Interview with Joe White
SACTOWN TALKS
Mar 27, 2023
3.11K subscribers ... 255 views ... 2 likes
Today we welcome Consul General, Joe White, of the UK Consulate in San Francisco. We discuss UK-CA relations including agriculture, tech policy, trade and more.
SacTown Talks is a podcast about California politics, policy and culture. We feature interviews with California political leaders, and analysis by experts and insiders focusing on the Capitol. Like, share, and subscribe to learn more!
- (01:08) Joe White’s journey to Consul General in CA
- (07:21) Tech policy and regulating artificial intelligence
- (14:11) Agriculture and trade relations
- (20:12) Talking national security technology
- (24:16) Looking forward to the future of technology
Transcript
have a science and Innovation team which looks at research collaborations between the UK and the California University ecosystem and
again that often goes into the agriculture space as well
have some tech policy folks
we've got a lot of trade folks that look at supporting companies who want to travel expand from the US into the UK vice versa UK companies looking to Spanish to the US and California particular
so there's a range of things we work across there we've actually been talking to the state
about an MOU with the state for the UK broadly across a range of areas on climate trade and
some of the tech policy areas that we've got agreement on
so there's a there's a pretty constant and robust conversation between the UK
and the state of California
[Music]
Joes background
hello and welcome to another episode of Sac Town talks today we're glad to be joined by the British Consulate General Joe White
Joe how's it going
thanks for joining us
good no
pleasure to be here thanks for inviting me up
yeah it's good to have someone here from uh with a different accent
so you know switch the viewers up we want to make sure your viewers stay on their toes
um you know can you tell us a little bit about your your background
kind of how you got to be the the Consulate General here in California
sure yeah happy to
it's um it's actually ended up being a bit of a wild card
I mean I've um spent the last 20 years in Tech and venture capital and uh the UK government last couple of years produced a new piece of um strategic planning called the integrated review which was looking at the whole foreign policy and UK's position in the world and that included things like having Science and Tech to be one of the core pillars of what we're doing
and so this role the console General position which the UK's had in in San Francisco for some time uh was supplemented to also become the tech Envoy to the United States so equivalent to the tech Ambassador so they were Keen to bring in somebody potentially from private sector who could help support those conversations between the government and the nation-states of of big Tech given that some of the biggest Tech firms are now you know enormous geological players in their own rights
whether they want to or not
right
yeah
Joe's background in tech it's pretty amazing I think you know a couple years ago California was the eighth largest economy now somehow we've gotten up to number four
yeah that's right
yeah pretty close to Britain itself
well you you just passed us we'll let you have this round did we yes
Apple's still a good way to go but no yeah they unfortunately
yeah California has uh just passed the UK
it's about to pip Germany so we hit it so you know we'll we'll route on a little bit of that one
but we're um we'll let you have this round we're gonna fight back though
um so you have a background in Tech kind of you know how did you get kind of into Tech and kind of what what did you do before becoming a diplomat
yeah so I um I founded one of the early uh SAS businesses in the UK we branded one of the early platforms for website and e-commerce uh businesses and we built that through the.com boom and bust we got to about seven million sites on the system at about 150 million of of ARR so I got it to a pretty big global scale
um and then after selling that got involved in in early stage VC investing in the UK and across parts of Europe and and the Far East
so raised a couple hundred million Adventure funds
my wife who was my co-founder on this journey which also makes things complicated but we were we were married at the end not at the beginning which is from what I don't sound the better way around of doing these things
um she uh we built this business together we invested funds together she was then approached by Google to come across and run parts of the moonshot factory so Google X
The Innovation piece and that brought us to California about four years ago so I was based uh on Sandhill Road at Greylock Partners which is Reed Hoffman was one of our investors in the fund traveling back to Europe with our partners there but it was actually when covid hit I got involved in supporting the UK government on a response for the tech sector
I think the UK like the US and others were providing a lot of debt-based products into the real economy so if you're a restaurant or a normal business you can borrow money to get through the challenge with that for venture-backed businesses is that particularly for using Banks as Gatekeepers if you approach them and say hey I I lost five million dollars last year and if things go really well I'm gonna lose 50 million dollars next year can I have some taxpayer money please uh the banks will rarely say no so we we stood up this billion pound Equity vehicle which allowed the government to alongside private investors take these stakes and in venture-backed businesses and I think that was hugely successful in the back end of that first year of COVID when everything was going very much sideways
