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It's a fantastic opportunity. I can break away from the day-to-day things that I have
to worry about to address issues that have been in the back of my mind for years and
years. In particular, because of the prestige of the Dream Fellowship, I can use it carte
blanche to say to people 'back-off I've got something interesting and important to think
about'. But once I've got those ideas established,
I think I need to understand what they mean, so to that end I've got to spend some time
not thinking about just the pure theory I'm working on, but also how that theory can be
deployed. So I'm going to use the Dream Fellowship to travel, to talk to people about deployment
and also to have special bespoke workshops. I'm going to have three, where I invite people
who I think can help me bottom out these ideas about deployment, so by the end of the year
I will have both a new theory in my head and hopefully on some paper, but also some very
concrete ideas for how that theory can be deployed and used in practice.
I want to make a difference if I possibly can. I'm torn between a sense of tremendous
urgency that we need to find a new way to do things to provide the water and sanitation
services for urban areas, I think we desperately need. And we need this quite fast, not fast
tomorrow but certainly ten, fifteen, twenty years' time, we need to have a really different
way of doing things otherwise it's just not going to happen. Yet if we are going to find
this new way, then we are going to need new science and new science requires calm, detached
and systematic thinking, which is not something you can necessary do in a hurry.
That tension drives me nuts -- the tension between wanting to do something fast and knowing
you've got to be slow and thoughtful about it. I don't mind if my way doesn't work, but
I care passionately that I should try and if I don't succeed maybe at least I'll inspire
somebody to come up with something that will.