The Business Olympics

While the world and his dog are either in Britain or watching us on TV at the moment, the government has been throwing a series of business events at the British Business Embassy at Lancaster House, next door to Buckingham Palace, under the umbrella of the Global Business Summit.

I’m not sure how I got an invitation – it just arrived in my inbox and was more of a summons than an invite – but it’s very pleasing to be included amongst the top 400 UK tech companies.

Lots of big wigs were in attendance and there was much (British) wine and (British) food available – all provided gratis by the (British) caterers.

There where many speeches, presentations and seminars but two things stuck in my mind from the day:

This graph, taken from my notes of a presentation from Derek McManus of Vodafone:

It’s rather terrifying; it means that while mobile phone data is growing in a straight line at a steep angle, mobile revenues are flat. Quite how the mobile companies solve the problem of sharply rising costs with no revenue growth isn’t immediately obvious – price rises anyone?

The second was my discovery that Vince Cable is, indeed, a jolly nice feller……