um and really on the back of that I had these unexpected conversations where they said hey look Joe we're now looking at this new tech Envoy position
um would you be interested in in going in for that as well
so for me I Tech is one of those things which has grown to be a geopolitical geopolitically significant in more ways
and I think people realized and whether it's semiconductors or social media and the impact on democracy and freedom of speech and all these elements it's now something which um you know States Nations all over the
4:50
world are having to engage in a different way and the tech companies themselves have found themselves in this unique and
4:56
potentially uncomfortable position of suddenly having to figure out how they engage with that and so acting as a as
5:02
an additional I guess go between for the UK government and some of the things that we do and including our conversations here in Sacramento
5:08
California is now doing a lot more in these areas too so um I'm here for my four-year Tour of
Joes role in government
5:13
Duty and then I'll probably run screaming back to the private sector but uh I think it's it's an important thing to do more folks should come back from
5:19
Tech into government as opposed to just the other way around yeah it's kind of amazing just here in California like the Department of Motor Vehicles was always
5:26
like a scourge of of everyone's existence and you know Gavin Newsom some attack guy said hey I want to come in I
5:32
want to check it out and I'll have to say shout out DMV uh much improved recently got my license redone and it's
5:38
like so easy everything's online systems are getting better yeah so yeah it would be great for uh for all you uh fellow
5:44
Tech Bros to come back to government and help out and give back a little bit so yeah definitely a positive influence um
5:51
so you know you're saying you know covet hit you know you were in the private sector are kind of working kind of with some of the kind of these funding things
5:57
kind of uh for lack of a better term kind of ppps clones I guess for for Tech this sort of thing that's right yeah and
6:03
so all of a sudden um the government calls back and says hey would you would you mind being a diplomat or how did that go about well I
6:10
was approached by one of the former Council generals um in San Francisco who knew me knew about the role and said
6:16
look this is a thing uh are you interested in doing it I wasn't initially sure whether they were kidding or not and I said why would you want me
6:21
as the consul General I said don't worry we'll send you a an extremely competent Deputy who can make sure that all the
6:26
Diplomatic pieces are well taken care of um but on the tech side as I said they were looking to bring in somebody who
6:31
had contacts in the space who had a bit more fluency with the way that people uh engage in these things and so you know I
6:38
went through a normal process as you would do with the recruitment of any uh senior official position um and uh you know I think it's a it's a
6:45
great thing to do like I said it's it's a unique Insight dropping into diplomacy after you know not having spent my
6:52
career in it as I said greatly I'm sorry about people who who have done but the kind of conversations that you're having
6:58
with senior execs about tech companies within government both in the federal side and and back in London the tech
7:04
piece of my role is U.S wide so I spend time in DC in New York and la and Austin Boston wherever there is Tech wherever
7:11
there is Tech I'll be there so yeah it keeps moving around yeah to Texas to the uh yeah the boom here
7:19
yeah um you know what I guess what's unique is about tech and kind of we always say is like you know a lot of it started
Tech in the UK
7:25
here a lot of it's based here but you know it's kind of you know Global as well as you're saying you know I guess
7:31
Britain has always been known for I guess Banking and finance kind of what other aspects are you guys looking at outside of the kind of the banking and
7:37
aspect you know sectors that yeah you guys are interested in no it's a good point I mean the UK is actually now the
7:43
third largest tech ecosystem outside the US and China so um and this is one of the pieces that we're focusing on particularly here on
7:48
the West Coast uh the UK has four of the top 10 research universities uh in the world we are the third largest VC
7:54
ecosystem them we've got the third largest number of unicorn scale companies again outside the US and China
8:01
and there's a huge amount of interest and and Tech that goes on in the UK
8:06
fintech uh is naturally one of our strengths given as you said the the city of London as a financial Global center
8:12
right but AI is another massive piece uh Deep Mind of course now an alphabet
8:17
property is all of its research is done in London and there's a number of companies that have been spun out and
8:22
generate around that ecosystem but the ecosystems around Oxford and Cambridge and Imperial and UCL as those four
8:29
research universities is is pretty broad we also had of course the med tech biotech piece
8:36
