BSEEN (Birmingham Skills for Enterprise and Employability Network) web www.b-seen.org.uk

Ever been tempted by the thought of being your own boss? Brimming with entrepreneurial ideas? BSEEN is the scheme for you.

Insight Out offers free office space, bursaries and specialist training over a 6 month period.

The Graduate Enterprise Club meets once a month for workshops in marketing, PR, finance and many other areas, as well as providing opportunities for networking with industry professionals.

BSEEN is a new collaborative scheme between Birmingham City University, Aston and University of Birmingham.

For more information visit the website at www.b-seen.org.uk

Join the facebook group; Bseen NTI Birmingham

Don't forget to follow on Twitter @ b_seen

Light House The Chubb Buildings Fryer St Wolverhampton WV1 1HT t: 01902 716055 e: info@light-house.co.uk www.light-house.co.uk

Out of Hours is a regular networking and socialising event for people in the creative sector based in Wolverhampton and the West Midlands where you can make new contacts, keep up with old ones and find out what’s happening in the region. To reserve your place email: info@light-house.co.uk

OUT OF HOURS: ANIMATION
Thu 15 Jul, 6.30 – 9pm
Admission free

This evening’s event, run in conjunction with Animation Forum West Midlands, will begin with a screening of the best of FLIP 2009, a 35 minute programme of award winning films from across the world. This will be followed by a screening and talk from Light House Animator in Residence Drew Roper. Drew has just completed his first commercial commission in between stints on The Fantastic Mr Fox and Tim Burtons’ new Disney production. Drew will show his 3.5 minute stop motion short and the sets and puppet will be on display. Finally, there will be the official launch of this year’s Great Animation Challenge. All this and networking and drinks supplied courtesy of Animation Forum West Midlands http://light-house.co.uk/calendar/events-calendar/2010/06/out-of-hours-animation-2/

To keep up with all the latest news on FLIP Animation Festival 2010 contact us on flip@light-house.co.uk or visit the website

LIGHT HOUSE ARE NOW BOOKING FOR TRAINING COURSES...
http://light-house.co.uk/discover/training/

Contact Light House Box Office on 01902 716055 to book a place or for more information visit www.light-house.co.uk

Do you want to extend your contacts but don't know where to begin?
Do you worry about attending events and standing alone in a corner?

Fear not! This month's networking session will kick off with top tips on effective networking from business consultant, Carole Manship. Carole is a member of many networking groups and has extensive experience of not only building contacts but turning those business cards into productive working relationships. She is also the current chair of the Producers' Forum board.

After the presentation there will be a quick catch-up to find out what exciting projects people have planned for the summer and then we will hit the bar to test out our new networking skills.

This is a free event open to all, but spaces are limited so you must rsvp.

We look forward to seeing you there.

www.producersforum.org.uk : 0121 265 7145

You are invited to the following event:
Producers' Forum Networking - June 2010
Date: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 from 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM (GMT)
Location: MAC, Queens Ride, B12 9QH Birmingham

Can you attend this event? Respond Here

For more information click here

MAKING MOBILE MARKETING WORK

One day practical workshop
Presented by DMA and in partnership with Birmingham City University, Making Mobile Marketing Work is a one-day practical workshop demonstrating how to take mobile marketing beyond SMS. It shows you how to use a range of channels to create stimulating, effective and engaging marketing campaigns.

The approach is a practical one with the morning session utilising case studies and live demonstrations presented by both leading brands (including Orange, M&S and DirectGov) and mobile practitioners. The afternoon session will include break-out workshops to put campaign development into practice. Working with industry specialists, each participating company will identify ways the tools can be used to manage clients’ expectations, enhance business profiles and identify the best ways to generate and maintain interest.

This event will:

• Show how to engage and retain current customers
• Demonstrate the role of apps in direct marketing
• Illustrate the value of harnessing user generated content
• What lies ahead? The future for mobile marketing

Who should attend
This event is designed for any business looking to increase their knowledge and potential in the mobile channel from agency, operator and client-side, including: account and campaign management, marketing and sales and business development.

Date: Tuesday June 29, 2010
Time: 9.30am - 5.30pm
Venue: The Studio, 7 Cannon Street, Birmingham, B2 5EP www.studiovenues.co.uk/conference-venues/location.htm
Cost: DMA,ISP Members: £55 + VAT / Non-Members £65 + VAT

To Book:
Online: Click here to book
Phone: 0207 2913355 / 0121 202 4817
Web: www.dma.org.uk/training/evt-evitem.asp?id=5721&t=Making+Mobile+Marketing+Work+

Measuring the Unmeasurable: Digital Participation Seminar
Monday 19th July, 10am – 4pm, Birmingham City University, City North Campus, Baker Building.

