On the 13th of November Gary Hird, Strategy Manager, Computer Services at the John Lewis Partnership, visited Farnborough Sixth Form College to deliver an inspirational talk.

A group of students currently studying the Diploma in IT at Higher Level attended the talk, which focused on current and future energy usage, and looked at ways of reducing our energy consumption and addressing the means by which energy can be provided in the future.

Gary used a mixture of slides and videos to support his talk, which included economic assumptions for 2029, personal data storage, current sources of energy and potential energy sources to supply future demand.

The John Lewis Partnership introduced their green technology initiative in 2006 and Gary gave an overview of how they are tackling energy consumption and introducing new methodologies to reduce their energy demands. 

Finally the group discussed some technology-related predictions for the next 20 years, and the students gave their ideas of how technology might change the future.

The event was a great success with Matthew Thorne, the Diploma in IT teacher commenting:
“Thanks for organising this, the talk was excellent and really got the students thinking about emerging technologies and the possibilities to try and make ICT/Computing greener.  Gary spoke really well and engaged the students in the topic area.”

Gary Hird remarked:
"It was a pleasure to go to Farnborough Sixth Form College and meet with the students and staff.  From what I observed, the Diploma in IT seems to me to be an excellent way of equipping students with the broad range of skills they'll need to be able to successfully apply technology to solve 'real-world' problems in their subsequent careers.  The talk I delivered was a highly speculative view of the world of the next twenty years - some of it may never happen.  But what is certain is that the Farnborough students belong to the generation who will actually deliver the reality, and the Diploma will prepare them very well to do that."