Don’t Settle ..

Don’t Settle ..

I am so lucky to live and work in Edinburgh. The amount of things going on in the city means there is little time to catch your breath. There is also so much activity in innovation and enterprise, and the city is brimming with smart people doing smart things — it’s an educated, enterprising and achingly beautiful place to be.

Over the past couple of weeks, we have made our first steps towards defining new areas of innovation, and it is a scary time, but it is all part of the learning process, and the first steps towards (hopefully) excellence. If not, and it all fails, we will have learnt from it.

And, so, Steve Jobs is well missed on this planet, and said …

And, so, if I have learnt one thing about doing research and teaching, is that doing a few things to your best ability and excelling in these is a whole lot better than doing many things in an average way. In research, we often see quotes that a person has published 50 papers — and I even do this in my bio. But what does that really mean?

These days, a person could publish 50 papers at the drop of a hat in paper mill journals, and which will be read by no one (and, possibly not even by the reviewers). And, even so someone publishes in a Top Tier conference or journal, that is not a guarantee that the paper is actually going to make any impact at all. It is a throwaway metric and is not a measure of quality and excellence. To me, one amazing, ground-breaking paper which has a great impact, or one fantastic spin-out company that is changing an industry, is a whole lot more worthy than a research career of publishing bland research papers. As Steve would say:

And, so, I see the world recovering fully from the pandemic, and where our lives get a whole lot busier — and where busy is good, as it means that we are making a dent in the universe. On Tuesday, we were off to the amazing Gogarburn conference hall to speak to NatWest/RBS employees:

The talk focused on two sides of a coin: the good side of quantum computers (in replacing existing Von Numman processing) and the bad side of them (in cracking public key encryption). It was such fun to have a closed audience and who were so interactive. We even gave away a few of our “Bob and Alice” mugs as prizes:

What was nice, is that it was a closed event, and where we focused on a topic that the bank is interested in. With this, we all learn together.

Then, on Wednesday, we were so lucky to have David Colombo along to speak to our students:

and had time to meet some of our forthcoming spin-outs:

And, to end the week, we had the privilege to present in the beating heart of Edinburgh … with Lloyds Bank on The Mound:

And, so, to present in my home city to two businesses that are the corner stone of our economy is a privilege I will never forget:

Along the way, I shared the stage with some great people, too:

So, ‘Don’t settle for anything less than excellence’ … we are all on a journey towards excellence, and sometimes we just throw ourselves into something, and it is not quite at a good standard. But we learn, and in time you can refine and improve, and listen to others .. and hopefully it will become excellent.

Next week, on Wednesday evening, we will be presenting at “Blockchain, Society and the Digital Pound”:

and then off (with our PhD student Sam) to Condatis to present a workshop on cryptography on Thursday. Finally, on Friday:

If you’re in Edinburgh, please consider coming along to the public events, and be part of the debate on building a more security, resilience and trusted world.

And, so, thank you to my home city of Edinburgh, you’re amazing!