A couple of years ago, I took part in a project with the thinktank Demos which led to a report called ‘The Edgeless University’. Most of the other participants were senior representatives of lobbies within the higher education world. At the end of a three hour seminar, I turned to Pete Bradwell and said, “That was like sitting with a group of record industry executives in 1999.”

It was a soundbite that went straight into the report. Two years on, the decade of disruption I anticipated seems truly underway - and others have picked up the music industry analogy, as in the text distributed at November’s student protests, ‘Education’s Napster Moment’.

It’s a theme to which I’ll be returning next month, in ‘The Edges & The Centre’, the Sunday keynote at the Transition Universities conference at Winchester University (Feb 5-6th). The organisers have asked me to address the relationship between the kinds of alternative ideas for the future of the university which will doubtless be bubbling up throughout the weekend, and the places in which policy is shaped and influenced.

As a starting point, I'm taking a text from an unlikely source - the evangelist for neoliberalism, Milton Friedman:

We do not influence the course of events by persuading people that we are right when we make what they regard as radical proposals. Rather, we exert influence by keeping options available when something has to be done at a time of crisis. ('Two Lucky People')

I want to talk about tactics. How do we make sure our radical proposals are real options, rather than wishful thinking? (Not necessarily under present conditions, but under conditions we have good reason to anticipate.) And how do we make sure these options are available to decision-makers at the point at which “something has to be done”?

It looks like being an excellent weekend. I’m looking forward to learning more about the conversations and projects already underway on the edges of Britain’s universities, and to finally meeting Ben Brangwyn from Transition Towns, who's speaking on the Saturday. Hopefully my contribution will be of some use to others trying to navigate - and even find the hopeful possibilities within - what we could well call “the end of the university as we know it”.