Maggie Philbin

I asked Twitter for help with a brief talk I gave at Birmingham Art Gallery on Thursday night to spark and inform a discussion about ways technology could make a real difference to the city.

Chatting to people upfront of the day , I was struck by the number of times I heard people say “Actually, I was quite surprised by Birmingham” . Not scientific I know, but I googled “Birmingham” and “quite surprised by” and it seems they are not alone. 10,600,000 others have made that comment.   Outsiders may have a very outdated view of the physical city  and some also have an outdated understanding of  how people want and need to live and work there. So my question to Twitter was how could technology improve the experience of living ,working and visiting Birmingham?

Many, many thanks for your  ideas. It makes such a difference to be able to confront people who may be making decisions which will affect the city with the thoughts and concerns  of people who are living and working there. It’s so powerful.

The first thing you did was to convince a number of  social media refuseniks who finally grasped the value of the conversations you take for granted. Birmingham has a Living Lab project running to engage local communities in finding innovative, technology driven solutions . And as @podnosh points out  Social Media Surgeries started in Birmingham. I flagged up sites elsewhere like Change By Us in New York,  Dear London and the Amsterdam Opent open innovation project which invited suggestions from citizens to help deal with three issues the city was struggling to solve :parking bicycles. restructuring the red light district and encouraging people to generate as well as consume energy. These initiatives only work if it’s clear who’s listening and change happens.

As you can see you brought a range of ideas from very different perspectives

Free wifi across the city? Well sited and equipped co-working spaces? No mistaking what a difference this would make. Not only for people fed up with searching for coffee shops with decent speeds but for the 40% of people in Birmingham who are still not online. And is enough being done to support people who aren’t online or who are struggling with literacy? Birmingham is a young city – 37% of the population is under 24 – the youngest profile in Europe – but how aware are they of the opportunities offered by what is officially a Science  and Digital City. There have been some good initiatives from Birmingham Science City , Aston Pride’s Computers in the Home , Student Access at Home and  Young Disciples Please add any others.

There  were a number of people at the event from the transport industry, so the desire for reliable real time information across the city was understood. They took on board the need to make bus and train information accurate, especially when snow or traffic issues meant erractic timetables. There was a also lot of discussion about how to make wayfinding much simpler, so it was easy for visitors to see that they were only a 3 minute walk from where they wanted to go.

@ccrpinkie’s comment about the need for an Oyster type travel card sparked a heated discussion. There was a feeling that rather than Birmingham devising yet another system, surely it was time to go beyond this and take the lead in insisting on a payment system which could be used in any city. A sense that you should just be able to swipe your card anywhere and get on to any train or any bus. Time to stop a myriad of incompatible systems sprouting up across the UK.

Making data available and crowdsourcing data to improve the quality of  information should be a no-brainer. Access to data means people can transform that raw data into useful apps or devise innovative solutions that the community needs. The London Datastore shows the potential this has for allowing the digital community to improve life for everyone.

World Skills is an extraordinary event.  From plumbers to garden designers, pastry chefs to car mechanics, cabinet makers to welders, hundreds of young people come from all over the world to compete for coveted gold medals.

The scale of the show is colossal – halls full of cars, robots, landscaped gardens. There are jewellers, aircraft repairers, graphic designers, pastry chefs, florists, beauty therapists. Watching the competitions and taking part in numerous “Have A Go” activities are thousands of young teenagers and their parents, many hoping to find an answer to the big question of what to do next.

The enthusiasm of the visitors moved one employer to tears. He simply couldn’t believe the level of interest in his business.

If the Korean team return home with a medal for this work of art in sugar, they’ll be treated like national heroes. As will their welders, engineers, web designers and plumbers.Here in the UK we need to do more to celebrate the achievements of our own competitors because they are superb role models. These focussed, talented young people demonstrate the value of contemporary vocational careers. I watched cabinet makers, web designers and plumbers complete demanding set pieces for the judges. But it was our young UK tiler who won my utmost admiration. He’d made an error on his design but the rules didn’t  allow him to go back and correct it. He accepted the mistake, professionally carrying on for hours with the complicated design, determined to finish the rest to perfection.

Life is sometimes very surreal.

Aung-San-Suu-Kyi

If you were listening to R4’s Broadcasting House, you’ll know that my name was used as code to protect the identity of pro-democracy leader  Aung San Suu Kyi who is delivering this year’s Reith Lectures. The lectures have run since 1948 and the BBC have recently made the archive of all 240 recordings available. They make for stimulating listening.

Broadcasting House invited me to give my own mini Reith lecture on Sunday morning.You can listen to it here.

If you want to find out more about the events I’ve set up to help young people understand more about the real opportunities available in science and engineering have a look at the TeenTech website. And if you’d prefer to read the lecture, here it is :

Who wants to be an Engineer?

