 I'm the last speaker have you had a good meaning best meaning ever I wouldn't know it's my first meaning can we give it up for Louise and the whole team can we also give it up for all the other speakers I'm terribly intimidated to be following them and coming on last so my main focus right now is just not making a fool of myself I've got some things to say and I just really want to be taken seriously we've heard a lot from those speakers today about the future of the planet the future of business the future of leadership the future of community we're gonna do it aren't we we're gonna we're gonna take their ideas and we're gonna translate them to action we're not a talking shop are we no wait here's a thought though and I think this might slightly change the mood what if it doesn't work what if we fuck it up what if you fail I'm sort of try try again I'm sort of your go-to guy for failure a bit of a mood killer there and if we are sat on the balcony overlooking the end of the world it's burning up rapacious business is destroying communities our freedoms are in the hands of tyrants we're watching this I want to ask you what we got left there is something left yeah it's it's called the meaning of life and I thought we talked about it being as we're called meaning so should we discover the meaning of life this is the meaning of life little hint you'll all be getting them soon the thing is is we don't have to think about the end of the world because it's already happening to some people and they're in this room guarantee there'll be someone in this room who it's their own personal end of the world someone here will be in a crisis if I was to say to you who has had a drug problem who has had a experienced homelessness a few hands might go up but if I said to all of you in this room put your hands up if you've ever ever had any sort of tough times anyone ever had tough times boom that's something we all have well I spent about 20 odd years working with people at the extreme end of that so by some complete accident I ended up winning the biggest homeless provider in the country I set up the biggest homeless shelter in the world I've won drug rehabs domestic violence refugees community projects in communities where there is no community and I tell you what hanging out with these people doesn't half make you realize what matters it's kind of on their mind because when your toes are over the edge of the cliff of life you know that shit's pretty real you you talk about what really matters to you and as important as things are in our life it's not housing they're not thinking about money they think about something else but in all those 20 years of running all those services did I ever focus on it did the services did the hostels did them all these places do we ever talk about it no when people moved on did I ever ask them did they have any of it where they were going no and I wondered why I'd given over 20 years of my life and I'd resettled thousands of people and most of them came back I've done failure I've tried to do social change didn't work in the main so I'm doing something different now and it's certainly not an organization organizations just the bigger organizations I got more important to go up government advisor 170 million quid giving it out all that chief executive various organizations housing associations the further I got away from the meaning of life so I'm hanging out with other people now and guess what it is missing how do I know this because people are starting to do it in hospitals in these tepees and they're doing them in igloos as well they're finding the meaning of life 70,000 visits so far Cameroados in hospitals there that's a great little cabin they made in Northern Ireland they're doing it in universities 700 a day in Bristol Student Union Bristol has a huge problem with mental health we have 700 a day there empty shops cafes once a week between five and nine meaning a life streets that's Glasgow they're doing it in libraries community centres that ones in Baltimore we had a bit of a laugh in Piggadilly Circus and we even did it on the Brooklyn Bridge and that person at the back is an NYPD officer who joined in what are these people doing and why is it the meaning of life well they're Cameroados and they wear this badge and they set up things called public living rooms somewhere you can go and be alongside each other we're not a religion we're not a cult I'd like the tax exemption but we're not in fact the people who want public living rooms are setting out to achieve nothing we're not setting out we're not gathering outcomes we are an outcome-free zone we're also an agenda-free zone with a unity of faiths or no faiths so oh that's great isn't it yeah failure guy so I ought to tell you by the way that at half eight this morning my little disc thing got corrupted and I lost my entire presentation had to build it finally rebuilt it put it in here boom everyone thanks so we're gonna find we're gonna find the meaning of life will you help me all right will you all close your eyes please everybody close your eyes I make a solemn promise to you that when you reopen your eyes most of you will have your clothes on okay I want to imagine you're sat opposite television I want to imagine that in front of you is what back when I was growing up they call a VCR some of you youngsters won't know what this is it's a large metal monster you put a tape in it it shows films I want to imagine you're putting a VHS tape in my dad's one went okay you're about to watch the movie of your life I would like you to fast forward please from zero to ten watch it go okay good times some good some bad okay we're