Cntrl-C, #Interrupt and Cntl-Alt-Del
Cntrl-C, #Interrupt and Cntl-Alt-Del
A few weeks back I was invited by the Principal at West Lothian College — in Livingston — to present at their #Interupt19 event, and, of course, I jumped at the opportunity to pass on some advice, and hopefully say hello to some of our future students:
As a Crypto Punk, the whole concept of “Interrupt” appeals to me, and where we need to disrupt our conventional thinking, and restart/reboot.
And so it’s not often I get a chance to appear in a presentation with the mighty Eamonn Keane:
Eamonn is someone who has helped us at every single step of our development. He was there for the starting phases of our amazing 3rd spin-out: Cyan Forensics, and for our EU grant that led to the building of our virualised security environment (vSoC). So, I can’t really thank him enough, and it was a great priviledge to invite him up on the stage to do a bit of face recognition.
And the great honour is to speak on the same platform as the inspirational people — honestly, truely inspiration — of Toni Scullon and Gillian Docherty:
If you don’t know it, Scotland has an amazingly integrated business infrastructure, and where innovation cuts through many of the things we do. Generally, if you are into innovation, there’s always someone there ready to help support you.
Gillian started with such a fantastic vision of the future, Eamonn was all about the opportunities now, and Toni showed how everyone can achieve their dreams, no matter what there route is. And me? Well I was a nice end-stop to Gillian’s talk, and painting a less rosy view, but one which outlines the challenges that our next generation face.
In the event, our message was pretty consistent … it’s an amazing world that we are building, and our next generations are the ones who will benefit most from it. But there are risks, and they must fix the problems that we have caused. For me, education is the best investment that any country can make, and we must provide every single route for every single person to achieve their full potential.
The true health of a nation is often directly tied to its educational health. I thus leave it to my greatest hero to say it better than I can:
And some pics:
