Corvid-19 🦇 (sic)

Z/Yen people are concerned about the health of our colleagues, friends, families, and selves. We are undertaking a number of initiatives that might be of interest to others:

Collaborative Projects

• Cov-ID proposal for a covid-19 individual health passport
• Professor Michael Mainelli was one of the initiators, and judges, of the Pandemic Challenge to identify radical technologies to combat covid-19
• Z/Yen worked with the Worshipful Company of World Traders and a major bank to send several containers of personal protective equipment in a container from Antwerp to China in February, totalling approximately $500,000 worth of personal protective equipment (PPE)
• Z/Yen helped the city of Xi'an donate some 20,000 face masks to a London care home facility
• Professor Mike Smith's offer of application of youthinmind for assessing people's mental health in quarantine, isolation, and physical distancing remains open for people to use for free in large-scale mental health work - watch "Telepsychiatry - Mental Health Assessment And Diagnosis In The Time Of Covid-19"
• Z/Yen has tabled a proposal for the use of a prototype identity infrastructure and central bank digital currency for Covid-19 UK Cash Distribution, as well as the use of common tenders to stimulate credit currencies, in emulation of the Swiss WIR
• Z/Yen made a bold proposal for "Chair Miles" on 1 April

Research & Analysis

• Z/Yen's covid-19 bulletin focuses on 'deep news' - if you wish to receive this weekly, sign up here
• Working with Henry Price of SI Units, developed a naive modelling and data site for covid-19 analysis, described in this Pamphleteer article, Post-Covid-19 Calcs - Beat The SEIR In Forty Days: Naïvely Modelling COVID-19, 11 April 2020, Michael Mainelli & Henry Price
• Pamphleteers running articles on longer-term economic implications:
  • In Safe Hands – The Future Of Financial Services After Covid-19, 28 May 2020,Patricia Lustig & Gill Ringland
  • How Covid-19 Affects The Future Of London, 18 May 2020, Patricia Lustig & Gill Ringland
  • The Impact Of Covid-19 On “A Tale Of Two Middle Classes”, 11 May 2020, Patricia Lustig & Gill Ringland
  • Post Covid-19 Calcs - Has Financial Services Lost Purpose & Plot?, 1 May 2020, Paul Taffinder
  • Naïve Modelling and COVID-19, 21 Apr 2020, Christopher Gleadle
  • The Cold Equations - Covid-19: When The Value Of Statistical Life Changes All Our Lives, 20 April 2020, Mark Freeman & Ben Groom
  • Post-Covid-19 Calcs - Beat The SEIR In Forty Days: Naïvely Modelling COVID-19, 11 April 2020, Michael Mainelli & Henry Price
  • Post-Covid-19 Crisis: Making Up The Differences, 6 April 2020, Chris Yapp
  • Post-Covid-19 Calcs - Forgotten Finance, 03 April 2020, Michael Mainelli & Paul Taffinder
  • Foresight In The Time Of Covid-19: Prediction And Uncertainty, 2 April 2020, Patricia Lustig & Gill Ringland
• Professor Will Ayliffe and Professor Michael Mainelli began an unusual project back in 2006 to rescue the St Barts Pathology Laboratory collection that has turned out to have relevance for covid-19 research into the relationship with Kawasaki disease
• Professor Michael Mainelli has even restarted a 2003 book project he had to abandon in 2005 due to his Gresham College role, an educational thriller to help people understand pensions based on a plot involving a flu virus vaccine and digital fiat currency, "The Pension Plan" (honestly, he really began writing it then)

Home Working

• Z/Yen CommunityZ have held well over 1,500 events over 25 years. The programme has had online webinars since 2005, but the webinar programme is now greatly expanded.
• Z/Yen was one of the UK's first 'virtual' firms in 1994, and lauded as a rare, case study, example of putting the theory of the virtual office into extensive practice (Real Estate In Corporate Strategy, Chapter 20: Z/Yen Ltd, Marion Weatherhead, Macmillan, 1997). Using established technologies such as ISDN, mobile telephony, computerised telephone switching, voicemail, wide-area-networking, electronic mail and the Internet ("no wizardry", as Weatherhead put it), people who work the Z/Yen way are probably more readily accessible to clients and colleagues than most traditional office-based staff. We are now experimenting more with the cultural side, virtual kitchen and coffee meetings, management styles, and the range of video services moving from Skype, Zoom, Teams, and GoToWebinar to exploring Panopto, Shindig, Jitsi, Bigmarker, Lifesize, Bluejeans, Webex, Hangouts, Facetime, and even TelePresence. In fact, it was work with Telepresence that inspires Chair Miles, "From Air Miles To Chair Miles".

Community Working

• Providing business, resident, and voter information for Broad Street Ward as part of the City of London Corporation's work
• NHS volunteering by several staff