Chancellor, Lord Lieutenant, High Sheriff and elected representatives from the County and Town Councils, Prince Oyinlola, honorary graduands and honorary graduates, Sir John Brigstocke and members of Council, the Reverend Kevin Ashby , old friends, parents and - most importantly – new graduates, thank you for coming to this ceremony. Buckingham 2008 Today is a very special day. After a serious period of serious study, which for many of our students has been in a foreign country, often speaking a foreign language, our students are graduating here today, and you have come – from all four corners of the world - to support them. Buckingham 2013 When I was asked to give this speech, many thoughts went through my mind, uppermost of which was ‘what shoes shall I wear?'. My next thoughts concerned my hair. At this point you may be wondering if you are listening to the right speech. I may be a professor, but that doesn't stop me wondering about my shoes and my hair. StA 2013 600 years is a very long time. How many institutions, companies, countries even, have been around for 600 years? Not many. StA 2012 One thing is certain: the world in 150 years will be a very different place. We will shortly produce 50 zetabytes of new information a year. A zetabyte is a billion terrabytes, and a terabyte hard drive of storage costs about £50. We will, then, soon create each year new information that needs 50 billion, £50 hard drives of storage. Salford 2013 The university is clean, secure, and well-managed, thanks to the efforts of porters, cleaners, secretaries, administrators, and a host of others. The lights are on, the labs and seminar rooms are warm. There are coal miners in eastern Poland whom we will never meet, and who will never know to what they contributed – but without them the wheels would not have turned, the lights would not have burned, and none of the functions that we perform in this university would have been possible. So every success that happens here is their success too. StA 2013 I am not advocating that we all chuck in our day jobs and aim to become the next signing for Chelsea or JK Rowling – although I do occasionally toy with the thought myself. I suppose all I'm really trying to say is that you may be happy to have been here, you may be happy to be leaving. There may be people you will always keep in touch with and others you will be happy to see the back of. Whichever one it is, it's over now, and the only thing you can really do is try to do better in the future. I will leave you with some lines from a song I can frequently be heard singing as I go about my work. I nearly went with Aerosmith and 'I don't wanna miss a thing', but decided that didn't quite fit, so instead I conclude with: Get on up when you're down  Baby, take a good look around  I know it's not much, but it's okay  Keep on moving on anyway. StA 2013