No 133: I love Professor John Bridgeman (and by the end of this Note, you will too)

Like all mid-life crisis infatuations my love for John Bridgeman crept up on me almost unnoticed.

I have known him for many years, we used to be work colleagues. He is now Professor for Environmental Engineering at the University of Birmingham, one of the more distinguished UK universities. John has somewhat quirky sense of humour (I think it is caused by his constant close proximity to sewage). Earlier this summer I emailed John and received his out-of-office message. Unlike most such messages, John’s was a glorious blend of wit and humour.

Below is his Christmas out-of-office message. Read and enjoy (and then, just to fill his inbox, send him an email expressing your appreciation to j.bridgeman@bham.ac.uk)  

OUT OF OFFICE MESSAGE FOR JOHN BRIDGEMAN

Thank you for your email, the contents of which I am sure are informative, instructive and interesting in equal measure.  Sadly, I am unable to engage with you and your missive directly at this time as, in the words of the world’s most famous septuagenarian amateur tennis player and chanteur it is “Christmas time, mistletoe and wine, children singing Christian rhyme, etc. etc.” and consequently I find myself in the bosom of my family wearing a jauntily misplaced paper hat and smelling faintly of festive sherry and sprouts.

However, even though it is Christmas, I feel it my duty to provide an appropriate response to your email.  Thus, please indulge me for a few moments.  I would be grateful if you would imagine that you have called one of those infamous telephone help lines (choose a poorly performing utility of your choice) and that you have been on hold for the last 45 minutes with only a muzak-mangled version of Greg Lake’s ‘I believe in Father Christmas’ for company.  Suddenly you find you are greeted by an electronic voice asking you to select the most appropriate option.  With that in mind, here we go:

1.    If you are a journal editor:
Thank you for your rejection of my latest manuscript.  I shall, of course take note of the reviewers’ insightful comments and, in particular, take particular care and attention to cite the entire canon of Reviewer 3’s work in all my future contributions, despite the fact it has nothing to do with the subject matter of my manuscript.  All power to his h-index I say.

2.    If you are a Research Council employee:
Thank you for your rejection of my latest grant application.  I agree that it is entirely appropriate for you to take four months to reject a proposal that has been lovingly crafted over the previous six months on the basis of some particularly vitriolic comments from Reviewer F76RSD.  A cynic might think that these comments were borne more from a desire to ensure that a competitor from an equally mid-ranking Russell Group university does not steal a march on one’s own research portfolio rather than a detailed analysis of the proposal’s scientific merits.  Fortunately, I am free of such cynicism and am overjoyed that an esteemed anonymous colleague has taken the time to describe my ideas as “naïve”, “intuitively obvious” and (my personal favourite) the description of me as “academically lacking and intellectually weak”.

3.    If you are a conference organizer:
Thank you for your email inviting me to chair a session at your forthcoming conference on macramé and wig manufacture in 17^th century Prussia.  Whilst not an ideal alignment with my own research interests, I would of course be only too pleased to make my own flight and accommodation arrangements to join you in China / Malaysia / Uzbekistan (delete as appropriate) at my own expense in July 2016.  I look forward to hearing a succession of dull and ill-founded presentations after which I will attempt to encourage the audience of bored PhD students to generate some form of contribution which will no doubt  result in at least one particularly arrogant yet bizarrely esteemed Professor to make a monologue on how useful his own research is and how it is significantly more important than anything else spoken in the previous 90 minutes.

4.    If you are a prospective overseas PhD student seeking to read for a PhD in my research group:
Thank you for your email; we are always keen to hear from high quality students looking for work that aligns with our research interests.  However, we do operate particularly stringent entry requirements and to be considered you must reach the following standards: (1)  Can you write your own name?  (2)  Do you have cash?  If the answer to both questions is ‘yes’, please pack your bags and I will be delighted to welcome you to the Department in the New Year.  (Incidentally, if you can only answer ‘yes’ to Q2, we’ll take you anyway).

5.    If you are a recruitment consultant:
Thank you for your email.  It is a pleasure to hear the sound of a barrel being scraped once more.  I would be only too pleased to make my way to London at your convenience to be subjected to a critical analysis of my failings as an academic after which you can inform me that your ‘client’ does not feel that, on this occasion, my skillset is appropriately aligned to the needs of this most demanding of roles.

6.    If you are a Pro Vice Chancellor:
Thank you for your email.  It would be my pleasure to jump.  Exactly how high would that be sir / ma’am?

7.    If you are an Undergraduate student who wants to complain about your coursework or exam mark:
Look, just fxxk off will you.

No 132: A Damn Fine Investment

Last Christmas I wrote a Note (no 66) entitled ‘And you thought your day sucked…’. It told the story of Drinkwell International, a Malawi-based business that drills and maintains water boreholes. They provide water to some of the poorest communities in the world. I shared some of the challenges they had experienced, in particular with corruption and bribery and how the owners, Jonathan and Jennifer Hunter, were facing the difficult but understandable decision to fold the business. My Note struck a chord, and many of you reached out directly to Jonathan and Jennifer to wish them well. A year on I thought it would be good to give an update.

Drinkwell was established in 2013 and it has continued to operate all through 2015. It will finally cease trading in early 2016 once it completes its outstanding commitments. From the very start the aim was to build a business that was both financially viable (ie charged a fair price for its services) and socially sustainable (ie employed and trained local people). This was a bold goal that would require tenacity, courage and significant start-up cash.

Isle has provided financial support to Drinkwell through our foundation, REEF (the Revolving Economic Empowerment Fund), which provides soft loans to water-entrepreneurs in developing countries. It is called a ‘revolving’ fund because every penny that gets repaid is re-invested in the next (wild, hair-brained) scheme that takes our fancy.

