Tony Wilson died early yesterday evening at Christie’s Hospital. Everybody in Manchester knew it was going to happen soon, but it doesn’t make the sadness of those who loved him and his work any less sharp.

Whilst this is a blog about innovation in software, the under current has always been about innovation in Manchester as well - and there are few people who can be described as an innovator in this city as much as Wilson can.

The tributes have started, and I’m sure I won’t be the only person to talk about encounters with him. Last time I met him was when he was having a meeting with my then-boss. It was about 11am and he was quite clearly off his tits - and said so - which made for a less than intelligent discussion. Many encounters you’ll hear first-hand about Tony seem to involve eccentricity, drugs, and occasionally a shade of darkness creeps in. Those stories rarely break out into public accounts of him. In a way, that’s a good thing: his work was never mediocre, never banal, and that’s a rarity these days in media.

The next few weeks of mourning are going to be the climax of this City’s obsession with a man who helped shape Mancunian identity over the last two decades. It will culminate in a collective prayer of “RIP” and then….

One of the barriers we have as a city in some ways, is that the only thing people outside the city have to talk about when the topic of Manchester comes up in conversation is the bands from Factory, the Hacienda and occasionally football.

I don’t think he’d be happy with that. He got involved in the political scene over the last few years and was an ardent campaigner of a regional assembly (notwithstanding the fact that for various reasons it was a flawed idea), and got very bothered about the future of the North West as a whole.

His ego aside (he was a self-confessed ego-maniac), I’m pretty sure that the last thing Wilson would have wanted is for the future of Manchester to be entirely about what *he* did here. I can already feel a pull in that direction - it’s been subtly happening for years, the Northern Quarter being a good example - but it’s the wrong way to decide a direction.

Yes, a cultural renaissance did happen here - one that impacted the entire globe - and one of the important sparks was Factory and Hacienda. Their spirit, like the spirit of Wilson himself, shouldn’t and won’t be forgotten. Whilst physically no longer with us, the memory of their achievements will colour our city’s culture for a long time to come, but they are not in themselves what the future is about.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is, we should collectively pay tribute to Wilson the way he paid tribute to Manchester: ask ourselves “what’s next?” and then give it a go.