Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Elliot Moss
Welcome to Jazz Shapers, with me Elliot Moss bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. I am very pleased to say that my guest today is Dr Mick Donegan, MBE. The Founder and CEO of SpecialEffect, a charity helping people with severe physical disabilities access and enjoy technology for leisure, creativity and communication. After many years teaching children with learning and physical disabilities it was as Deputy Director at the Oxford Ace Centre supporting young people with complex communication needs through technology that Mick found parents were asking him, how can my child make friends when they aren’t able to play with others. Was there anywhere they could go to help children play video games. Launching SpecialEffect in 2007 to fill that technology gap and gathering a small team of technical specialists to try and to modify tech and develop their own interfaces, Mick’s efforts to raise money faced scepticism with newspaper headlines you can image bemoaning the impacts of video games. But SpecialEffect has since improved thousands of lives with bespoke technology including their Eye Gaze support for people in Intensive Care and their bubble busting service tackling long-term medical isolation through home controlled desktop robots, and they’ve also supported Microsoft, Sony and PS5 to develop their accessible controllers for playing video games.
It’s fabulous to have you here. Fire in the belly. I read when I did my usual research on my guests, um, you had a fire in your belly to go and create this charity. Tell me about that fire in the belly?
Mick Donegan
Right, uh, and I’ve still got it, um, basically it started because I just realised as you said before, I was helping children throughout the country from the Ace Centre in Oxford, I was helping children throughout the country to be able to access their learning because my background’s in teaching, access their learning using assistive technology. That’s special technology to help them to be able to write etcetera, do their maths etcetera, and to speak, um, because the children I was working with were very severely physically disabled so many of them couldn’t communicate either in the written form or vocally, so, um, basically those are the children that I was helping to access their curriculum, uh, more effectively. What happened was the parents then started com… uh, around 2006, 2007 when the brothers and sisters of these children were beginning to play on computer games at home and parents came to me and said, it would be great if my child or my children could join in and play together because there’s no other way for my child to play. It’s, um, you know, can’t ride a bike, can’t play football, can’t play netball, they can’t play tiddlywinks physically so there, there was nothing, no way to interact. You add the fact that these children were non-speaking and making friends and playing with grandma, granddad, brothers, sisters etcetera, was impossible. So they said, where else can we go for, you know, you helped them with the education, the communication, where else can we go? And I looked around and, and there was nowhere, there’s nowhere which had the kind of specialist skills that you need if you’ve got someone with a severe physical disability and you want to help them to achieve something using technology. Basically I knew that video games could be a way to help those children play and not just play but to play on a level playing field because if you give someone the right access to technology, then they can play their brother and sister and beat them which is something that is really, really difficult in any other form of play for children with disabilities. So basically having found that there was nowhere else to go, then I just decided well I am just going to have to do it myself. And at that point, I mean I was Deputy Director of a national organisation, very, very happy but then I realised, hang on a minute, this is a big, important gap, um, that I could help to fill and, uh, I just decided right I am going to start a charity to do that. Um, I’m not a particularly confident person but I’d been fortunate enough to have collaborated with a company in Sweden back in 2003, called Tobii to turn their gaze analysis system, which is used for market research as psychological testing, I was lucky enough to get in touch with them to actually discuss the idea of turning that into something instead of receiving information from someone or reading some information, the person being in control using eye movement and basically to cut a long story short, they sent over a little piece of software and then they realised, hang on a minute, there’s a new market here using this technology for people with severe physical challenges and basically to cut a long story short, they sent a coder across. We designed the interface together, then they started marketing it and now they are a very, very big successful company. A global company and it was kind of the confidence that that gave me, if you like, goodness me, I’ve helped to, to make this happen that made me think well actually maybe I can make a global difference in this way which kind of gave me the confidence to go for it. I was lucky enough to get a job at, uh, University of East London and basically did that for four years while I was building up the charity. Turning it from the kind of organisation where we were looking for funds, desperate for funds because you were mentioning before that with all the newspapers at that time around 2007 it was all headlines like this, front page – Murder by PlayStation, Driven to Kill by Call of Duty, Gaming is as addictive as Heroin – those were what the kind of headlines were saying.
Elliot Moss
You were talking about the serendipity or the, the confidence moment when you reached out and the Swedish company were working on this thing.
Elliot Moss
How did you, just as a quick aside, the eye control thing.
Mick Donegan
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
That’s a very specific area…
Mick Donegan
Yes.