Somewhat surprisingly, Drinkwell is not folding for any of the reasons we anticipated. It isn’t because the financial model was flawed (Malawians are prepared to pay a fair price for a good service). It isn’t because the local population don’t have the skills. There is a willing local workforce, hungry to get involved. Drinkwell is closing because to survive the company would need to adopt the corrupt practices that others in the supply chain embrace. This approach is, quite simply, not in Jonathan or Jennifer’s DNA. Principals can be expensive but they are always worth every penny. Despite these challenges the Drinkwell record is impressive. After 2.5 years of operation, they have drilled and rehabilitated 84 boreholes.  

The high-risk nature of REEFs investment portfolio is such that delivering a pure financial return was always going to be a challenge, but our measure of success is not purely financial. We are not walking away empty handed. We have learnt valuable lessons which we take into our next deal. We have proven that at a base level (ie drill borehole, charge client) the economic model can work, even in very poor communities. Best of all, Drinkwell has provided water to 25, 000 people.

The financial support that REEF provided to Drinkwell was around £60k. Most of this has been repaid but we will unfortunately not recoup our full investment. Our losses once the company is finally closed will be about £15k. That is £15k to provide safe, reliable water to 25,000 people who didn’t previously have access. Even if you assume boreholes only last 10 years (20+ is more typical) that is 6p per head per year.

That feels like a bloody fine investment to me.  We would do it again in a heartbeat.

No 131:A Christmas Fairy-tale: The Gingerbread Café and the Magic Toilet

                                                                                      

Deep in the heart of London is Europe’s tallest building, The Shard. At the base of The Shard is the Shangri La hotel. Hidden inside the hotel is Lang’s Café. So far, there is nothing remarkable to this story. But this café is magical. Like a Lewis Carol portal at the back of a cupboard, this café has the ability to enhance the lives of those patrons who, through accident or good fortune, notice its hidden mystery. For hard though it is to believe, the serving desk in the Lang’s café is made of gingerbread.

Don’t believe me? See the attached photos. That 12 foot high brickwork is all pure, edible, fresh gingerbread. Most patrons fail to notice, but to those that do, great things happen. Take my story as an example and then, I dare you, try it for yourself.

Mere minutes after I had noticed the gingerbread (and had an enlightening exchange with my server about the various merits of such a workspace) I found myself facing a call of nature. I visited the café toilet and experienced the unexpected but surprisingly wondrous pleasure of a heated toilet seat. As I placed my delicate white buttocks on the pre-warmed ceramic I knew my life was about to change. I could feel an enchanted tingle creeping up my body. Something good was about to happen, I just knew it.

Seconds later my phone buzzed, announcing the arrival of a new email. It was from Frank Rogalla at Aqualia. It was in Spanish but  I could tell it was good news. A quick translation later and I learnt that after almost 2 years in the evaluation process our Horizon 2020 consortium (comprising 18 different organisations from across the EU, with Isle as the only UK partner) had been successful. We had secured a Euro7m grant, spread over the 3 years, to investigate ‘Nanomaterials – Low Energy Desalination’. This is a great project, working as part of a great team.

It is an early Christmas gift, coupled with a little bit of fairy-tale luck perhaps. Some might call it chance. Some might call it coincidence. I believe in the magic toilet.

As my day progressed it so did my feelings of good fortune. As chance would have it, this evening was the Isle UK Christmas Party. Admittedly an evening of virtual reality golf, speedway racing and unbridled drunken karaoke with complete strangers is not the traditional way to celebrate the birth of Christ, but it seemed strangely fitting. We bonded and celebrated. I didn’t share my magic toilet seat story, no one would have believed me. No one in Isle reads these Notes, they get enough drivel from me as part of their day job that I suspect they all press delete as soon as these emails arrive. My secret is safe.

So here I am, sitting on my train home as it limps slowly across the Surrey countryside. A little bit drunk and horse from singing, yet unbelievably happy. It is a Christmas Fairy-tale! And there is still 10 days to go….

No 130: ‘Twas the month before Christmas….

The water sector is not known for clever word play but Bactest, the Cambridge-based technology company, is pioneering the way forward. The CEO Annie Brooking, has a reputation for creating innovative and inspiring marketing campaigns. Aside from being the BFF for Myleene Klass (see Note No 60), she has even been known to burst into song whilst on the podium at conferences. She now has a new song, one specially designed for this festive season…

Bactest have developed a clever technology, called Shepherd, that measures and controls aeration in Activated Sludge lanes, saving copious amounts of energy in the process. So good is Shepherd that the Telegraph recently made a video highlighting its installation at Anglian Water. To see the video go to www.shepherdmanagingthefloc.com and scroll down.

What better way to celebrate this exciting technology than to create it’s very own Christmas Carol:  

Let Shepherd Watch Your floc by night

When you are not around

With Shepherd on your plant each day

Great savings can be found

Fear not, Shepherd said, for mighty dread

Whilst you are saving pounds

Your lovely bugs are nicely fed

Your plant is safe and sound

Not since the Thames Executive team sang ‘Merry Phosphorus’ at an impromptu pantomime back in 2013 has such a musical feat been achieved. ‘Merry Phosphorus’ was created to celebrate the recent installation of the Ostara P-recovery facility at Slough (the video is here: http://sdrv.ms/1cxwBQI, jump to 18 minutes in for the big finale).

Brilliant though Shephard and Bactest are, I should point out that my infatuation with it is not completely independent. I am about to step into the role of Chairman for Bactest. However I encourage you to turn my lack of independence into a positive. For those readers who have aeration floccs which need managing let me be your route to owning your very own Shepherd. I can connect you to the very people you need to speak with.

I will even make sure you get a special ‘Chairman’s discount’. It is, after all,  time to spread some early Christmas cheer.