um the UK was one of the other nations to produce Covenant vaccines during this period And so particularly around Oxford
8:42
that ecosystem uh vacatec which did the AstraZeneca vaccine uh so there's a lot that's going on there you know it's
AI
8:48
really interesting um kind of seeing kind of how things are evolving especially with with AI like we just had chat GPT come out
8:56
um I actually had chat BTT X ask give me some questions it's amazing I just sped out like 20
9:01
Questions exactly it seems like you know it's just
9:07
like exponentially getting you know better and better you know whether it's you know electric cars or
9:13
phones everything just keeps especially getting bigger and bigger kind of how do you how do you see
9:18
um I guess AI kind of you know moving forward and kind of I guess from a government perspective are there are
9:24
there concerns and and Regulatory things that you need to be thinking to be addressed no it's a great question and and I think
9:31
that's exactly right and part of the challenge now that Tech is moving so quickly that how government can get ahead of that and respond to it and
9:37
we're seeing um you know conversations about regulation of social media progressing
9:42
through different parts of Poland both in the UK and other parts of the world but this is a technology that's now more than a decade old and so as you said
9:48
chat GPT which was the I guess the the the the productized front of some of
9:55
these uh large language models that have been around now for you know a couple of years but this is the one that really made it go mainstream and so I think
10:01
that's pulled it into public and policy maker uh conscience and I think this is one of those areas where
10:06
um open AI who's behind chat GPT uh anthropic some of the other businesses here they're trying to put some
10:14
um guard rails around these Technologies in terms of the questions you can ask the kind of responses that they will give because this in some ways
10:21
democratizes access to knowledge which is a great thing um but in these edge cases can be a very
10:27
dangerous thing I think previously if you wanted to figure out how to do uh you know
10:32
unpleasant things with science you'd probably have to train for a PhD go through many many years of this with
10:38
lots of uh ethical questions and discussions along the way was nowadays if if with the wrong information the
10:44
wrong questions asking to some of these models you can produce some quite interesting outcomes so there are things that definitely policymakers are
10:49
concerned about I think there is also the huge opportunities that come from these things and how we integrate those
10:56
into the way that um folks work in you know frankly any industry has got ways I mean so you
11:02
pulled out Chachi BT I think it's the human augmentation bit which is the exciting Parts the positive part of this is how it can supplement what we do I
11:09
don't think chat gbt is going to necessarily replace what people are doing um but I think governments need to figure out how to respond to this in a
11:17
near real-time evolution of these Technologies so it is definitely a challenge you know it's kind of interesting you kind of notice that like
Government response
11:23
technology happens and it goes on for quite a while and then government responds yeah
11:29
um kind of what have you seen here in the last few years you've been here kind of California has been responding to technology whether it's kind of dealing
11:36
with Uber and how it pays its employees or privacy different aspects kind of what are you saying here and and you
11:42
know how does that affect what's going on back in yeah yeah in the UK no I think that's right and in some ways with
11:47
any of these new technologies you start with this wave of um optimism and opportunity and new
11:54
things that are possible and that's all true and then after a while you start to almost get the the gaming which turns
12:00
almost into the weaponization of these policies and the unintendected unintended consequences of what happens and so you know ride sharing as you said
12:07
which was a great technology which allowed all of us to have immediate access to personalized Transportation
12:13
um and then suddenly we realize that there was more of a a question around workers rights and low income and so on similarly with social media connecting
12:19
the world and then it became a bit more weaponized with both misinformation and with even from you know adversarial
12:26
nation states doing things within it and this is the danger with with with these AI pieces so what you're seeing is
12:33
um the UK has taken the leadership position on some of these areas I think we've got our Online safety Bill going
12:39
through Parliament at the moment and this looks at ways to try and frame uh social media regulation one of the neat
12:44
things about it is is that it gives our ofcom which is one of our major Regulators for for media the authority
12:52
to actually now um engage in those conversations with teeth in some of the social media companies so part of the way that
12:58
mechanism works is it doesn't tell social media what it should or shouldn't do it just says great you have your t's
13:04
and C's make sure they're clear and you tell us what they're doing and then we can then enforce your behavior against your own decencies so if you tell us
13:10