Elliot Moss
…to get into. How did you just briefly, become so obsessed with the power of eye control to enable people to do what they wanted?
Mick Donegan
Yep, I, I became obsessed by it because I was working in a, um, I, I worked in all kinds of schools but mainstream schools, specialist schools and I was working in a school with children with severe physical challenges at that time and a lot of these children it was very effortful. At that time the children who’d got, a lot of people, a lot of children, well adults as well who have physical disabilities, some of them do sit still you know, and, and they can use eye gaze a lot easier. I was working with a lot of children who had conditions like athetoid cerebral palsy but basically that means it’s cerebral palsy but with a lot of involuntary movements.
Elliot Moss
A lot of movement, yeah.
Mick Donegan
Absolutely. So asking those children to use the technology at the time, or to either sit still to use it, the existing gaze tracker or, to have the control to press switches or grab a joystick, was really difficult for them and I just noticed if the child wanted to say something to you, any of the children I was working with wanted to say something. Say if they were fed up with what they were doing and they wanted to go out the door whether it was to go to the loo or lunch or just a break, they would make that very clear. It didn’t matter what their head was doing, their eyes were fixed on that exit.
Elliot Moss
It’s the eyes, yeah.
Mick Donegan
And I was thinking, hang on a minute, the eye control is use… is working independently of the movement of their body.
Elliot Moss
And, and then just, and then in terms of that being developed and I’m, you know, you obviously work with people who are very severely physically limited.
Mick Donegan
Yes.
Elliot Moss
I have friends who have been, you know, paralysed from the neck down, tetraplegics…
Mick Donegan
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
…and all that and then unfortunately seen people in Intensive Care and you are literally unable to move.
Mick Donegan
Absolutely.
Elliot Moss
That power of being and, and just go on the website and have a look, whether you’ve got motor neurone disease…
Mick Donegan
Yes.
Elliot Moss
…and I’ve seen some young people with that or whether you’ve, one of the kids I read about had a car accident, his father was talking very eloquently about that.
Mick Donegan
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
It is life changing to be able to…
Mick Donegan
Yeah, yes.
Elliot Moss
…look up from your bed and actually with the movement of your eye or a blink to move the, click the curser. Extraordinary.
Mick Donegan
Absolutely, yeah.
Elliot Moss
I mean how have you, through the time that you have changed people’s lives, Mick, how have you managed your own emotional regulation?
Mick Donegan
With great difficulty I, I, um, I, I, still, I mean I’ll probably tear up at some point just talking about it. Seriously. Uh, but, videos that we’ve, of people that we’ve helped and I’m giving a talk and I have to really work hard to hold it back. It, it, you know, the transformation that you can make to people’s lives is, is, you are right, it is life transforming and…
Elliot Moss
Well it’s binary, you can’t communicate and you can’t involve and you can’t engage and then you can.
Mick Donegan
Absolutely. Exactly. And what happened was we started, yeah, so basically I, I, you know, gaze tracking is a big part of what we do and a big part of what we bring to all of the people that we help. We started with access to video games, the charity started with that. Then what happened was initially it was someone called Matt Hampson who was playing for the England Under 21’s, Rugby team, um, he was with Leicester Tigers. He, uh, a scrum collapsed, he had a spinal injury and we were asked to help him. Uh, this is way back and it was about 20 years ago and we helped him, uh, to use technology and we used at the time, gaze tracking had just come through the system that I’d helped develop. It was a great big screen etcetera but I managed to fight through, my way through the rest of the Leicester Tigers to get to his bedside in Intensive Care.
Elliot Moss
He’s much bigger than he sounds this Dr Mick fellow.
Mick Donegan
(laughs) Yeah.
Elliot Moss
He’s a big unit, big unit.
Mick Donegan
(laughs) But basically we, we you know, we started using technology with him. What happened then, somebody heard me give a talk and they had a friend whose son was in hospital, um, and he was in Intensive Care and I suddenly realised, hang on a minute there’s a gap here. We went to, you know, where there’s people in Intensive Care who are unable to communicate, we went and helped this lad right, Rob his name was and his parents, his family and he were desperate for him to have some kind of entertainment. He’d been lying in bed for weeks by that time. The hospital didn’t...
Elliot Moss
He was meant to go to York to do PPE, is it that one?
Mick Donegan
Absolutely, exactly. Absolutely.