going in again and this is where it gets a little bit fruity I think probably for some of you we're gonna go 10 to 18 are you ready close your eyes we're going in 10 to 18 the teenage years go okay good times come on I bet there was some good times okay last one for some of you this one might take a little longer this is from 18 till the present day are you ready 18 till now go eyes closed eyes closed do you need a bit longer sir yeah we might be a while okay could you open your eyes please okay some ups some downs right only to get the remote in your hand only to go back in eyes closed please again or either rewind to a happy day any happy day doesn't have to be the happiest day of your life just go to a day where things were coming together you may have even registered the thought you know what this is what life's all about just a happy day go okay breathe that day in with your eyes closed breathe it in big breath smell that day with your eyes closed do a virtual look around and open your eyes now normally what I've done and I've been asking this question for 10 years to rooms like this thousands of people I would normally ask you to shout out I might even ask you to talk to your neighbor but we're up against time it's the end of the day I just want you to hold the thought of what that happy day was put up your hand if that day included people you care about go have a look around everyone keep your hands up okay hands down put up your hand if that day included doing something you love look around okay thank you so I've been asking that question for years I always get the same who I always get the same two answers and I have to take my shoes off I always get the same two answers 80 to 90 percent of the answers are with people they care about 10 to 20% of the answers are doing something I love climbing a mountain did the marathon never thought I'd be doing this the happy days of our life I divided up into two things there are no others I've never had an answer that falls outside of these two things the happy days of your life ladies and gentlemen our friends are great this slide's gonna really fuck me up well there you go one sure thing in life somebody's gonna thanks Cal my fucks things up one sure thing in life cheers pal that's what that slide would say anybody know what that might say hey friends and purpose did I ever ask anybody leaving one of the homeless hostels or rehabs or refugees or whatever if they had any friends I never asked that and I wondered why they kept coming back did I ask if they're connected with their purpose no I got them a shelf stuck in job in asda but funny enough that wasn't really their purpose this is the meaning of life now you can't get people friends I can't just go and say get a friend so what we do is recreate the environment for it a public living room is a little bit different there's there's not a decent risk assessment document there there's a lot of fairy lights there might be a piano and something happens to your brain chemistry when you see a fairy light you you you don't you don't think to yourself I'm in a dropping centre I'm in a police station think of all the places we go in times of crisis no fairy lights messaging we talk about being a camarado now what we're talking about when you're camarado is not innovative it's not disruptive this word that everyone keeps saying when they phone me up and want us to go for some award and I was it we're not disruptive we're not innovative we're as old as the hills we're just giving a name to something that we've all forgotten right and we're also it's really handy to have a name camarado do you know why because it means no one has to call themselves service user no one has to call themselves patient client doctor student it blocks it out we're just a camarado messaging be a camarado people walk in they see the fairy lights they think strange they see be a camarado they think something is expected of me in this space and then the final thing that's slotted into place and it took us ages to work this out was stories we put post boxes in the public living rooms and we asked them people to write a postcard I have to say we came up with all sorts of whiz bang ways upload a film from your smartphone phone this hotline nobody used them postcards who knew thousands of them thousands of them thousands of them thousands of them people in public living rooms saying what's going on in their life one of them said my 14-year-old sons just died and I think I'm the worst mom ever because I spent so long looking after him that my other kids were neglected I came in here sat down I talked to a stranger maybe I'm not the worst mom ever I just said goodbye to my husband on the cardiac unit for the last time I came in here met a stranger she got me through the night I'm an angry lad at university nobody likes me I came in here and there was this autistic kid and he showed me the ropes and then I helped him a bit and it was proper good I'm a cancer surgeon and I'm not really coping a woman offered me a hug take it when you where you can we had to laugh I went back on shift so what do we do we've learned an awful lot we've done a lot of failure hey it's me we've made a lot of mistakes and we put them all in the box and people say you know what my neighbourhood's a bit shit a lot of mental health problems in my college our staff in our hospital are really stressed our business has a bad corporate culture and so we send them a box full of stuff that helps them set up their own public living we don't do it they do it can look how they want they can call it what they want it just has to follow a set of principles and have some fairy