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Day: 26 October 2015

Lemn Sissay installed as Chancellor

Written by Charlie Spargo on . Posted in News.

On Wednesday the 14th of October, local poet Lemn Sissay was inaugurated as Chancellor of the University of Manchester.

Sissay, who was elected by university alumni, staff, and members of the General Secretary in June, took over from property developer Tom Bloxham, founder of urban development company Urban Splash.

Sissay received 7,131 votes, beating the other candidates for the role—Labour politician Peter Mandelson, who gained 5,483, and Music Director at the Hallé Orchestra Sir Mark Elder.

He officially started as Chancellor on the 1st of August, but received formal inauguration at the Foundation Day celebrations last week, in which he also received an honorary doctorate, alongside journalist and presenter Baroness Joan Bakewell; physicist Professor Dame Athene Donald; theatre and film director Sir Nicholas Hytner; and judge Dame Janet Smith.

Sissay said: “My primary aim is to inspire and be inspired. Reach for the top of the tree and you may get to the first branch, but reach for the stars and you’ll get to the top of the tree.”

He starred in two university-produced promotional videos—one of which featured a poem, ‘Inspire and Be Inspired’, which he wrote especially for the inauguration. He also took a selfie with Vice-Chancellor Dame Nancy Rothwell during the proceedings.

“Foundation day is over but the journey has just begun” tweeted Sissay after the event.

For the next seven years, Sissay will act as a figurehead for the university, representing it to the world and promoting its work. He will also attend each graduation to shake the hand of every single graduate.

Photo: @lemnsissay @Flickr

“When you leave somewhere you take it with you,” he said. “I would not want everyone who has studied at this great institution to stay here. I want them to go out and experience the world and come back.

“We are a migratory species. We are, by nature, migrants.”

Get involved: Silicon Valley Comes to Manchester

Written by Gemma Sowerby on . Posted in Features.

Manchester might seem far away from the bright lights and palm trees of  Silicon Valley—the epicentre of Noughties-born, high-tech innovation and investment in the San Francisco Bay area—but on Wednesday the 4th of November, UK-based organisation Silicon Valley Comes to the UK are bringing the tech to us for a one-day summit: SVC2Manchester.

Featuring speakers varying from the top of the Silicon Valley food chain, to local and national start-ups from the North West and beyond, SVC2Manchester is an opportunity for business leaders, investors, and serial entrepeneurs, to provide networking and mentoring to students looking to get their foot in the door of the next big thing.

I sat down with Summit Lead and University of Manchester Ph.D. student Laura Jeffreys to find out everything about the upcoming event, the Manchester tech scene, and how students can get involved. One thing’s for certain—it’s not to be missed.

 

What is SVC2UK, and what were their goals for starting this not-for-profit organisation?

It was formed 9 years ago because the founders wanted to bring that Silicon Valley attitude to the UK; all the ideas were happening in the States, they could get funding pretty easily because they have all these routes to go down, whereas in the UK it was nothing like that. With the world as it is now, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have all this. So it was originally founded to network from America to England, and to build up these entrepreneurs. Now everyone is jumping on the bandwagon, there are loads of new apps and products. It’s just about networking—it’s that simple. One of the co-chairs is Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn, so he brings a lot to the table.

 

Why and how was SVC2Manchester born?

Last year they decided to bring some focus to the North, and especially Manchester as the start-up community is so good here. London has a reputation for breeding entrepreneurs, but the speakers are always really enthusiastic to come here, and Manchester has got a hell of a lot to offer. This is the second time that the event has come to the North, and both times PhD students have run it, so we’re really involved with the university.

 

How did you get involved in SVC2Manchester?

I started my Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Manchester last year, and heard about the event through a fellow postgraduate student who was running it. I asked to volunteer on the day, and at the event itself I got to sit in on all the talks and listen. I really enjoyed it—it was so inspiring. Then I got asked to run it this year, and of course I said yes, so that’s how I got here.

 

Why did you want to be involved again?

At the student event, the speakers begin from where they started, so you’re not just seeing them as they are now, as billionaires, but from “When I was a student…”. They too learnt from experts, had their ups and downs, got bigger and bigger, and worked hard; they’re not the type to say “Oh I inherited £20 million from my father and invested it everywhere…”. Before the event last year I always thought “Oh I’ll never be an entrepreneur, it’ll never happen, you’ve got to be in the right place at the right time and have a brilliant idea,” but they don’t make it about the idea; they got involved by knowing they were the right person for the job—someone else can have the idea. So you think, “How can I get there?”

 

So what is the set-up of the day—what can we expect to see and learn?

In the morning we have these TED-style talks from each of the five speakers, and then there are workshops, or master classes, which are really Q&As. People ask really in-depth questions that you wouldn’t have necessarily thought of, it’s really exciting.

 

The summit’s themes are ‘Scale-up’ and ‘Connected health’. Could you explain these for those who can’t speak Silicon Valley?

