Recently my job has taken me to Rotherham, Leeds, London and Cambridge. How glamorous I hear you say. The meeting with the Music Factory guys was simply inspiring. I took a look at u-xplore. Wow. Andy describes this as as a solution that "helps connect the business community of today with the business community of tomorrow". While I was there, they had tiny tots in a recording studio singing the Scooby-Doo song. Surreal.

My journey from Rotherham to Leeds to see Yorkshire Forward should have taken approx 40 minutes. Engrossed in phone conversations about a possible tie up with MS, BT and iCentrum in the West Midlands, I trusted sat nav to take me there. Then it dawned on my that the RDA's HQ was unlikely to be in a row of terraced houses. Anyway, when I finally did get there an hour later, I had a good chat with Robert at YF about regional innovation, how we attract more local ISV's into our SaaS and BT programs (to help them reach more customers) and how we increase use of IT in small biz. They're about to publish a report that shows the high % of "not connecteds" so there's clearly an opportunity for bundled hosted solutions and Office Live.

Robert told me about some things the RDA are doing to help - like the ICT Directory and innovation centres with the Universities. They're proposing a heavy investment in infrastructure. Sunderland won the recent Digital Challenge and £3m to spend 'digitally enabling' their community. If you're curious about the investment by your area, and how IT is being used to tackle socio-economic issues, read more on the top ten submissions from the regions.

Spent time with a great bunch of innovators at a Partnering for the Future roundtable today at our research centre in Cambridge (which I found despite sat nav getting v confused by a road closure) and had a great debate on the impact of Web 2.0 and 'next gen' partnerships. Folks there include the wonderful Tom "the web is all about sex and shopping" Keane from Nitrosell, Sally Ernst from Sinocode who help ISV's and enterprises access skills in China, and serial entrepreneur Ben Way. Ben, together with Nigel (who has just left his job at FT.com), will be launching the fabulous Horsesmouth soon. I just love their concept: "someone needs what you know; someone knows what you need". Best of luck to them with that. Also contributing to the debate were Graeme from Caspian, Cary from Mydeo and Rob from Lightmaker who have built some really sexy sites. Not forgetting Cscape and the award-winning AWS.

A truly great week for innovation - all across the UK. Next stop...........Edinburgh and Scottish Enterprise on Wednesday. No sat nav required this time.