No 142: My Night with Leona and Natasha

Las Vegas is a soulless city. No culture. No history. And not much water either. As you fly in you can look down on Lake Mead, the reservoir that serves the city, and see a clear white rim around the edge showing how the water level has dropped by a staggering 140 ft since 2000. The water level is now lower than it has ever been, and it continues to fall. It is surely only a matter of time before the city runs dry completely. But give the city credit, Las Vegas knows how to party.

I was in town for a special summit on Digital Water. Convened by the Canadian private equity firm XPV they had invited 30 senior executives from key organisations in both water and digital comms. It is still somewhat a mystery as to how I got on the guest list but there I was, ready to play my part. I knew I was out of my depth when one of the first people I met told me he had been ‘employee no 83 at Apple’ back in the late 1970s. He had even introduced Steve Jobs to his wife. At lunch I found myself sitting next to a delightful man who I subsequently learnt is a Senior Advisor to the Executive Office of the President. Fascinated I queried him on the Oval office and his dealings with his boss. Apparently the way to strike a chord with President Obama is to talk about your kids, or rather his kids. It is good to know that the most powerful man on the planet has a heart.

I learnt many things through the day. There are 25 billion ‘connected devices’ in the world today. That’s almost 4 per person. I only have 3, which makes me feel more inadequate than usual. When 5G is launched in 2019 it will be 4 orders of magnitude faster than the 2G connections we used in 2005. Thank heavens, films will download in just 3 seconds rather than 30. Every minute there are 700,000 internet searches undertaken, 320 new twitter accounts opened and (particularly relevant here) 1500 new blogs posted. About the only thing that isn’t growing in the digital world is email, which has stayed relatively static at a mere 168 million emails per minute. Apparently sending emails just isn’t de rigour for the new generation. Perhaps they have retrograded to writing letters.  

As a group we put our minds to the task of resolving what modern digital technology could do to improve the water sector. Our findings would be fed into a special White House summit next week so it was not a task to be taken lightly. If we can now put microchips in our bloodstream to tell us what to eat/when to exercise/how to sit properly (even just thinking of this makes me feel miserable) then, surely, we can also devise on-line, point-of-use, real-time water quality sensors?

Perhaps not surprisingly our big conclusion was that water quality data should be democratized and made available to all. When looking to name a single action that would propel forward the sector and enable a step change in digitization then this is undoubtedly it. Not very sexy. Not very radical. Nigh on impossible.

 After the debate we gathered for an evening of entertainment courtesy of Cirque du Soleil. Once a year Cirque holds a charity event dedicated to the water-charity One Drop. Before the show commenced there was a silent auction with prizes that included a walk-on part in the forthcoming movie ‘Fifty Shades of Grey 2’, and a McLaren 675LT Sports Car. $6.5million was raised without anyone breaking into a sweat. How very Vegas. Like all Cirque extravaganzas the show involved ridiculously beautiful people doing ridiculous things, usually on a trapezes 30m above the stage and while wearing ridiculously little.

It was at the after-show party that the real spirit of Las Vegas kicked in. Leona Lewis having performed in the show then spent the evening laughing and being beautiful in a smoky side room, while the ever-lovely Natasha Beddingfield belted out some terrific numbers on the stage (despite clearly mislaying her entire wardrobe bar her underwear, brave girl). Leonardo di Caprio and Mark Ruffalo (aka The Hulk) were apparently also present but I didn’t want them nagging me for an autograph so I slipped away shortly before 1am.

As I write this the lights from The Strip glow through my hotel window. It is just coming up to 1.30am locally. It is 830am in London. Another day dawns. Time for a long glorious soak in the shower perhaps?