Yeah. ‘Scale-up’ is just a fancy way of saying their journey, the scale-up from start-up to serial entrepreneur; it’s Silicon Valley talk for that, they’ve got loads of words of their own. [Laughs] Connected health means health tech—last year we had a focus on health tech, but we had feedback from Manchester Business School (MBS) students that it was just about health tech. This year we only have two speakers talking about health tech and about the future of the industry, Andrew Thompson and Jack Kreindler.

Andrew’s product is really interesting, it’s a tablet you take but it’s an electrical device, and it tells you how fast your tablets have been absorbed, how active you are, and it sends all this data to your phone, your family’s phones, your doctor. So you can check up on a patient or an elderly relative throughout the day. This is about as in depth as the talks will get into the medicine—it’s more about the future of technology, like we’re getting closer to everything being on a wristband, it’s just so interesting, I think. Though I am a bit health techy being a Ph.D. Biochemistry student!

 

Andrew Thompson is one of the Silicon Valley serial entrepreneurs—how do you tempt these people to come to Manchester?!

Well, we contact them like a chain mail sort of thing; we know someone, they know someone, and so on. They’re really busy people and most of their business is in the States, so it’s hard. But if they can get to England then it works—they like spreading the word to new places; Andrew Thompson feels like he can make a difference at a new event to new people.

 

Tell me a bit about some of the other speakers and their careers.

Well, we have Charlie Songhurst, he started out by predicting that Google were going to be really big, and his company guessed and bought shares, and he made that company so much money. So he started small, and then got bigger and bigger. He worked for Microsoft and was behind their [$8.5 billion] acquisition of Skype. With Charlie, he’s so nice that you just talk to him, and you forget that he’s worth millions. Now he has his own company, Katana Capital, where he just goes round and gives money to people—that is his job. He has about 130 start-up businesses. He invests in people, he doesn’t invest in products. One reason he’s coming back to Manchester this year is because he thinks there could be another really good business here in Manchester, as he found one last year.

We also have Dr. Neil McArthur MBE, a British entrepreneur who founded TalkTalk and is a Governor at the University of Manchester. He just founded a new charity called Manchester Tech Trust, which is about networking really. A big problem when you start up is you’ve got a good idea, sometimes even the product too, but you get that far and then it’s like: “Whom do we sell to? Where are our contacts? How do we make ourselves bigger?” So Manchester Tech Trust is about making the connections that need to be made. So he loves this event, and it’s like a mini-launch for them.

 

So if you’re a student in Manchester and you think you want to get involved, how can coming to this event change your path, or inspire you? Could you network?

Oh yeah. It gives you an idea of what the journey will entail—it’s not the sort of thing you can learn in a lecture. You’ve got to see it being done. Last year, two students met and realised they had similar passions and they’ve since developed an app—I probably shouldn’t say what it is. As I mentioned before, Charlie Songhurst gave £100,000 to a business a student pitched him last year, and now he’s done a second round of investment totalling £300,000. For students this event is to meet like-minded people and learn from the best.

There will be time as well for students and start-ups to interact over lunch. Although there is a really good start-up community in Manchester, sometimes it doesn’t interact much with students. But start-ups are always looking for new employees; start-ups in incubators look for different students to do part-time jobs, as Communications Officers for example—someone with English skills to sit and write press releases, people like that.

 

So how easy is it for students to get involved with start-ups? What is the tech scene like in Manchester?

There’s an event every week called the Silicon Valley Drinkabout and it brings together entrepreneurs from around Manchester, mainly from start-ups. At these events people just come up to you and say, “Hi, I’m so and so, and I own this company, what do you do?’ Because I do a PhD, they find it the most interesting thing ever. They don’t really meet many students, and the more people they meet, the more they know about the world. I would completely suggest it to people who are interested in tech.

I’ve seen students there before but not many; students are usually way too busy just getting the degree to think about a start-up as well. However, the university is an amazing stepping stone for start-ups; we have a lot of competitions—like Venture Out, Venture Further, and OneStart—which give students injections of cash for their start-ups. It’s a big step in the right direction for students just getting into it. You also get a lot of good advice, from the Manchester Enterprise Centre for example; they’re so encouraging for businesses and for students to be entrepreneurial. I have a friend who came Second Place in last year’s Venture Further—with the simplest idea ever for an app for Ph.D. students—and now it’s taking off, he has investors.

In Manchester there are so many spaces for start-ups, like incubators and accelerators where you rent out a desk in buildings with lots of other start-ups; there’s a community feel, and people higher up can help and inspire you. They’re all over the city, in the Northern Quarter for example, and Barclays have one on Deansgate. They have internships too; the people who run them hire interns to do the day-to-day work, and help out with all the events in the evenings. Manchester students have done summer placements there and absolutely loved working alongside these people.

 

Finally, how do students sign up to attend the event, and why should they come?

So you sign up to the Eventbrite page, then they’ll get to decide which workshops they can go to. There are six workshops with all different people, you get to choose two to go to, but you’ll still hear talks from all five speakers. Each one is different; for example, Claire Mills has a start-up to do with allergen-free food, and she is running a workshop about women in business. It’s an issue that needs to be talked about; we still need more female programmers, we still need more women high up in tech, so I think it is something that needs to be encouraged. At events like these it’s just sort of time to tell everyone, girls, students: “Go on, now is the time to try it.” So I hope the students of Manchester will come along. We want it to be full of students. I want it to be standing room only, even if there’s a fire hazard. [Laughs]

 

http://bit.ly/1O2eKcJ

Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 – Preview

Written by Connor McBride on . Posted in Games.

