Annual City Lecture

Last week we held our Annual City Lecture in the beautiful environment of Goldsmiths' Hall. Despite it being a Friday night it was a well attended event with the Masters of 26 other Livery Companies present as guests of the Company, with their Clerks.
Pre lecture drinks led on to a stunning presentation, using digital slides and video, from the guest speaker Jeannette Liendo. As Sir Paul Judge said in introducing her, she is Brazilian, was educated in Switzerland and lives in Paris. She is the Global Marketing Director, Corporate, for Microsoft. As I explained when I opened the evening it is impossible to have a year themed, as mine is, on the subject of Innovation without having a major speaker to talk on the subject which is the most innovative in our life time -the digital revolution. And who better than Jeannette.
An accomplishes presenter she explained how Microsoft approach innovation both in process and culturally. She then showed a video on the future of digital--the innovations that exist today but are not yet, as she put it, 'distributed' i.e in general circulation. What looked like science fiction actually now exists and will in time be rolled out for public consumption. Whether everyone in the audience fully grasped all that she said I don't know but it certainly left a terrific impression.
After a virtuoso performance we retired from the main hall to the outer rooms for a delightful supper.