End of June and Exciting Times ahead in July

Yet again, I realise that it has been way too long since my last post…

Our event with Firebird and the Moldovan Embassy went well (almost sounds like the name of a Harry Potter book), although to be honest, we had a few too many people there. It had been a slightly tough issue as we had initially planned for 50 maximum, but in the end we had over 150 at the event.

Here is a great picture of our team (or rather part of it) with David from HBJ Wines, our corporate wine partner, and Gheorghe, the First Consul of the Moldovan Embassy. I was really pleasantly surprised with the wine and actually used the Firebird Chardonnay and Pinot Noir at an army function on Friday night and it was very well received.

On Sunday, the team got together to start finalising our strategic plan for the next year and beyond, which should see EYP expand beyond the UK (and Thailand) into other countries. It is very much like a start up business (or perhaps a start up social enterprise), and what we are doing in London is the concept demonstration of what we want to roll out elsewhere. We have now finalised our venue for our July get together which should be lots of fun (it has a nautical element to it)…

On the evening of 18 June, I went along to the first birthday of Greenbang, which is a very cool news site focused on environmental business and technology. It was a fantastic evening and there were a lot of cool people there; the readership also has a great number of entrepreneurs in it so it is particularly encouraging to see the innovative approaches people are taking to solving some of the big environmental and sustainability issues that we face around the world. It is always interesting to consider the new business ‘environment’ that I am in which has a heavy environment focus (pardon the pun). As a military, conservative voting, capitalist type of person, there may be some sense that I am now doing something that is rather incongruous with my persona. Some of the military blogs I read are certainly dismissive of the environment – however I think that it is a dire error on behalf of military people to ignore the potential environmental issues that the world faces. Whether it is a humanitarian crisis due to starvation or flooding, or indeed a need to secure natural resources, there are a large number of scenarios where military force will be involved in environmental concerns in coming years. And I also sense that it is business that really is showing the way in terms of finding ways to become more sustainable (and I think this is borne out by evidence as well).

The Firebirds of June and other things

So, I have been a little slack in posting recently although there have been a range of rather interesting things I had hoped to post about.

European Young Professionals is moving into a really interesting phase of life at the moment. Next week we are holding our monthly event and I think it marks a transition into a bigger, bolder set of functions for our members. We are doing a wine tasting with our corporate wine partners, HBJ Wines of Firebird, the most successful Moldovan wine to enter the UK market. The Moldovan Embassy here in the UK is even taking part which is great news. And TM Lewin is also joining the fray as another corporate partner which is also nice. As an organisation that regularly gets 150 to an event, it is interesting to note that it is far better subscribed than most networking organisations I see around the traps. It is starting to take up quite a bit of time, so it is nice to see that we have a few more people joining our committee :p

On a more serious note, the Renewable Energy Foundation released a report last week that I had the privilege to read about a month ago before it was sent out. It discusses the UK electricity industry between now and 2020 and highlights some very concerning trends and potential scenarios. There are some clear problems existing in this industry in terms of supply. It can be downloaded here and is certainly worth a read, particularly in terms of putting the debate for renewable energy in a context of the UK’s electricity needs and the associated costs. I will be going to the Micropower Council dinner on Wednesday night which should be very interesting as well.