Elliot Moss
Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
Mick Donegan
Yep, yep, absolutely and what happened was, we tried to get into the hospital so we could help him using this technology that I’d, well that I’d helped develop but unfortunately it was something that hadn’t happened before at the hospital, so it took us, it was, I think he’d been in that hospital for about six weeks before we actually managed to get in and help him. But the difference that it made, honestly, we, we were sort of, um, I, I managed to get someone to modify a golf game so that he could play using his eye movement. Uh, he’d played, um, draughts and chess with his dad. He was, he was a rugby player and you know, as well as a very bright guy and he was desperate to compete apart from anything else. He had got a whole stack of friends who he wanted to, uh, communicate with through email etcetera, and he was a very good eye gaze user. You know, it was a high spinal injury so basically he is in effect paralysed from the neck downwards with a ventilator, he was able to speak eventually but initially when you are on a ventilator and it…
Elliot Moss
You can’t.
Mick Donegan
…yeah you, you can’t, uh, quite often until you get used to it and they have to fit a cuff and then you can only speak for a little while. So communication as well as leisure and entertainment.
Elliot Moss
All in one.
Mick Donegan
Exactly.
Elliot Moss
All in one, and we’re going to hear lots, lots more about this but I’d urge you to go on the website, um, it’s impossible not to be very moved very quickly but also you will see just how much work goes into making these things a reality, making this technology work and adapting which I am going to talk about a lot more with my Business Shaper today, it’s Dr Mick, as his friends call him, Mick Donegan and he’s the Founder of SpecialEffect. Right now though we’re going to go to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Lydia Kellett invites Business Founders to share their practical advice and industry insights for those of you thinking about starting your very own thing, whether that’s for profit or whether it’s a social enterprise, whether it’s a charity. In this clip we hear from Dr Max Munford, Co-Founder and CEO of OSSTEC, the MedTech company on a mission to transform orthopaedic surgery through cutting edge 3D printing technology.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers, lucky you, on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again if you pop ‘Jazz Shapers’ into your podcast platform of choice. I personally am agnostic, do whatever you want. My guest today is Dr Mick Donegan, MBE, the Founder and CEO of SpecialEffect, a charity helping people with severe physical disabilities access and enjoy video games and so much more. I mentioned the gaming thing and we talked about that paradigm of they are bad for you. You’ve obviously collaborated very closely with the gaming world.
Mick Donegan
Yes.
Elliot Moss
Whether it’s Microsoft, whether it’s Sony, um, that must be the key to this because if they’re not in then you’re just consistently and constantly working from the outside.
Mick Donegan
Yep.
Elliot Moss
How have you managed to collaborate? How, what’s been the secret?
Mick Donegan
Yeah what we’ve done is we, I just decided that we weren’t going to just go straight to them and, and make a point by tub thumping, you know, by campaigning. So I, my attitude is the opposite to that and that was to be a catalyst for a change and to make that, that a smooth transition really rather than any confrontation. So basically, um, the idea was just to show what can be done, just to show. So we shared videos to show what we were doing and then offered to speak to the games industry. Uh, so basically what we did was we actually worked with people with disabilities and we hacked our way into their systems. It was all very safe, I had a very, very good technical specialist who was doing the modifications for us. But we would do, you know, for example, we, we took, uh, a game pad, that’s the controller to bits and then made a few sockets in there so that we could plug alternative kinds of joysticks that you could control with your chin and different switches that you could, for the buttons, uh, five buttons that you could put on any part of the body that you wanted. So we were able to do that safely.
Elliot Moss
And then showed them what you’d done?
Mick Donegan
Showed them what we had done.
Elliot Moss
And what did they then say? Great? What, did they then, what did you want from them?
Mick Donegan
Well, basically what happened eventually is that they then invited us to collaborate. It was an offer, you know, to join them in designing interfaces that would make physical access to their games easier.
Elliot Moss
Easier.
Mick Donegan
So, you know, initially it was Xbox. There, there’s an adaptive controller, that’s a special interface box that you can plug your, uh, switches these buttons that you can use any part of your body with and, any kind of special joystick, so it just gives, um, it enables a lot more people using a lot more devices…
Elliot Moss
To access.
Mick Donegan
…to play their games.
Elliot Moss
And, and in general the point about adaptive technologies or rather technologies that enable the world to adapt and the user at the centre of things. We often, people say, the user experience in general is, start with the user, devise the experience.
Mick Donegan
Yeah, exactly.
Elliot Moss
It sounds like that’s exactly what you do.