that this sort of content is not acceptable on your platform we at least now have a mechanism for saying wait a sec here it is
13:16
how are you gonna deal with that right so we're not trying to tell you what the rules are but we are trying to say once you've told us what the rules are we'll
13:23
then have a mechanism to at least hold you account to them right and so that's an evolving conversation
13:28
um and of course the European Union is passing legislation in these areas and that's I think the challenge where
13:33
um you know California has a real opportunity and is increasingly leadings on this debate in the U.S the CCPA based
13:41
on the European gdpr was a piece around you know privacy protection there the new
13:47
um uh what was in the UK the age-appropriate design code has now got an equivalent in California looking at a
13:52
protection of young people in their data and these are things where um as I said it's mainly the unintended
13:57
consequences and the evolutions of these technology which lead to these minority cases for social harms but minority at
14:05
internet scale is pretty big and so we still need to figure out how to how to moderate these things yeah it's
Trade relations
14:10
interesting um you know I guess outside of tech you know California's also has a lot of Agriculture this morning on
14:16
Twitter I saw that they're rationing tomatoes and lettuce in the UK kind of what what are the aspects of your job
14:22
outside of of tech and kind of what are the relations like trade relations between the UK and California yeah so so
14:28
the consulate here
we've got a number of different areas we work across the political relationships and so we're regularly up in Sacramento here
and Chris campisis who's uh who's our main political guys here pretty much pretty much at least monthly I see he's probably you see A well-dressed English gentleman and then that's Chris going to point approaching but we have folks that work across the trade relationships
uh including across agriculture so the Agri Tech bits that go in there
as well we have a science and Innovation team which looks at research collaborations between the UK and the California University ecosystem and again that often goes into the agriculture space as well we have some tech policy folks we've got a lot of
uh trade folks that look at supporting companies who want to travel expand from the US into the UK or vice versa
UK companies like new Spanish to the US and California particular so there's a range of things we work across there we've actually been talking to the
state about an mou with the state for the UK broadly across a range of areas on
uh climate trade and some of the tech uh policy areas that we've got agreement on so there's a there's a pretty uh you know constant and robust conversation between between the UK and and the state
15:39
of California as I said as large as now is it's nation-state scale in its um influence and has a huge influence within within the US as a whole
and I guess has a diplomat you know kind of you know California you know we're all California used to legislation and bills and we have you know the different houses kind of what are the Diplomatic you know I guess nuts and bolts of like who do you deal with is it the governor's office
kind of who do you talk to and kind of
how do those you know things go yeah so
we do we do deal with the governor's office
um the lieutenant governor has the remit of many of the international relations piece so we deal with her quite a lot
and she's been great when we have
uh official visitors either Minister ministerial or senior officials we often engage with
uh with with both the governor and the lieutenant Governor's teams here um
and then we engage across a variety of other areas that the trade folks
um uh Emily Desai and the the biz team we talked to quite a lot and so there's a range of people that we engage with and particularly on the areas where California is uh passionate and quite
Cutting Edge
whether it's climate and some of these other pieces the UK of course uh
hosted COP 26 now a couple years ago and so there's a big push on those pieces now
but things like zero emission Vehicles which again we have a commitment to try and uh remove the combustion engine by 2035 and
so that that's an accelerated time frame I believe like California and then some of the other states on the west coast so we engage across a variety of these things um both in Sacramento and then on a city basis uh in San Francisco of course with the mayor and team there
and we have another General in La who covers the southern part of the state as well as some of the other states she has Hawaii right
oh really Southern California
Southern California yeah so can you do like four years here and then transfer down there for four years
well fortunately the the tech part of my role is U.S wide so I'm I'm allowed to roam
um which is helpful and I think you know most folks on the Diplomatic career as you said would do uh these four-year postings and then move to other parts uh
I think you know being on the west coast of the US is certainly one of the one of the friendlier climbers to spend your
Brexit time as a diploma quite sought after definitely definitely um you know here here in the US you know we just get filtered news from what's going on in the UK and you know for years we've just heard about brexit they kind of made it seem like it's going to be this horrific end of the world event kind of like Y2K back in 2000.
