I went in search of a company that could do an App for me last June, 2009. I already knew Jo Shaw in another existence and when she said she thought her new company - PublicZone - might be interested we were on for it!! From June till December, we worked on the design and content model and eventually launched it in the

Cloud Computing has been with us for five or so years; its the computer's world equivalent of off-shoring. First we had the call centres (a lot of which have since returned to mainland Europe from India); then we had people off-shoring with companies relocating to where they could gain a competitive tax advantage like Dubai, Dublin or Delhi and now we have the whole infrastructure on the move with servers and their ilk physically moving "off-shore". This is happening without much public...

Steve Jobs meets Jonathan Ive, the main designer at Apple, at least twice a day. I wonder how many FTSE 500 company CEOs do the same. Though Steve Jobs is a stickler for design, he is so lucky that he has as his co-partner, the slightly shier Jonathan Ive. They couldn't be more difficult. In 2006, I asked the Cabinet Office to give Jonathan a knighthood. In the dying days of Brown's premiership, I tried to persuade No.10 to award an honorary one to Steve Jobs. I failed on both counts.

The Family Online Safety Institute (www.fosi.org) had a couple of previous incarnations before it moved from the UK to Washington, DC four years ago. Its current CEO is Stephen Balkam and he and his staff here in London and in DC have done a pretty fine job in raising the profile of matters to do with child safety on the internet. They've run three excellent conferences in DC, two in Madrid, two in Paris and one more recently in Bahrain. More are mooted with the next European conference...

Financial Times Global 30 Computing, Media & Technology Companies 2010                   1 Microsoft USA      2. Apple USA   3. China Mobile Hong Kong   4. IBM USA   5. Cisco USA   6. Google USA   7. Oracle USA   8. HP USA   9. Intel USA   10. Vodafone UK       11. Samsung South Korea   12....

It is a rare event for any UK newspaper, especially one as old as The Observer (www.observer.co.uk), to dedicate most of its Editorial to the subject of Privacy and for much of that to online privacy.   I wrote to The Editor on Monday asking if The Observer would begin a national campaign to change the law but as yet I have had no response.   My view is clear, it is wrong of Facebook and Google and all the other online companies - though these two seem to be in danger of becoming...

The BBC was founded as the British Broadcasting Company in 1922 and was renamed the British Broadcasting Corporation in 1926 once it had obtained its royal charter; it was delivered through the General Post Office both resident inside the Home Office. It was essentially a radio (wireless) service with naturally the Home Service (now Radio4), the quaintly named Light Programme (Radio2) and the Third Programme (Radio3). Today, the BBC receives over £3.5 billion a year for its increasingly...

I find it hard to reflect on copyright without also examining its brothers and sisters which include intellectual property, digital rights and patent law. I no longer think you can discuss copyright in isolation. I have been a huge fan of the work of Larry Lessig at Harvard University; he has successfully sought to add a very substantial formalisation of copyright under a creative commons licence. I hope he can hear my standing ovation for his magnificent efforts. I regret we have such...

The world needs a place to foster more informed debate on Internet policy and regulation.     1. Why is it needed?   A number of events have coalesced over the past year or so to make me think that the world – its politicians, its governments, its businesses, its charities, its academics and free thinkers, its people - needs a place to identify and discuss best practice:   Google in China Digital Economy Bill in UK France’s three strikes and out for illegal...

Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) and the Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) inaugural conference in Bahrain www.tra.org.bh/online-safety    This morning, the TRA-FOSI conference began its two day conference on child safety online, a first for the Arab world. The original conference had to be postponed in January and with the Icelandic volcano threatening air space last week it was touch and go whether the 20 or so speakers from the USA and UK would make it. Happily...

Given my interest in all things digital which stretches back to 1992, it would seem perverse of me not to do a weekly blog on the subject.   At the moment, I’m nearly no longer an MP (6th May 2010) and so I have a kind of luxury – some spare time to think, no salary and a diary which seems to fill up at an alarming rate……   Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to this past week or so:   1.    ...