Digital Alcohol

I am just back from an entertaining and informative session at SunLive07, with particular items of note including two MiFID experts (Bob Fuller of Equiduct and Nick Gibson of ABN) actually agreeing on most things, not least and not surprisingly that rapid decisions by CESR are required on Best Execution and Transaction Reporting to aid implementation. There was also an insight from Reuters into the myriad features that make up “latency” - the increasingly important attribute of algorithmic trading. Versions of the presentations should be on the Sun web site shortly. With strong themes of “green” computing (IT contributes more to carbon emissions than airlines we were told) and Web 2.0 (even if there is no exact definition of what this is) the highlight of the plenary sessions was a counterpoint between Andrew Marr, BBC political editor, and James Gosling, “Father of Java” and VP Sun. During this session the journalist and the Java guru covered topics as diverse as trust and privacy on the web, Britain as a surveillance society, and why governments need to apply common sense to using eGovernment data. It was not all serious stuff though, as Marr likened blogging to "digital alcohol" – with its usage leading to the "loosing of inhibitions", and if over-indulged offering the possibility of the blog becoming "like a late night pub conversation".

So on that note, l must sign off before I get too carried away. I will leave you with just one final observation from the Marr – Gosling double act. Both agreed that despite advances in television and web technology, there was still no substitute for experiencing the real thing – key real life experiences for our duo were wildlife in the Galapagos for Marr, and Stonehenge for Canadian Gosling. So strong evidence that despite our growing carbon consciences, foreign travel can still be as intoxicating as ever.