it's
17:53
happened uh you know has anything changed is is it is it good is it bad is it is it just what it is uh to a certain
18:00
extent it it is what it is I mean it was a clear vote back in 2016 to take the UK
18:06
out of the EU and then there was a period of um agreeing exactly what that meant and
18:11
actually we've seen in the last couple of weeks um quite a significant movement on that as in uh prime minister Rishi sunak has
18:19
recast an agreement with the European Union on um on trade relations in Northern
18:24
Ireland which remained one of the the pieces which was difficult given that it's attached physically to uh of
18:30
Ireland which remains part of the EU but still Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and so therefore has this
18:35
this um interesting slot of how do you reconcile the cross-border trade there and the objective was always there to
18:41
make sure that there was no hardboard that returned between Northern Ireland and Ireland and um the the progress that
18:48
the prime ministers made on these negotiations in the in the last few days um has been great it'll allow a kind of
18:54
a Green Lane for goods which are moving across the border so there'll be no longer a checks on them for those that have been consumed within those
19:00
territories on either side of the northern uh and Northern Ireland in Ireland a trade barrier or trade trade
19:08
area those that will go on for further consumption within the European Union Beyond may have checks on them but it
19:14
also gives further rights to storm one which is the power sharing group for the North Island assembly part of the
19:20
Belfast agreement which is now 25 years old which really created that stability and peace in that part of the world so
19:25
that's one piece which has been in some ways a um getting that resolved such that the
19:31
conversation with the European Union can go back to all the other important areas of cooperation so for example Horizon
19:37
which is the pan-european scientific research piece talks between the UK and European Union
19:44
had been a bit bumpy in that in the last couple of years while this Northern Ireland piece was unresolved but now that is looking like it's going ahead
19:50
all these things have opened up again and of course you know the the UK retains strong relationships with with
19:56
the EU and particularly with uh Russia's invasion of Ukraine we're working incredibly closely with them on all
20:02
these elements of National Security and protecting Europe as a whole so um yeah
20:08
it is uh we're coming to the end right you know it's interesting you know I guess especially lately with kind of
National Security
20:13
this Ukraine uh tensions with Russia and these weather balloons and all the weird stuff we're having lately the kind of
20:19
like the Forefront of National Security and Technologies really really coming out ahead how much how much time do you
20:25
spend on on that front of Technology dealing with National Security issues uh a reasonable amount unincreasingly so I
20:32
mean the the tech bit that I operate across has the policy landscape around things like Online safety and homes
20:38
encryption um the trade landscape companies and capital the r d piece and then the final part is the National
20:44
Security Bid And I think the uh National governments ever realized that technology provides interesting
20:50
opportunities but also increasing threats and I think um the semiconductor supply chain challenges exacerbated by
20:56
covid and and and economic mess that came from that has really shown people how vulnerable these
21:02
things are and I think um big Tech even played a role in the early stages of the the Russia's invasion of Ukraine where
21:10
um you know keeping certain sites active blocking certain sites from misinformation and there were things
21:16
that they were doing uh very much in the public eye and then there were things that they were doing um only involving conversations with
21:22
with nation states so there's a lot that Tech does in these areas and um it's one of the reasons you know starlink's uh
21:30
supporter of of Ukraine on the ground allowing them to retain com systems allow
21:35
um you know drone systems and other pieces continue part of this I think there is uh one one Ukrainian
21:42
um uh Tech entrepreneur I describe talked to this to describes it as the first open source War where the even in
21:48
the first month or so before the UK and the US in particular came in quite strongly backing on the Ukrainian side
21:54
and providing a lot of technology and support there there was this window where there was a lot of tech provided
