Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-10-24 - 5:17 p.m.

Just about woke in time to drive to the NEC and arrive on time, thanks due that the roads are much less busy between 7.15 and 8.00am. My guests were an interesting bunch and I learned a lot. I saw Ashley from DTI and he gave me a copy of the brand new UK Automotive Technology National Routemap. This is a project into which I put a certain amount myself and I am really pleased to have this as an asset for the Automotive Academy. I am not sure that everyone appreciates its potential power which is fine by me.

One of the people on my table had been working on Into Automotive Volume Supply which is another of my projects which has been maturing nicely and I really want to get that into the Academy portfolio too. I picked up a couple of good research reports from EMTA � they produce some excellent stuff which would cost a fortune if you had to pay commercial rates for it.

Part of the day was devoted to saying goodbye to the Japanese Master Engineers � I mentioned to John Neil who is the CE of Unipart that I was surprised that the expertise had been transferred so effectively between these and the younger UK engineers. He said that right from the start he never had any doubts that this would work. I still think the balance of probability is on my side � that it is surprising that it did work as well as it did and that there will be lessons in how to make this kind of thing work better to be learned for more general application.

I also realised that the majority of the post start-up ascent to success had taken place under my regime of interested and benign neglect. Between running a business myself and being on the Board of and being the banker for this one, I had owned another training business and learned that the best way is to have a good person in charge and let them get on with it. My predecessor Roger was interviewed live from Glasgow and he said how much he had enjoyed getting the thing in place � I thought to myself that part of the tao of development is to do with protection from unnecessary uprooting.

I had a good discussion with Alan Glover who is now with the Learning and Skills Council. He had been involved with another training business which I funded as a startup � he had some really interesting stuff about apprenticeships with him. Also a good perspective on the national distribution of manufacturing expertise in the FE sector.

Adam Postgate is currently in a slightly different manifestation owing to the fact that I forgot to save often enough last night before the computer locked up. Maybe he is a bit nervier today � also just over four minutes.

I drove south west down Fosse Way to Stephen Bates house in a little village just to the south of the Roman Road. He had cooked a vegetarian mousaka and we quickly got onto the subject of 20C composers � especially John Adams. His wife had sung some of his stuff in the Birmingham Symphony Chorus � and then Varese � and the Part. They played the St John Passion which I hadn�t heard before and really liked. They also played their middle son�s band � based in Sheffield which I was really impressed with. Must remember my thank you letter. I tried the new arrangement of Dayindayout on their hifi � the speakers are quite bass heavy and suited the sound well � althought I think they found the content a bit hard to take. But I played Blossom first.

Later I had this idea that Adam Postgate could be an algorithmic piece.

Get hold of an imperfect photocopy of Phrygian Gates or China Gates and reconstruct part of it in a sequencer of your choice. Use the editor to mess it around and stretch it out . Try to make it sound less tonal but don�t use any specific method for this. If theirs is a covert method try to keep it as well hidden as possible.

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