This one-day seminar intends to provide a forum for discussion of the meaning and measurability of Digital Participation, focusing on the three main measurables promoted by the Digital Participation Consortium – Reach, Breadth, Depth.

It will include contributions from Ofcom, following publication of their initial statistics bulletin on digital participation. In addition, it will hear about the role of the UK Research Council funded Digital Economy Hub at Newcastle University and from the Arts Council and Audiences Central on the experience they have in measuring participation in the arts.

Speakers:
Paul Watson – Director, Digital Economy Hub for Inclusion through the Digital Economy
Catherine Bunting – Director of Research, Arts Council England
Alison Preston – Senior Research Associate, Ofcom
Vishalakshi Roy – Senior Business Development Manager, Audiences Central

Attendance:
The seminar would be of interest to academics from media and cultural studies or those working more broadly in ‘digital’. It is also of interest to policy-makers, activists, community media workers and social media advisors. To register FREE visit http://bcudigital.eventbrite.com/

Robin Valk
Midlands Calling? ... the new apps and opps for audio
www.radiotogo.co.uk

Robin introduced himself as a ‘Radio Dinosaur’, having worked in the industry for over 40 years starting in College Radio at URY in York. He then became a DJ for a radio station in Buffalo, New York, at the time one of the top 25 US Radio markets. Robin emphasised how striking the similarities between Buffalo and Birmingham were, at that time it was a big industrial area just like the Black Country. The station went from nowhere to Number 1 in the market while Robin was there, although it was nothing to do with him - it was due to a shift in listening from AM to FM wavebands among young listeners.

Robin argued that governments don’t control our use of media - what we listen to and where we listen to it. In fact we determine what is our favoured means of distribution. Texting on mobile phones, was an accident; the web was a by-product of a university communication device; yet both these services are examples of haphazard developments which have completely changed our lives.

In the seventies, the main Radio medium was the AM waveband, which is hardly used now; FM is where the better quality sound can be found. In Buffalo, the big shift for baby boomer listeners happened when WPHD–FM was the No.1 station in town with its Rock playlist. Several other stations then followed suit. For Robin, the US success was a helpful statistic to quote when he came back to the U.K., his currency had increased and just to rub it in, we were treated to a picture of what he looked like then, a rock star!

He therefore had a useful commodity to sell when BRMB opened, so much so that he then spent 20 years there; jobs don’t last that long anymore. Robin started as a Rock DJ and did that for 5 years before doing a late show for another 5 years. Halfway through his spell at BRMB, music scheduling software was introduced, and Robin dived into that with some success. When BRMB changed hands for the third time in its history, in 1993, Robin left to pursue a freelance career as a consultant.

This took him to Bulgaria and Scotland for some interesting times before coming back to Birmingham again to work for Pebble Mill for 5 years at Radio 2. He has since been consulting for other stations, in Sweden and Ireland where his working relationships continue to thrive. Robin joined RCS, the makers of Selector, working to their New York office as a help author and as part of the development teams for 10 years; they’ve now been taken over by Clear Channel. His most recent consultancies are with clients in Southampton, and a new client in the North of England next month.

At this point, Robin played us a video of a song he wanted us to consider, Tom Petty’s ‘The Last DJ’, from a long documentary recently shown on BBC 4. The song comments on the state of radio play and the demise of the independent DJ (based on Wolfman Jack). It was produced in 2002 and tears into the commercial radio structure in the U.S.A, though it didn’t stop the stations from playing the song, because they were still able to make money from it.

All the points Tom Petty makes are valid; if you want to have broad adventurous radio in America right now, you pay for it, you subscribe to a separate service. The lyrics also refer to ‘the last human voice’ - as automation software has sucked the life out of many pockets of creativity and definitely sucked the ‘localness’ out of radio.

According to the most recent U.K. RAJAR survey, commercial radio is being beaten by a ratio of 3 to 2 by the BBC. Over 20 years ago commercial radio had well over 50% of the audience share and were starting to have an impact on the BBC, but ever since then there’s been a gradual loss of listenership. Hand in hand with that there’s been a gradual retreat from ‘local’ radio. Robin’s next slide was a graph showing that BRMB’s audience share over the past 10 years has declined, from 17% in 1979 to about 7% today. However, there are several reasons for this, one of them being that ownership of the station kept changing during this time. Another graph, of Radio 2 over the past 10 years, showed a rise for Chris Evans since taking over from Terry Wogan’s excellent figures. Radio 2 targets a fantastically desirable section of the audience. This drives commercial radio crazy. Commercial radio quietly hopes that the new government will give the BBC a good kicking and make life easier for them. And in fact, Conservative governments tend to favour the commercial sector and give them want they want, whilst Labour tends to favour the BBC.

