World Future Energy Summit Abu Dhabi

This week the event that everyone has been preparing for and anticipating for so long finally arrived and its certainly been a manic week for John. A chance to showcase his work and the Masdar Institute to the world. It was due to start for us on Saturday with a vist to the exhibition to see what the stand would look like but, like all these things the world over it wasn't ready on Saturday! So after we'd hung around waiting for most of the day we realised that we did have some time to ourselves and went out for a lovely stroll in the sunshine along the Corniche.
Sunday morning John had a breakfast meeting so we got up especially early (despite the fact that we have four bathrooms we just share the one and manage our mornings around it!) And I was in excellent time for work. Somehow John's driver didn't know about the early start so we needn't have rushed and poor John had to start off this stressful week by standing on the street. After this meeting he went to lead the press conference at the Emirates Palace to launch the Boeing Biofuels project. Over 100 journalists were present and it certainly made all the papers (National, Gulf News, Khaleej Times) and the radio over here. I'll try and create some links as there was also a supplement in The National featuring a photo of John in front of the new campus wearing the obligatory hard hat!
I went down to look at the exhibition on Monday morning and admire the Masdar and Masdar Institute stands which were huge and very impressive. MI had created mini labs in the back of the stand where they were demonstrating live work and ongoing research which really added to the usual displays. They also had a big part of the Masdar main stand with videos of John talking about the project. I didn't have the right level of VIP access to attend the opening ceremony so amused myself by taking a good look at the rest of the exhibitors and talking to John's people, who are all so very passionate and enthusiastic about their Institute its wonderful to talk to them. I was also able to admire the Wordsearch stand - rather smaller than Masdar but still perfect and talk to my friends there. They were hoping for a name check by Ed Milliband about UK companies setting up successfully in Abu Dhabi but I never got to see Ed so I don't know if it happened!
John went to a big do at the British Embassy in the evening and I was very sore about not getting an invite, especially when he finally arrived back just before midnight and told me about so many of my Abu Dhabi friends who were there! I must work harder to get myself known as a Brit working in Abu Dhabi and stop being an invisible wife!
Tuesday was the Zayed Future Energy prize giving ceremony and thanks to John's PA, who nobly gave me her ticket I was able to go along. Not such a jolly do as the Embassy but infinitely better for my soul and to get to the heart of what Future Energy is all about. Being Brits we were told to turn up at 7pm and so arrived at 6.45pm to avoid being late but of course it didn't really start till 8pm! Must try to remember about Arab time but I don't think I'll ever really break the habits of a lifetime. Once they'd got themselves organised and managed to find everyone a seat (they had some elaborate ticketing system with hand held scanners but it didn't work due to the people who turned up not being the people they were expecting! However, since even John's invite said he was from the Higher Colleges of Technology it was hardly surprising!) it got started.
The prize giving itself was wonderful - moving speeches and interesting videos about last year's winner (who we met) and this year's short list. Last year's winner was amazing - he'd set up a scheme to train women in Bangladesh to fit solar panels to individual dwellings - bringing electricity to people for the first time. Watching these women bringing the solar panels by bicycle then up on the roof fitting them and then watching the faces of the families when the lights were turned on for the first time was truly awesome. What amazing people there are in the world.
This year's prize was won by Toyota in recognition of the huge strides they are making in car technology. Totally different and a really good move to recognise a huge global company in contrast to last year. The Japanese guys from Toyota who were there were also inspiring and clearly love what they are doing. Hopefully the publicity generated by Toyota will also help to put the prize on the map and generate even more interest for future years. They had nearly 700 nominations so perhaps they will start to create categories as well, which would be good, to recognise different kinds of contributions. It must be really difficult to judge but then the panel is a very auspicious one so I expect they manage. It would also have been nice to hear more about the long listed entries.
The prize was given by the Crown Prince which was also fantastic, since, although the Sheikh's pictures adorn every workplace and public building, I'd never seen him in real life.
By the time it was finished it was late and I was starving so we looked at the hordes heading in for the dinner and decided to head for home and a quick supper there. I was really privileged to have been able to go along.