lights we then send it out to locations we have very scientific fantastic sort of AI thing we just really apologies to any from Leeds Leeds isn't there and then they say hey what a lovely thing to receive today from Kamarados and they tweet about it and then they go and create public living rooms in the back streets and and all over the place and the great thing is it's not dealing with an organization I'm not doing a local authority strategy I'm not getting partnerships with organizations I'm dealing directly with people from Arkesia Avenue and they're doing it themselves and it reminds me of a television in a wheelbarrow my hero we all have our heroes my hero is Sergio Popovich if you don't know in me what book called blueprint for evolution there's only two books you need to buy one is mine you need to write down by maths book oh write down something else get math to finish his book and write down another one find math a publisher and his book is amazing and he talks about how in Poland under Soviet rule people were so hacked off with the propaganda coming out of news channels under communist rule that at six o'clock when the news came on they put their televisions in wheel barrows and drove it around the streets because if they complained about the oppressive news rules in in communist Poland they'd have disappeared and so would most of their family so they showed their resistance by putting their tally in a wheelbarrow and taking it around the streets and they bump into each other and piss themselves out well guess what this is the meaning of life right this is this okay we need to connect which means you gotta have a laugh you gotta be human you gotta put up some fairy lights okay ping-pong balls in Aleppo they went to surge and they said surge if we say anything against Assad will all disappear so Serge said write anti-assad slogans on ping-pong balls and release them into the streets in their thousands just the site of Syrian army officers and soldiers running around after ping-pong balls everybody pissed themselves it eroded the fear but you know the thing is this is a serious business there's a lot of fear in our country even though with you know it's it's a free country all right people with massive raging mental health problems who feel pretty scared to leave the house and you know what the system that's helping them and the service they go to with a white cleaning floors and the needs and risk assessment you know what that's not helping I know I won most of them so public living rooms is like TV in a wheelbarrow right it confounds people right very quickly cock-ups we've made because I'm up against time here power oh great just gets better doesn't it it's one of those gags that grows I didn't realize how hard-wired people are into the binary thing parent-child people who come into public living room for the first time and we just assumed people would look out for each other right we were totally stupid because people turned up to public living rooms you know the first thing people say is they say who's in charge what are the rules how messed up is that power we realized we needed a set of principles and I'm not gonna go through them you can find them on the website we needed a set of principles that fought against this you have to make an effort to make a public living room even though to all intents and purposes it's a sofa and some fairy lights you got to get a box and read about it because if you don't there'll be somebody in charge and you know what they'll be doing they'll be fixing everybody they'll be hunting for a bloody outcome it is amazing what you can get done if you sit alongside someone not searching for an outcome as soon as you advertise you're searching for an outcome the situation shuts down this is something else we discovered money there's a fella called Pip in Osrestry he's on benefits he hasn't got any money he's got a massive mental health problem and every Saturday he turns up in the middle of his market square and he sets up a public living room with furniture he has a mate who has a van he blagged the furniture off another mate the market traders in his town love what he's doing so much they bought him a gazebo there's a local granny sat down and chat to him one day knitted him some bunting another one sat down another chat with him made him little camarados cupcakes with a sea in them the mayor's had dinner with him he's been on local radio he's got no money it didn't cost anything you can do this if Pip can do this imagine the power we can all have in a good way if we released ourselves from the need to do for everything to depend on a funding application what if we just did it staff we employed staff big no no people stop looking out for each other in a mutual aid concept when there are staff in the same space cut why because that's the staff's job weird anthropological study we didn't know that until we did it guess what they got themselves uniforms I turned up one day they said what do you think you like them people are weird this is me I handsome devil wow walk in the 70s fashion I had a very happy childhood my dad had a big house but we went bankrupt so we were it was a weird contradiction we were completely skinned and I went to a primary school which used to get burned down regularly by local organized criminals but I was happy I had lots of mates it was a Catholic education so I also had a lot of guilt but it was it was a great time I went to secondary school oh no back I went to secondary school and unfortunately the Catholic secondary school was in a posh part of town so that was a little harder I need to get the shit kicked out of me mostly by the