Looking at BBC 6, one of the BBC’s digital stations, we know what a fuss there’s been about 6 Music since the government announced it was to close. In this case, the audience graph showed a steep rise since that announcement; the massive amount of publicity the station received has produced a substantial increase in audience figures. Regrettably, the Asian Network which is also under threat has not benefited in the same way from its closure announcement. The government now has a problem: by issuing the threat, they’ve made ‘6’ more acceptable.

The Digital Economy Bill figured as Robin’s next topic, with a graph entitled ‘Digital Grief’. He maintains that government wants to free up some spectrum, they want some of the AM and FM spectrum for telecoms. This is fair enough, however, the thrust of the proposal is to get us to listen on DAB. But we choose our own ways of listening, as we choose to text and use the web. Listeners in the U.S.A. chose to migrate from AM to FM in the seventies; it happened here in the eighties. But we don’t have a choice about switching to digital.

The government wants to reclaim our analogue frequencies by moving from analogue to digital. That’s why they introduced the Asian Network and 6 Music, to get us used to the idea of digital radio stations. A graph, which Robin got from the parliament website, accompanied the debate that took place when the closure announcement was made. It shows what it costs to produce one hour of programming on each network. The cost for Radio 4 is about £10k, the highest there is, but when you factor in how many listeners that service gets it is apparent that it’s good value at 2p per listener per hour. Radio 2 is even better value because their figures are so high. However the cheapest service of all at the BBC is 6 Music. Not so long ago with the kind of audience figures it received then, it wasn’t seen as efficient so it was decided that it should go, along with others. But these stations were broadcast on digital in order to tempt listeners across.

Robin asked the audience “Who listens to digital as a first choice?”, it transpired that most of us had only transistor radios rather than DAB, when asked if we had digital in our car the answer was again in favour of analogue – that’s what we’re listening to. It’s more immediate and doesn’t need rebooting as digital does. Digital is a long way from being perfect; if it was portable with a durable signal and gave us better sound quality then there wouldn’t be a problem. However, it’s none of these things at present and this is the industry’s conundrum, achieving a critical mass of listeners for digital will not be easy.

So the dilemma is that we are to migrate to digital but at the moment it’s not fit for purpose. DAB Plus is already being talked about as the next medium; there is yet another different standard in Europe, and yet another standard in the U.S.A., as opposed to AM/FM which you can receive on a transistor radio anywhere in the world. Robin highlighted two recent articles from the Guardian ‘The Digital switchover is folly, listeners like radio as it is’, by Julian Glover, which is a blistering critique of present policy. Also, an article by Tony Stoller who used to be a Regulator of the industry, he passionately argues that independent local radio gave its soul away when it transmuted to commercial radio. It’s inevitable that a commercial concern will look for ways to reduce costs and one of those ways is to get rid of ‘localness’ but you give away your USP, your relationship with the audience. Robin recommended both articles as worth reading. He said he’d also listened to a fantastic interview on Radio 4 between someone from the Radio Institute and Tony Stoller; it became an argument but was very well refereed by the presenter who kept a detached viewpoint. To encourage us to move to the brave new world of digital, both commercial radio and the BBC have come together to sell us this notion. Robin played us an Ad with Stephen Fry’s voice over promoting an ‘Amnesty’ of money off new digital radios when trading in old portable radios. The proposition is ‘Digital Radio – Future Radio’, Robin’s view is – maybe?

He referred to a similar Ad on Radio 5 that made him want to stomp the radio into the ground. However, Robin is keen to point out that there is a silver lining – the next clip we saw demonstrated this. Clive Dickens from Absolute Radio one of the smaller independent radio groups, which used to be Virgin Radio, has 70 separate digital platforms and aims to be quite inventive, he’s looking for new ways of doing things. We next saw an Ad for the ‘Sensua’ – an ‘intelligent’ radio that can be navigated like a computer. The colour touch screen is operated by scrolling through with one finger and tapping to play. Stations will broadcast a slideshow, you can save settings as favourites in one easy to find location and see what’s now playing. Internet radio gives access to over ten thousand stations from across the world, ‘quickjump’ allows you to search by genre etc. This may be the future but it still doesn’t represent instant portability, it does provide a world of listening. The problem is that internet radio might be where you are working, for low money, but the service will be going to bolster big corporate concerns. Big DAB stations or platforms are now national organisations run from London, yet again the idea of having something that represents a locality is gone.

The deal that has been struck with commercial radio to get their support for the digital amnesty is to do with the fact that it can’t afford to keep paying for both a digital service and an AM platform. In order to cut programming costs, the first thing they will be allowed to do as a local station is to reduce the statutory minimum of 10 hours a day down to 7, keeping just enough time to protect local bulletins. That’s effectively one show gone, 2 DJs on shift might cover a region like the West Midlands, therefore cutting costs by retaining 2 or 3 people rather than a staff of 50 as used to be the case when radio was profitable and thrived. From June local FM stations can apply to co-locate and share all programming, in other words, reducing workforces by another 10 jobs per station location. To promote DAB, Heart FM and Smooth, for example, can drop regional programming in exchange for providing a national service on digital. In such a climate of change, it’s not surprising that we experienced some difficulty in persuading people to join the panel that we hoped would support Robin’s presentation.

