Attended a meeting this evening of the mentors' council of the Ideas Foundation. This is an educational charity founded by Robin Wight of WCRS. The Ideas Foundation ams to help creative young people connect with the creative industries and to broker partnerships and projects between industry and education.

Here's how they describe what they do:

We spot & develop young people’s creativity.

We pilot creative education projects and champion transferable skills within the creative industries and beyond.

We
provide effective work experience, internship and apprenticeship
opportunities. We signpost further & higher education routes to
creative employment and enterprise.

Seems to be a very worthy cause so, having had my arm twisted a little by Robin, we have signed up to the Mentors' Council, along with many of the UK's larger agencies.

It was an interesting evening and the representatives from the students presented very persuasively in front of a tough crowd of agency top bananas. And me.

BBH kindly hosted the evening and laid on the refreshments. There was no wine from Sir John's vineyard but I was intrigued to see that own-brand BBH water was provided. Blimey. It's hard enough for us at W+K to organise beverages for meetings in pots that will pour without spilling. If we need to have our own brand of tea to compete we're going to have to raise our game to the next level.
Mind you, the only flavour of crisps provided by BBH was ready salted. And at W+K you may well be offered smoky bacon. Or even prawn cocktail.

But now that the gauntlet has been thrown down I'm resolved to make plans for our own brand of beverages and snacks.

Michael Sinclair
started today, and is another person who should really help us push our interactive work.  I think
we're officially calling him a 'content guru', or something like that.
 
Above is a picture that Michael has approved as “good”.  As
you can see, he’s also making an attempt to wrestle the “Best Specs in
The Agency” crown from Noe. (See below.)