Mick Donegan
Exactly. It’s a bit like being a tailor, if you imagine, and, and you can’t, for people with more complex disabilities, if it’s, if it’s less severe then there are, you know, there are things on the shelves and we have training material, training videos that we put out there so that a lot of people are going to be able to learn what they could buy and what they could get and how to solve their problems without us being involved. The more complex cases, you do need specialists and I’m lucky enough my background is in education, we’ve got, uh, specialist occupational therapists, specialist speech and language therapists and we offer a lifelong service as well to those people. So we, we start them off by doing an assessment with that team for their, you know, what they, we find out what game they want to play, we find out which parts of the body are the most effective and safest to use because we don’t want them to get RSI in any part of their body so it’s, it’s highly specialised and then what we do is we find the right equipment and then as I say, we offer a lifelong service because assistive, you know, the kind of special technology, the assistive technology that will change and develop. New games will come out or different versions of them and their condition will change. We work with people, for example, who have something like cerebral palsy so they’ll, the, they’ll have a long life ahead and physically they will change. Sometimes, you know, they’ll get stronger and the muscular movements, you know, bigger and longer, and, and, you know, more powerful. You know, sometimes it might a progressive condition, that’s a condition like motor neurone disease, muscular dystrophy, spinal muscular atrophy where, you know, they, they might change for another reason.
Elliot Moss
But basically I’m going to re-name you,
Mick Donegan
Oh sorry.
Elliot Moss
No, no, no, not to stop you, re-name you Dr Mick the Iterator.
Mick Donegan
(laughs). Yeah.
Elliot Moss
I mean that’s essentially, he’s the iterator in chief, um, and he’s, um, he’s my Business Shaper today, Founder of SpecialEffect, a charity helping people with severe physical disabilities access and enjoy video games and so much more. The team that comes up with this.
Mick Donegan
Yes.
Elliot Moss
Yeah, um, people often talk about innovation and what’s the secret. What is the secret Mick? For you and how have you managed to have these little breakthroughs. Is it simply as I mentioned, the iteration and the playing and the try this, try that or is there something a bit more methodical than that?
Mick Donegan
Yeah, well. It’s a case of realising that there’s a need and looking around and seeing if we can fill it. Or, if someone asks us, you know, to collaborate with them on, on making something more accessible, whether it be a games developer to make their actual game more accessible to more players or whether it’s someone, I mean we helped Logitech for example, when they saw the, uh, adaptive controller come out and that you could plug all these switches etcetera in, they then involved us and others in developing a switch kit, um, what they call an adaptive switch kit so…
Elliot Moss
How many people are in this team? Is it, because I, again I hate big committees of people trying to solve problems. I’m hoping you are going to say Elliot, it’s a small number of us and then we try lots of things.
Mick Donegan
Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
Elliot Moss
Is that correct?
Mick Donegan
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
Phew.
Mick Donegan
Yeah and, and it’s like, basically like the whole idea, you know, was to have a smaller ship. If you imagine, you know, with me at the tiller or what, you know, hope, well hopefully anyway that, that the rest of the team…
Elliot Moss
Captain Mick, he’s still there.
Mick Donegan
…wouldn’t agree but, but, but to see an opportunity and then if you’ve got you know, even if the, if the team are worked off their feet which actually we’re getting busier all the time, then if there’s a great opportunity comes up that could be, uh, transform, we could use the skills and the experience that we’ve got to actually create something that will change the world if you like, or have a global impact, then that is something that’s worth doing.
Elliot Moss
And are you still a really good spotter of what’s going to be transformative? So you know, hold on, don’t do that, that’s the one?
Mick Donegan
Yeah, not me, I really on my, well a discussion with my colleagues and one of my sons, Bill, he runs the R&D department, our R&D department and he’s the man who decides, you know, whether or not something is a good investment of our time or not.
Elliot Moss
And how does he know?
