Lincoln Bedeau

Lincoln Bedeau came to the UK in 1973 as a child, from the West Indies. His father, a teacher, had to retrain and took labouring jobs while studying; when offered a job in CMK with accommodation, the family moved to Bradville in MK. At primary school, Lincoln was the only black child, but he got on well with everybody. He enjoyed the relaxed style at Stantonbury Campus and began to discover entrepreneurial skills, selling sandwiches to friends. He persuaded his parents that Business was the career for him and was allowed to leave sixth-form and do a Business Studies Course at College.  He then began a varied career, initially in estate agency, where he excelled and set up his own agency. His entrepreneurial skills later took him into IT, as he recognised the growing importance of the internet. In 2004, he encountered askMK.com, a new internet directory, in his then marketing role. As a customer, he appreciated their drive to succeed and joined the company, because of his IT knowledge and experience. A couple of years later, he took  over the company, and transformed it into a video on demand company, AskMKTV, after filming the Ground Breaking Ceremony at the Dons’ Stadium for Pete Winkelman.

Having taken over AskMKTV, Lincoln was happy to take risks and passionate about promoting MK. However, his early attempts to collaborate with other media organisations like the Citizen and MKNews were not successful: newspapers did not see the benefits of combining different media at that stage. As AskMKTV successfully grew its private sector clients, proving its worth. They won a ‘Spark! business award’, Spark! being a University- and government-funded programme working with innovative businesses. They filmed many MK events like Willen Hospice’s Midnight Moo, the IF Festival, and MK City Orchestra: all ‘freebies’, to promote MK. He says: ‘We were about anything that’s good: if we could support it, we would be there at our own cost.’ His good relationship with Pete Winkelman led to him filming the Queen’s visit to the opening of the Stadium.

However, the economic crash and austerity saw a rapid decline in the projects he was offered both by public and private sector clients. With regret, in 2015 he decided he had to dissolve AskMK. Looking back over his 11years at AskMK, Lincoln is really proud of being part of the development of MK at that time. As well as high profile pioneers like Pete Winkelmann, or John Cove, he points out that there are many lower profile people, opening restaurants and small businesses, and he is part of all that… ‘building things that weren’t there before.’ Lincoln says leading AskMK was: ‘an amazing journey’, taking over the company on the death of its founder and building its success. Finally Lincoln makes it clear that he doesn’t define success in terms of money: ‘success is doing what makes you happy… and makes you free’.  Lincoln is very grateful to all the many people who have helped him achieve his success: ‘they know who they are’. And finally he says: ‘Milton Keynes is my home… the best place in the world.’