Over the last few days, I’ve been taking part in an interesting idea - a kind of travelling conference. I, and my commercial radio colleague Nick Piggott, have been doing a presentation called Radio for the Facebook Generation, in which we talk about interesting ways of keeping radio relevant for a young generation - and this week we’ve done it in Stockholm, Oslo, and (above) Copenhagen.

A travelling conference is a really neat idea. In each city, the programme was different - but while it would have been difficult to fly some of the speakers ‘just’ to Oslo, for example, the big international names appeared at all three; so you got the benefit of some really big names, and also the benefit of good local content too (a bit like, I suppose, what local commercial radio is trying to do).

So, also speaking was Mark Ramsey, who spoke engagingly about some of the things US radio is doing; and Nik Goodman. Nik’s talk was really good; essentially saying that sponsorship and promotions can lead to some really good radio, instead of boring crappy competitions. He played a lot of the work from Virgin Radio’s S&P department, who are deserved award-winners in this field. It reminded me that coming up with great radio ideas isn’t always the job of the programmes department; and rather nicely got a load of people listening to the radio and laughing.

Quite a few people asked for a copy of the presentation Nick and I gave. It’s 38 meg, and given that I was demonstrating Olinda (our rather nice prototype connected radio) and a rather neat webcam-based piece of software that got a spontaneous round of applause (when it worked!), it’s a bit hard to simply forward a PPT file to someone.

Instead, you’ll find a small PDF download here - Radio for the Facebook Generation - which is the text of the speech, suitably fiddled-with to make it less reliant on the visuals. If you want to see the whole thing, then do contact one of us; and note that the speech doesn’t make it clear who’s speaking at any one time, so don’t take anything in here as official BBC policy, because it isn’t.

I’m grateful for the hospitality shown to us by everyone we met; and it was good to make some good new friends.

My full disclosure is, as ever, relevant for this posting; in particular, it’s worth the licence-fee payer noting that all travel, accommodation, and internet access in Scandinavia was covered by the conference organisers.

Visit Oslo, and you’ll be impressed with the way the city merges its Nordic tradition, and a laid-back, hurry-free attitude, with some pretty impressive technology. Jump off the plane, and you’re whisked into town, underground for part of the way, on bright new trains which give you latest news, on a flat screen, from NRK and the BBC.

The radio station P4 is no exception. I was there on Thursday to talk to their sales team and some of their clients.

P4’s Oslo offices (which I should have photographed, but didn’t) are inspiring. A standard office block contains a really impressive open space - studios in all four corners (glass walls facing inwards), all visible by the news team, the producers, and internet production team.

P4 is fascinatingly similar to the station I currently work for, Virgin Radio. P4’s national, like Virgin; is 15 years old this year (six months older than Virgin). It employs around 85 staff (again, similar to Virgin). Its website justifiably crows about its success in terms of market share - it enjoys 24%. That’s not similar - but Virgin has more audience than P4 if we’re splitting hairs.

Their DAB-only radio station, P4 Bandit, has live programming - they feel very strongly that stations like this shouldn’t just be jukebox services. They’re experimenting with new technology, too - both their stations are running DAB slideshow, for instance - and have an impressive website. They’re a young-feeling station - and, just like Virgin, have seen around five marriages between staff!

Where they differ is their incredible audience statistics gathering. They use people-meters to monitor their audience, rather than the UK’s antiquated diary-based system. This allows them to measure radio by the minute, rather than the UK’s antiquated 15-minute interval. This means they know what happens to their audience with every feature they do. (They say they don’t lose audiences during the commercial breaks). Oh, and audience statistics for each show appear to be available pretty quickly after the broadcast, instead of the two months it takes RAJAR to get the paper diaries back, and then to work out a three, or six, month average.

So, with these new statistics, how are P4 selling radio?

They’re not. They’re selling broadcast advertising.

In Norway, you buy radio just like television. You’re no longer buying on figures that might be the average of a six month survey - you’re buying exactly how many people heard that ad in that exact timeslot. So, if the station broadcasts a feature which is a turn-off, it loses financially. Alternatively, big events - think V Festival, or Party in the Park, or football commentary - don’t get lost in the six-month RAJAR, but add money, instantly, to the bottom-line.

And, of course, the benefit of this method of selling advertising is that radio - a medium always criticised for being too difficult to buy - suddenly becomes as easy as buying television. Which means that anyone can do it, without additional training for radio.

And guess what? Radio ad sales in Norway are increasing. Compare that to the UK, where GCap Media, the country’s largest commercial radio company, are having a torrid time: Ralph Bernard announced to the City on Wednesday that “like-for-like [ad] revenues for April and May 2007 will be down just 2% and 1% respectively year-on-year”. Apparently, this is good news.

The UK’s radio listening survey is one of the most impressive pieces of research in the world; even more impressive when you consider the vast amount of dog-eared, pizza-stained diaries which are (to some degree) works of fiction but yet give vaguely consistent, mostly-believable figures. Programme directors criticise the electronic replacements for dramatically cutting hours, and for decimating breakfast show figures. (How can any meter measure my listening habits, which is generally 30 minutes of BBC Five Live before I get out of bed and pull my clothes on, therefore activating the meter?)

However, Norway is showing that, for all the concerns about portable people meters, they have the capability of dramatically changing the commercial future of radio. We should take note.

Tussen tak to my friends there; and I look forward to seeing you in the UK soon.

I read somewhere that last week, Facebook added the same amount of users who are on Second Life. In just one week. And no, I can’t understand the new Facebook Apps feature, much though I’d like to. I do have a natty service for Facebook users, mind, so I’ll have to understand it sooner rather than later. That’s scary too.

But perhaps most scary is my discovery that my mother is also on Facebook.

Uh oh.

Thing is, I’m quite free with my status updates (they’re on this website’s front page, too) since they give a vague impression that I’m down with the kids, and not a boring 36 year-old whose idea of a long weekend is a good excuse to tidy the house and go to Tescos to buy a new bin - both of which I’ve done this weekend. Think of the Clubcard points. My status updates are along the lines of “James is meeting fatcontroller”. “James is currently in the pub, being bought too many glasses of Leffe Brune”. “James has lost his glasses”. “James is bizarrely in Oslo”. “James is waking up and discovering he is unaccountably covered in cheese”.

But my mother reading them? Shudder. It’s bad enough that she reads this blog from time to time (calling it, kindly, “James’s rant page”, I discover from my father). But now she’s discovered Facebook, only a few weeks after I discovered it, I worry that my mother’s nearly as hip as me, and that’s not good, trust me.

Anyway, must go. I want to be away from the Google Talk when she’s worked out Facebook applications before I have - that would be truly crushing.

(As an aside, on Thursday I will be bizarrely in Oslo - talking to the nice people at the top commercial radio station P4 about new platforms and radio. If you’re in Oslo, and you’re one of the near 200 subscribers to this blog, then it would be good to meet. I’ve only an hour or so, but why not? Get in touch).