These past few days have been quite “playful”.

On the one hand, I have just discovered, right around the corner from our apartment by London Bridge, a free and public playground that has an artificial grass hockey field, half a basketball court, 3 pingpong tables and even a beach volleyball court with sand and all! So obviously, the next day I went with my son to a sports equipment store and bought a soccer ball, a pingpong set, a basketball, a volleyball and a badminton set. Time to hit the court!

Talking about pingpong, this past week I have had several meetings and events in interesting places, like the Francis Crick Institute reception at the May Fair Hotel, but the most playful one was the Innovation Club meet up organized by Microsoft at Bounce, a private pingpong club with a waiting list of 3 months! Who would have thought I would be playing pingpong with Microsoft executives and discussing open standards and free software a few years after having had to lobby against them and their defense of software patents at the European Parliament?. The tech world surely is a rapidly evolving one.