Vehicles of Value
and Truckloads of Tinsel

A few thousand of Yorkshire's straight talking corporate heads spent a day at Harewood House learning how to talk in tongues. Ayup tries to get a clear signal.
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I guess the real way to arrive at a jamboree like this is to land on the lawns in your private chopper.
But that's not the Yorkshire way of doing business. The traditional image of the taciturn tyke-made-good with his Rolls Royce Silver Ghost seems to have retired to the back of beyond too. Nowadays it's all about cell phone signals and mission statements. Lots of mission statements.

This is the 5th Convention of it's kind. Mike Firth, chair of the Yorkshire Food Group set the ball rolling in 1996. The idea was to get the city stockbrokers and investors to come up north for a change. The focus right from the off was International. Since Yorkshire is comparable in size, output and population to many European countries (Scotland, Ireland, Denmark) it made sense to take an independent business stance. And it seemed to work. Deals were done. Friends were made.

Now it's become an annual thing we thought that Ayup should see what the average international wheeler-dealers get up to when they leave the office and try to switch the cellphones off. And we have to admit they throw a pretty good show for a bunch of Northern provincials. Outside in the sun there were gleaming Jags, Mercs and Beemers. a permanent parade of silly walks as folk tried to get a phone signal, and a ring of commercial confidence clamouring for our attention. All the big Yorkshire movers and shakers were moving it and shaking it.

In the big tent Richard Gregory, Yorkshire Television Chairman, was laying it on thick with a hearty Yorkshire welcome. The list of guest speakers was indeed impressive and made for a fascinating range of speaking styles. The day would see the likes of Senator George Mitchell, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Stephen Byers MP, David Puttnam, NASDAQ President John T Wall, and veteran actor Sir John Mills all take the stage to strut their funky stuff. All part of the drive to raise the county profile internationally. Even if it was overwhelmingly white, old, male and boring.

Clearly we need this wider profile, no matter how it is wrapped in PR blather. One of the more illuminating things to come out of Yorkshire Forward's new branding exercise (more of which here) is the finding that there is little or no awareness of 'Yorkshire and Humber' outside the UK. People within the county feel that the area is"dynamic" and "full of opportunity" but those outside of the region have other ideas. The feeling that Yorkshire is one of the United Kingdom's best kept secrets lingers on regardless.

Of course Yorkshire folk know full well how wonderful the place is. We have been known to bore for England about our rugged moors, our charming Dales, our historic cities. It's not a subject that we tend to get humble and modest about. So what if it gets people's backs up. We've always enjoyed winding up the rest of the country about the merits of being Yorkshire anyway. To southern eyes we've become the epitome of primitive northern stubbornness. And what's wrong with that.

But for every gleaming example of switched-on Yorkshire Enterprise there's a clapped out old mining town. For every Dean Clough and Saltaire there's a Chapeltown and a Grimethorpe. High Unemployment. Higher Heart Disease. The unsafe sex capital of Britain. There IS work to do, and the business of attracting serious money to our neck of the woods demands that we get with the times and the trends.

The theme of the day became established as British Telecom Chief Technologist Peter Cochrane became the unexpected hit of the Convention with a clear, convivial and bullshit free guide to the shape of technology to come. His talk entitled "What Keeps Me Awake At Night spoke of e-commerce as the death of distance, of it's essentially chaotic nature, of a bit-form bonanza with no limits. A bucketful of Viagra if approached with the right attitude. Of course after the likes of John T Wall (who spent a smug hour telling everyone how NASDAQ was running the planet) and an e-forum of spectacular dullness and hard sell, the subject quickly wore thin. E-mail received. Over and out.

The day did did have it's moments. A chap named Professor Robert Swan, the first man to walk unsupported to both Poles, was a roaring success - A proper Yorkshire rabble-rouser who's straight talking made the business boys look like very small fry indeed. Once again it took a local accent to wake the hall up. A dose of plain speaking that cut through the carefully crafted PR speak like a knife through butter. He spoke about how there are too many damn words in the world. How he delivered personal debts based on his word."Because if your words are likely to happen people listen more closely". How to inspire young people. "Don't tell 'em. Involve 'em."

The sheen of Transatlantic Corpo-speak wore off very quickly as the afternoon wore on. Old attitudes began to poke through the polish. Just one woman took the stage to address the cream of International Yorkshire Business in the whole day. We saw precious few black faces in the rows and rows of delegates. The Conference drew uncomfortably to a halt with another old feller telling dirty stories ( Sorry Sir John, but it's true), then the spectacle of Richard Whiteley guffawing about Carol Vorderman's dress. We headed for the exit before we got any more stolen Bob Monkhouse jokes or matey banter from the microphone fiends. As someone said much earlier in the day, the art of good business is to "quit when you're ahead. To know when you've reached the point of maximum benefit."

If Yorkshire is to improve it's public image and show the world it is indeed "Alive With Opportunity" it has to address it's overwhelmingly monotone Geoffrey Boycott style straight-bat business attitude. No amount of WAP phone wielding e-business evangelists can cover up the overwhelming blokiness of the whole proceedings. It's not enough to come up with well-wrought words and pin-sharp presentations. Change has to be real and tangible. And this means making a real effort to change the face of our business, not just it's focus. In the words of Professor Robert Swan lets "throw out the rule book and achieve something amazing!".