22:00
by um you know open source and you know activists and
22:06
people who are engaging in this and that's both extraordinary and also kind of a whole new thing and that's an area
22:12
again where we have to decide you know if if a uh if a freelance hacker provides targeting material for
22:20
Ukrainian forces on the ground that strikes a Russian position does that make them party to an active War we were
22:26
very clear that our soldiers shouldn't go and fight there um so it's it's a it's a whole new whole new area again to look at and so I
22:33
certainly spend time in these conversations what areas of interest in California technology are you focusing on most
California Technology
22:41
well it's as I said the the the huge platforms really are are based here and
22:46
of course up in Seattle and so there's an element of um our conversation about as I said the Online safety Bill coming in has
22:52
elements of regulation of social media and the way that we um uh want to progress those conversations so that's one big part of
22:58
it uh the r d piece generally again both from the companies and the universities
23:03
um semiconductors is is is the topic topic of the day assuming because it's like 2008 they were like dead yeah
23:10
exactly exactly and I think I think um again they kind of crept into this geopolitical importance I guess from the
23:17
political perspective I think the semiconductor folk would say hey man we always knew this was happening why didn't you guys pay attention and now you're telling us to build Fabs and they
23:24
cost billions of dollars and take years to set up so um so that that's that's something we engage in quite a lot too
23:30
um uh and really it's just making sure that the UK retains access to uh these
23:36
kind of markets these kind of Technologies the UK has some of these strategic uh pieces there like arm
23:41
um the semiconductor business in the UK which provides some of the major kind of design Frameworks for it uh used by
23:47
Apple and others is a big piece of that and so this intertwined Global Supply Chain of technology is important and I
23:53
think as as we get more cautious things like serious regulation on the National Security side and we have equivalents in
23:58
in the UK as well making sure that particularly the UK and the us as um as International best friends as one
24:04
can be right uh that we are as well placed to not fulfill of each other's
24:10
National Security regulations when really there's a places where we should be continuing to cooperate and collaborate yeah you know I guess just
The Next Big Thing
24:17
kind of running in these technology circles and kind of living in San Francisco kind of what's what's the I guess the feeling amongst people there
of
what the next big thing is going to be kind of what's everyone excited about
it's going to happen in the next five to ten years in the tech world yeah
it's interesting I mean because you do go through these phases and I think we're coming into the we're sending a crypto winter at the moment
crypto was the thing that was was exploding everywhere um and I think that'll settle us something will emerge from that you know
I'm I'm still a mild crypto skeptic myself so you know I'm not too unhappy
it's in the winter but I think the the piece the generative AI explosion I think is what's really triggered at the moment and I think the floods of of venture capital moving into these spaces
I think um even meta announced over the weekend they're setting up a new AI unit uh you've got I think open IRS spurred this competition now from response from Google I think from Meto from others now doing this and I think that that will be an area of huge uh investment I think what we've seen is uh Tech has you know
had a Readjustment I think that the covert period where Tech stepped into the breach to keep us functioning both
from terms of video calls and deliveries and the infrastructure so therefore saw massive growth and I think that the adjustment we've seen over the last few months is really coming back to that trend line um from the crazy trend line that it jumped up into during covert so this isn't anything like I think the.com crash or the financial crisis in that respect you're seeing you're seeing organizations um you know cutting five to ten percent
which still of course has real implications for those affected but what you're also now seeing is those folks
being scooped up by other parts of the ecosystem particular as that next wave starts to build and it's the application