Catholic priests I used to get hung outside of windows I used to get dragged to the back of the bus and they used to pull my trousers down and deep eat my bollocks they used to do all sorts of things to me but it didn't matter because I used to come home every night to these two that's my mum and dad and my siblings all left home when I was 11 because they were much older than me and so we were basically a three-person unit I was like an only child and they were absolutely my best friends my mum was a very quiet person working class born on a train platform her dad worked on the railways and didn't say much but as Wordsworth a great Cumbrian said I held muted dialogues with my mother's heart I was the youngest I was a baby and she was amazing my dad was not quiet he after the bankruptcy he tried all sorts of small businesses in the garage from fairy liquid to lycra and he had a jazz club he was an amazing jazz trumpet player he had a jazz radio show he had a jazz TV show and he was amazing guy and we used to spend all our time together I was a kid who didn't go out with his mates because I'd rather stay at home with dad we were probably jamming over the cords tonight in Tunisia by Dizzy Gillespie until the early hours of the morning and yeah hero and best friend three days before my 18th birthday my mum died of breast cancer three days before my 21st birthday dad died of heartbreak really touch of alcoholism maybe and so that birthday week wasn't great didn't celebrate my birthday for 11 years I did what all good northern men do and pushed it right down carried on and yeah didn't do so well after that fast forward through my 20s and I used to spend Christmas in the homeless shelters as a volunteer and I used to go there because I used to think and you know these people I'm gonna be amazing guy and I'm gonna help them because what I discovered was they got me through Christmas and this was where the mutuality and the camarados comes from it was baked in even back then so I carried on but then the fast forward through the videotape of my life and you get to 30 and it all kind of fell apart bizarrely I was running a production company I used to make commercials for people like Hugo boss and stuff had the big office overlooking the canal quite a lot money lost a lot started cutting myself used to do the neck a lot pushed away everybody I love I think the only person who stuck by me amazingly is on the front row right my best mate Tash who lives near Brighton so she came along today so thanks love and I was a total asshole I just pushed everyone away and I about nine months of homelessness where I would I would keep on floors and oh my car sold the car circle line but mostly it was about the cutting really and then crisis the homeless organization said you've been volunteering us ever for us every Christmas why don't you can work for us and I ended up going to the interview with a really big woolen jumper on because I had to hide the scars it was August it was boiling and I'm in the interview hiding the scars with my woolen jumper dripping with sweat but I got the gig and I ended up running the biggest homeless event in Western Europe putting up 1500 homeless people in shelters which we had to blag with 4,000 volunteers and here's the thing this is the second big thing from Cameroados is it sorted me out looking out for other people in the depth of my despair sorted me out I've been sat with people who are saying the next thing they want to do is kill themselves do you know what I say could you do me a favor within ten minutes they're saying have stopped calm down man stop stressing I'm all over it I'm not saying I've turned their life around but I'm telling you they're not thinking about killing themselves anymore because they're sorting me out and that's what it did for me ended up blagging the millennium dome and turning into a homeless shelter one Christmas the which the world's biggest single span building and that's a story see me at the bar it's it's her my life around and that's when the government were very grateful I hadn't embarrassed them and gave me a job I ended up running a government program I wrote the government's policy on homelessness then cap the rest carries on well what's the point of that I'll tell you what though I'll tell you what I want to leave you with something I want to leave you with the best badge I've ever made you can't have a revolution without a 25 millimeter badge this badge will connect you to other people this badge will get you the meaning of life because when people read this badge they smile they get it and this badge sums up my speech today everybody as we leave the meaning conference I didn't really think about this whole holding the clicker playing the piano at the same time thing I want you to all be a Camarado okay are you up for that all right if you want something in your neighborhood see Jenny or Vaughn outside on me we'll get your box it's free go on bloody do something right remember it's all right to be a bit shit and to go to a public living room be a bit shit sometimes no outcome necessary just get friends and purpose and as you leave the meaning conference today with this inspirational sounding chords I thought we might honor this venue because something happened in this venue in 1974 do you know what that is they made famous a song guess what the song was all about failure so we're gonna sing it together because when you leave meaning you will have failures you will be a bit shit but that's the way to find the meaning of life you're all gonna get on your feet and sing it with me now come on I can't show you how to clap I'm playing the bloody piano