Mick Donegan
Because of lots and lots of experience of his own, um, and he’s a, he’s a specialist in design as well so he’s, he’s, um, the person who very much comes up with the ideas, like for example, as well as leading the collaboration with Xbox and Sony and Liberator and helping EA to make, uh, FC 2025 more accessible etcetera, as well as that, he’s also able to be creative with our own resources that we produce. And what we learn basically, uh, we’ve got a specialist team, if something is really complex and they live in this country, we can actually visit them, assess them or work with them online and tailor make the system that they want. If it is somebody beyond that or someone with a less complex disability, he’s the one who is behind the training resources that we make available and I, I’ve actually got – sorry I knocked the microphone – but yeah, we’ve actually got, we, we had a look online at who’s doing what but out of 195 countries in the world, over 130 of them are actually looking at our training resources, you know, these training videos. So there’s people all over the world who are benefitting from what we know. But with regards what we do, Bill is the person behind that and one of the things that he’s come up with, um, is something called Eye Gaze Games. We realise there is a gap, you know, for people who can only use gaze control because you can’t fully access the complex games no matter what kind of physical interface you’ve got, switches or whatever but he realised, hang on a minute, let’s, let’s have some, you know, a suite of games that aren’t too complex but are going to be challenging for people, you know, children and adults and we’ve got versions of, you know, four in a row, we’ve got chess, um, as well as some new games as well.
Elliot Moss
But all eye control.
Mick Donegan
All eye control as well as other forms of control as well, you know, so in other words I can talk and whether it’s switches, joystick, head movement, whatever.
Elliot Moss
It’s basically, it’s all going on with Dr Mick. There’s no stopping him, this team just go, they make it up as they go along because the human condition changes and they adapt and how brilliant is that. Stay with me for my final chat today with Dr Mick Donegan and we have some Hot 8 Brass Band for you too. What a treat. That’s, oh, coming up in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
Dr Mick Donegan, Founder of SpecialEffect, is my Business Shaper just for a few more minutes and apart from improving the human condition, a small thing that you do with your team. Obviously look, what were you ideally, in the ideal world, what, what happens in terms of money and an awareness. What would you love to see going on in the next five years so that you can bring even more of your amazing technology to people that need it.
Mick Donegan
That, that, it’s a really good question. Really, as we were saying, there are about 30 of us, we’re managing, just, to be able to meet the growing need. I mean, in, in the work that we do in Intensive Care for example, um, mainly with people using gaze tracking, uh, for those people with strokes, spinal injuries whether it be a car crash etcetera, um, we, we, our team will actually go out in person and help people in Intensive Care. So that’s a very, very labour intensive and then following them from then onwards as I say.
Elliot Moss
And it takes time.
Mick Donegan
It takes time.
Elliot Moss
Everything goes in slow motion in Intensive Care.
Mick Donegan
Exactly, absolutely and obviously the equipment that we loan, we, we don’t ask for it back for those people in Intensive Care, uh, um, so and, and you’re talking about gaze tracking computers quite often, you know, lifelong loan. That is, um, there, there…
Elliot Moss
Not cheap.
Mick Donegan
Not cheap.
Elliot Moss
How much is a piece of kit like that?
Mick Donegan
Um, a piece of kit like that you are talking about somewhere in the region of, of around £5,000 for that and then there is obviously the time it takes to support but basically we are managing at the moment by charging around doing our best. The number of hospitals, we started off with one hospital obviously, that was the one that Rob was at. But now year on year there are more hospitals throughout the UK, they are asking for help. Mainly England and Wales but there were forty hospitals out there who are getting in touch with us now. If they have someone in Intensive Care finding it difficult to communicate for example, we will go out there and do our best because physically the, the hospital are doing wonders obviously with, you know, helping the person physically and helping them to recover etcetera but what we find is that psychologically they are plummeting, those individuals are plummeting.
Elliot Moss
Yeah.
Mick Donegan
They are unable to have any control, unable to speak, no control over their lives so, so what we do is we find a way for then to be able to communicate, we find a way to be able to engage, maybe Netflix they might want, WhatsApp etcetera, you know, emails etcetera.
Elliot Moss
Whatever it is.
Mick Donegan
Reading a book, whatever it is that they want to do, we customise that set up for them.
Elliot Moss
But in order to, in order to help more people you need more money, you need more hospitals, you need more gaming companies that, I mean, I am just saying, if in an ideal world.
Mick Donegan
In an ideal world.
Elliot Moss
All of those things.
Mick Donegan
Yeah absolutely it, you know, we, we, we raise, basically the way we raise funds is just by offering people opportunities to support us and, and they can if they want to and if they do, we say a big thank you and mean it. As I say, it’s, it’s not a great business plan, nobody should come to me for advice about how to run a business but that, that was my idea, you know, if, if you’re doing something that’s important enough and you persuade people that it’s important enough and you prove it’s important enough, they’ll want to come to you so, in other words we’re not, we’re not at a market at the front there shouting about our wares, we’re the ones at the back.
