Autumn is certainly the conference season. If you’ve trooped round Le Radio, NAB Europe and The Digital Radio Show, all in the last week, you’re probably feeling like you’ve had enough death by powerpoint, and thinly disguised sales pitches for “strategic consultancy”.
But let me encourage you to come to a conference with a difference. Well, many differences in fact.
Radio At The Edge (RATE) is the radio conference which looks at how technology is changing the business of radio today, and what the leading-edge trends are that we could be exploiting in the coming year(s). This is where we discuss the new world order, whether the new world order has in fact already collapsed in a heap, and if the new world order is a complete load of rubbish and we should all go back to sending status updates as smoke signals and poking using sharp sticks. And leave tweeting up to birds.
So it’s not your normal, dull, play-16-songs-in-a-row-and-have-nice-jingles type radio conference.
It’s also darned good value as radio conferences go. £200 for a day’s worth of high value information, and a fair amount of entertainment too. With names like Iain Lee, Richard Herring, Andrew Collins, you’d pay for the comedy alone – if it wasn’t also that the bill includes the world’s most tech-literate reporter and prolific blogger, Rory Cellan-Jones, Peter Davies (Head of Radio from OFCOM), and Leo Laporte – Chief TWiT.
Lastly, there’s drinking at the end, and drinking in a proper pub, with proper beer – not a god-awful overpriced chain hotel dribbling sad pints of generic beer at a crowded bar staffed by communication-challenged staff. Did I mention I’d been to NAB Europe this week?
So I can’t recommend it enough, other than to say you should probably attend for the novelty of being at a conference on radio’s future that I’m not talking at – but my good colleague Robin Pembrooke most certainly is.
Radio At The Edge, Monday 10th November, Westminster. All the details and that all important registration form are here http://www.radioattheedge.com/
Photo (CC) This guy is boring by Narisa at Flickr
Hat tip to Andy on my team, for pointing out that it’s not this Monday…