Programming is being cut back and there’s not a lot left in the Midlands. It’s a depressing picture but not as bad as one might think: the impetus to create and to produce good audio and radio is as strong as ever. The creative impulse is there and so are the tools, the question is where will this be done? It’s essential to continue because this is where new talent is going to come from, the more radio centralises, the more the work will go to ‘jobbing’ presenters in London and there will be less chance for talent to emerge in the regions. We must have platforms on which people can develop and grow.

Conventional radio is retreating from the marketplace - so there’s a gap in market. The demand for local radio is still there. To illustrate the point, Robin asked us to imagine Aston Villa FC moving to London, supporters would object, as in the case of Wimbledon FC moving to Milton Keynes. The relocation was not welcomed by supporters in London, so much so that the ‘real’ Wimbledon is now a semi professional club climbing its way back up through the leagues, competing with the original club. It’s all about the pride people have for their region.

The quality of music being made in our region has never been better, in the past recorded sessions contributed in a big way to building phenomenal relationships with audiences. Robin suggests that having a platform to do that today is just as important, it’s a no-brainer, and he can’t understand why stations aren’t doing it. Credit must go to Kerrang and Radio WM for doing a few sessions of local music, but there’s a lot more that could be done.

Local bands and local radio are not just a marriage of convenience but can be ‘programming heaven’ – it’s a question of mutual exploitation. A live performance will generate more money than 29p digital downloads but it takes a while to generate some momentum. Robin counts himself fortunate that he had a 5 year spread of recording local bands which happened to coincide with the ‘two tone’ explosion of bands like the Specials, The Selecter and UB40. A session was recorded every 2 weeks for a long period, benefiting both the station and the bands who loved the exposure. However, the radio station has to pick the right bands and is not absolved from its editorial responsibilities, there’s nothing to be gained from playing bad music. The stations have given up that sector for the sake of economies but it hasn’t done them any good - there’s still a market to be exploited.

The demand for local content can also be met with the new digital and new web creativity, Podcasting is one way of reaching an audience. It’s a lot of work but Robin suggests that useful information can be gathered at www.about.com when ‘podcasting’ is entered in the search pane. Community radio is another area of new activity with at least 6 stations in our region. Web radio is also gaining in popularity but the drawback is that however much you localise you are still an international transmitter, so there’s a balance to be struck between what audience you are appealing to and how you do it. Rhubarb Radio is a good example providing a range of specialised programmes.

Robin gave a lecture to some American students recently, about Birmingham music, and used ‘Soundcloud’ as a means of presenting a 9 minute piece featuring 24 bands from 1967 to the present. He put this on his blog and it’s been very successful, the process of using Soundcloud, copying and pasting code, couldn’t be any simpler.

2015 is the intended date for DAB switchover, but take up is so slow that it may not happen until 2018 or even 2020. Community Radio has the opportunity to grow and develop so that when the switchover does occur, stations can ramp up transmission and will come into their own. Robin emphasised the fact that it’s now much cheaper to equip a station than it was. Where it once might have cost £20K or £30K, all that’s needed now is a laptop, a mic and a mixer. Robin recommended various tools for editing such as Adobe Audition and Audacity (which is open source and free but therefore doesn’t come with a manual). Audio capture equipment is also readily available at low cost.

Lastly, Robin referred to blogging with audio, audio mashups and audio with images – where convergence makes it possible to do fantastic things. He cited http://duckrabbit.info/ as an outstanding example of audio supplemented with photography. We were treated to a clip, produced by an ex Radio 4 employee and a colleague who teaches at BCU. They make brilliant photo essays with audio, at the moment this kind of thing is only found on the web but it could appear on platforms such as the ‘Sensua’ interactive radio that Robin had shown us earlier. The short piece we saw examined British youth at ‘play’ on a Friday night at closing time and is a good demonstration of new digital and web creativity. For radio you would have to add commentary but the piece works as audio driven with pictures, new tools provide new opportunities for creativity.

We were extremely grateful to Robin for taking the time to treat us to such an absorbing keynote presentation; it was followed with a lively session of Q & A with more interesting discussion. Thanks to Robin, we’d looked at the status of Radio today and where the talent that’s needed is to be found. Robin had also explained how the digital age affects production yet offers new opportunities and examined the expanded horizons for audio broadcast platforms and how to capitalise on the perfect synergy of local music with local radio. The evening ended with a deserved round of applause for Robin and hope that we can look forward to revisiting this topic with him again at one of our future events.

To find out more please visit Robin’s websites: www.radiotogo.com www.radiotogo.blogspot.com