Elliot Moss
And, and are the people coming to you including the gaming companies? Are they playing ball?
Mick Donegan
Absolutely. We, we, they are, you know, we are getting more and more support from the games companies.
Elliot Moss
Because that obviously, once they start doing things with their actual kit that they sell and the games that are, that are, you know, the response are accessible, you’ve changed, you’ve got millions of people…
Mick Donegan
Yeah, yeah.
Elliot Moss
…who are affected.
Mick Donegan
Exactly but as I say, we don’t, as I say, our intellectual property such as it is, is anybody’s, you know, we don’t…
Elliot Moss
It’s an open source for you.
Mick Donegan
… we have to, yeah absolutely, it’s not an income source, that’s really important but in, in, because otherwise if you say well we’re getting, you know, such and such a percentage of this joystick that we helped develop, people are just, they’ll just say, well I know the reason why you are recommending that joystick so, um, you know, but also the joy of this job is, is giving advice to someone and them trusting it. And that’s, that’s worth a lot.
Elliot Moss
I mean I was going to ask, the joy is in your eyes and, and, um, and that’s obvious Mick because it is sort of a calling. I imagine you’ll never stop?
Mick Donegan
Well, I, we’ll see. We’re still coming up, I might have stopped already.
Elliot Moss
Well your team, I was looking at the, the 2007 you started, you’re 18 years old this year, you’re really, you know, you’re merely a teenager in business, in kind of the charity terms. I thought what’s going on, what is the, is the teenager experience in going places as a business, is that what’s happening, and I know you may be a little older but, but the charity itself is quite young.
Mick Donegan
Yeah it is and, and as we’re, I think, more or less every other charity the pandemic hit, hit everyone, you know, hit all of the charities, uh, because events, and we rely a lot on events and, uh, fundraising. Those, you know, you could only run those online. People were great in supporting us online but there’s a limit to how much you can raise if you are online so we are gradually continuing to come out of that dip if you like that happened during the pandemic. So we’re, we’re getting back to where we were and that’s partly why I’m staying, to keep this ship steady and also because I’m loving it and while I’m loving it…
Elliot Moss
I was going to say you look like you’re loving it.
Mick Donegan
Well yeah and, and I mean, and while there is still that need out there, it’s really important. I mean, what we do is basically we bridge, one, if, if people haven’t understood a word I’ve said so far, if they imagine that we’re bridging a gap basically. We’re bridging a gap within the games industry because there are lots of people who wanted to play their games and yet a lot of people couldn’t so we bridged that gap…
Elliot Moss
Yeah, you’ve enabled them.
Mick Donegan
…in those people’s lives, people are in Intensive Care for example, and physically being looked after, psychologically finding it really difficult so we’re bridging that gap as a charity and the third, which I haven’t even spoken about yet but maybe on another occasion, is a project that started because there’s a gap, that’s called Bubble Busters and that is where we are providing little robots.
Elliot Moss
Little robots to sit on the classroom thing while you’re…
Mick Donegan
Absolutely.
Elliot Moss
But, and we’re going to have to wrap up, also I just want to say, apart from the MBE, you guys have won a Bafta Special Award.
Mick Donegan
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
I mean there you go. So now I’ve got a Bafta Award Winner here, I’ve got an MBE and he’s a doctor. Wow, I mean in certain families this man would not be, he would just be celebrated. We’d be lifting him above us and going wow, it’s Dr Mick. Listen you have been absolutely, it’s been an absolute pleasure because I, I just love that the, love the purpose of what you do is so powerful and so important. Just before I let you disappear to go and save, help more people, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Mick Donegan
Basically quite simply my whole life I realised has been dedicated to try and include as many people as possible and as many activities as possible and here’s a song basically that everybody can join in.
Elliot Moss
And it is Camp Callaway with Minnie The Moocher.
Mick Donegan
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
Camp Callaway with Minnie The Moocher, the song choice of my Business Shaper today Dr Mick Donegan. Talk about inclusivity, that’s exactly what he said that song was all about and it is at the core of what he’s been trying to do most of his life. A catalyst for change versus confrontation, his model of driving collaboration with a huge industry called the gaming world. The sense of constant change and having to tailor make the technology around the individual – how good is that as a general lesson for anything that you do in the world of business. And if it’s that good, he said, they will want to come to you. That sense of making your product fit with the market, the business will take care of itself if it’s that good. That’s it from Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
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