of AI that will think will drive a lot of that because in some ways you've got these large language models who provide
this raw capability but the applications that sit on top of that which chat GPT is a great example of really sits on top
of the raw power of the llm it's chat gbt which created this explosion in usage even though the
capability was already there so what other people are doing innovating on these models and the way they present
that capability to an end user whether it's in business whether it's in search whether it's in medicine that's the
stuff we're going to see an explosion of in the next few years I remember kind of reading about like you know the early Industrial Revolution in the UK and
Tinkerers
about how it was just a bunch of Tinkers guys who just had time and just kind of building machines and stuff and they all sudden built Motors and engines and all
that stuff and kind of to think what people with chat GPT now as you always hear programmers right yeah it can build
code and kind of like the at-home tinkering this AI is going to enable people to do and kind of see what comes
out of it probably going to be pretty astounding yeah I think that's right I think um I think what when any new
platform style technology arrives it always takes a while before people figure out what they can do with it right I always think about it like
um you know whenever next generation of PlayStation arrives like when the PS4 or PS5 arrive they've got these incredibly
upgraded processor technology juice but the first games look like ones that could have been written on the old system because it's taken a while for
the engineers and the tinkerers as you say to figure out how would we push this to the Limit what's now possible and so
Meeting the Queen
I think we'll see this creeping into the next few years yeah um you know I was reading your bio and you received an award from Queen Elizabeth in 2017
is that right
that's right
did you actually get to meet the queen so
um so my wife and I both got got MBEs which which are royal Awards and
she received her six months before I did and
um so when she she uh she got hers at Windsor Castle um around Christmas time and was lucky enough to have her majesty come out and present it ... which was an extraordinary thing to see in uh in an event where uh you know the palace puts on you know quite a quite a show for these things because these are really the recognitions of folks that have achieved things of of national importance and um they're always on behalf of the queen uh but you never know which Royal is necessarily going to come through the doors really open
and so um I was there with with our kids sitting in the audience while my wife was there to receive her award from that
from the queen and to have the then I guess 90 year old Monarch right um come up and and stand through a ceremony which lasts a couple of hours including
I'm starting with the knights and getting a sword to Knight them with I mean it's an extraordinary process
so six months later I was at Buckingham Palace
uh so we got to see the other palaces and Princess Anne presented my award so
um she was fantastic as well we actually talked about tech during our brief Exchange so you had a slightly bigger Palace but slightly bigger Palace yeah exactly exactly
and the kids also came to mind but once they done realized how long the ceremony was the first time they seemed less enthusiastic
oh my God come on kids yeah anybody notable get knighted
why why you were there
who's there I was the um David Tim Peake I think the the the British astronaut was knighted when I was there
um and actually mine was just after the Olympics so it wasn't it wasn't uh Beckham wasn't there but there was many
of the British Olympians were there so there's a bunch of very tall rowers and
uh and other folks so so an nbe just below United so there's um so so the night the Knighthood is the KBE yeah um and there's a so that's a knight commander of the British Empire there's a CB which is a Commander the British Empire there's an OBE which is the uh Officer of the British Empire and the MBE which is what I have which is a a Member of the Order of the British Empire
okay so it's the it's it's the the first rung the first run okay yeah
so you're working on your you're working on the second level
well that's great
uh thank you so much for stopping by and kind of checking us out and we look forward to kind of see you around town here
and in your staff and uh looking forward to see what's happening in Tech here in the next few years
fantastic
well thanks so much for having me
it's been a pleasure thanks for stopping me thank you
[Music]
30:06
thank you
| |