Did you watch E3 this year? Do you remember during the EA conference the man in the oversized mascot costume and how absolutely no-one applauded? That pretty much sums up Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, a game that, like an ageing rock star or the Numa Numa guy, tries too hard to stay relevant and funny.

When PvZ:GW2 was on the EA stage, people quickly flocked to find something more interesting. Like Guitar Hero: Live. Or Farming Simulator 2016.

PvZ: GW2 is a third-person shooter where you can play as either Plants or Zombies in six fun (their word, not mine) online game modes against up to 24 other players. There is a huge selection of characters to choose from, divided into 14 classes. There is something for everyone! In theory, at least.

The main thing they were showing off at Gamescom, however, was the 4 player co-operative modes where you play as either Plants or Zombies defending objectives from the waves of Zombies or Plants. It sounds simple enough; you find three friends, fire up the Xbox One and spend a good evening playfully yelling banter at each other while playing as a bunch of fruits.

However for that to work the game has to be good. It committed the cardinal sin of being a bit boring and, well, lifeless. This sentiment was shared by all the other people I saw leave the stand early. The real challenge was not surviving the waves of enemies, it was seeing how long you could play for before someone suggested something more interesting.

It seems to me that EA want to reinvent a franchise that really did not need reinventing. At release I’m really not expecting much from this title. I am envisioning long queue times because you have to wait for 24 other players and a co-op mode you only play when you need something to base a drinking game off. But please, EA, prove me wrong.

Mental Health in the Music Industry: A Matter of Life and Death?

Written by Alex Daniel on . Posted in Music.

Recently, Benga announced on Twitter that there was more to his 2014 exit from the music industry than had initially met the eye. He’s cited drugs and excessive touring as the respective reasons for worsening cases of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. In doing so, he has sowed the seeds of a more general debate surrounding links between deteriorating mental health and professional overwork in the previously unresponsive soils of the music industry. Exhibit A—Yannis Philippakis of Foals: “If you can’t hack it, don’t do it.”

The issue at question here is, does Yannis have a point? One might argue that artists are artists. It is their job, their livelihood. Like it or not an artist, by definition, lives and dies for their art. The ever-glamorised ’27 Club’ stands as a figurative monument to this within popular culture, making a modern-day mythic cycle of those whose lives were cut short in the public eye.

Indeed, deifying the likes of Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix et al for their musical martyrdom gives these figures a sense of true immortality and there is something immediately appealing about that. Their art lives on, unblemished. Yet, the sick fact of the matter is that whilst those whose profession has caused depression and addiction are marginalised during life, their troubles become normalised in death. Yannis’s hard-nosed attitude is romantic, but would he say the same about Ian Curtis? Even geniuses need help.

Benga’s case brings this issue in the spotlight again. One of his tweets read: “The stigma around [mental health issues] is what makes you feel so alone… Nobody recognises it.” His reluctance to admit his troubles publicly for over a year after his 2014 ‘retirement’ from music is testament to this and is indicative of the ignorance that the industry commonly exhibits towards these matters.

Benga isn’t the only one experiencing problems of this sort either; Zayn Malik, previously of One Direction, copped plenty of abuse and ill feeling from 1D diehards when he announced his departure from the boy band. Was this fair? A source close to the band told the tabloid press: “Zayn went because he’d had enough. Have you ever been on the road for four years?”

Admittedly, neither of these cases are in the same horrific ballpark as the ’27 Club’ deaths, nor did either of them (it seems) have to endure the same long-term tortuous experience that led to Ian Curtis’ suicide. However, the Joy Division frontman’s difficulty in balancing his musical career with a difficult personal life, compounded by ill-health brought on by his famous epilepsy, is presumed to be the cause of his death. It may seem a long way from Benga and Zayn Malik, but the formula is roughly the same in each case. It must be taken seriously.

One possible source from which those subjected to such problems might draw hope, however, is the charity Help Musicians UK. Though it tends to work on a smaller scale, their mission is essentially to provide support for musicians who find themselves in dire straits, helping them through to continue on the road to success.

Perhaps it isn’t on the same level, but the existence of organisations such as this will only help to provide exposure for those who are suffering in the industry. If there had been a more visible movement or school of thought that addressed the mental health issues brought on by the inconstancy and insecurity of a musician’s life on the road throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, perhaps there wouldn’t be a ’27 Club’.

With all this in mind, is Benga just garnering unnecessary sympathy when he actually squandered a charmed existence? He made it; he got to do what he loved for a living; was able to express himself and travelled the world for several years in a highly successful career as a relative dubstep-pioneer. I’m sure there are many who would happily swap lives with him, and even more who would happily show him the true meaning of being mentally ground down by an arduous professional life.

Perhaps Yannis is right: “People destroy themselves for their art, for their calling.” The trouble with this sentiment is just how true it can be.