Four years ago I asked a class of thirteen year olds if they could name a contemporary scientist, engineer or technologist. The only name they came up with was Einstein. Except for one young boy who suggested  “Charles Cabbage?”

They weren’t proud of that ignorance. They went on to explain that though they enjoyed going to the Science Museum, the visits left them none the wiser about what modern scientists and in particular modern engineers actually did.

They don’t know, their parents don’t know and nor do their teachers.

It’s not surprising because I’m willing to bet that even if you’re a high flying engineer at Google you have only a hazy idea about what’s going on at BMW or Virgin trains.

When I was 13, I wanted to be a vet or a doctor because they were the only options visible to me. It’s been my years as a technology reporter, barrel rolling across the sky in a Hawker Hunker trying out the latest anti-G suit, watching the delicate mesh of a stent expand to clear a blocked artery or demonstrating an electric blanket that knew where your hot bits were  – it’s this which has helped me appreciate the kaleidoscopic technology landscape and the myriad career opportunities available at every level

Like most teenagers,  the ones I interviewed were fascinated by gadgets and one boy suggested it would be helpful to have information on the packaging to tell them more about the inventors and the challenges they’d overcome. After all, as he said, “ Even on adverts, we see footballers but we never see scientists”

This was the reason I’ve set up events where young people get to handle not only the world’s shiniest technology but most importantly meet the engineers who created it.

We cut through the clichés., teenagers can see for themselves that it’s possible to be an engineer and a woman or a scientist and have a decent haircut. As they work on their own designs for the ultimate snowboard or a mobile phone app they see why maths and physics are a passport to creativity and can help you develop very cool ideas.

An ideas wall gives them the freedom to show off thoughts for the technology they’d like to see at the Olympic Games in 2050

“A drug that takes away all steroids and other drugs so no-one can cheat” suggested Samantha and Fraser,

Ben thought that the events could be made litter free if  “when packaging on food is removed, it’s drawn towards a bin using magnetic particles.

And Adam had a challenging thought “All ball events will be competed with an invisible ball, to make it harder”

The most valuable prizes are experiences. Last week 15 winners spent a day learning about the technology behind 3D cameras and cinemas. They then watched a 3D film. Whenever they watch films in the future it will be with completely different eyes

We talk endlessly about innovation but we have to do more to inspire teenagers with fresh accurate images of the contemporary workplace. The vast majority of jobs, even in the near future will be applications of science, technology, engineering and maths .

But at the moment a generation sit in chains, shackled to the false hope of instant success, and a magical belief that X factor, the lottery or marrying a footballer will transform their lives.

Steve Jobs says that innovation is just about joining the dots. It’s down to all of us to help young people understand how the right knowledge and the right skills will help them recognise those dots . And will give them the power to transform all our lives, not just their own.

In 1986 I demonstrated an ambitious project on Tomorrow’s World. Over a  million people (mainly schoolchildren) took part and contributed over 147,819 pages of text and pictures about their local area to create the BBC Domesday Project – a pair of interactive videodiscs to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book. If you brace yourself for 80s hair and shoulder pads, you can watch the original piece here

The equipment needed to play the discs cost over £4000, so it’s not surprising that only a few schools and libraries made the investment. This thorough, yet  idiosyncratic record of life in 1986 is now available to explore and update on the BBC Domesday Reloaded site.

Back in the 80’s we showed how it was possible to “search” and find the information and invited viewers to tell us where they lived so we could track down pictures of their local area. In today’s internet world, it may seem extraordinary but people were delighted to see their village shop come up on the screen.

A Domesday system at the Vintage Computer Festival 2010, Bletchley, UK

There were two discs in the Domesday Project package: the Community Disc and the National Disc. The Community disc is map-based and shows Britain as seen by the people who live there while the National disc is topic based and provides an overview of Britain. The country was divided  4 km wide by 3 km blocks, based on Ordnance Survey grid references. Each block could contain up to 3 photographs and a number of short reflections on life in that area. More detailed maps of key urban areas and blocks of 40×30 km and regional views were captured, allowing “zoom-out” and “zoom-in” functions.

If you check out the block containing York Minster, you won’t find a picture of  the cathedral , the three photographs show a lady ironing clothes, a row of terraced houses and a street scene.

Andy Finney ,who worked on the original project once wrote, “If I personally have  one regret about Domesday, it is that many of the people who contributed to it never got to see the results of their efforts”

He wasn’t alone in thinking this. A 2002 piece in The Observer reflected on the irony of how the original Domesday Book could still be read after 925 years, whilst the then 15 yr old one could not.

He and the team must be thrilled to see their project breathe again, as we all have the chance not only to look back to 1986 but to update all those pictures. And who knows, maybe York Minster will get a look in.