That was the week that was
The last thing I do is use this blog as a ‘online diary’ - and, indeed, it irritates me highly when I hear media people defining a blog as such. However, today I’d like to tell you what I’ve been doing all week. Stick with it, it might be interesting.
On Monday, I met someone fairly new and important at PRS/MCPS (one half of the music copyright holders in the UK). I was much heartened by what he had to say; and also didn’t appreciate some of the problems they face. I hope he got a lot from us, too. Talking together is a hugely beneficial thing to do; because we both understand a lot more of the other side’s point of view. A good thing, I think.
Tuesday was to have been a day at Microsoft’s research labs in Cambridge, courtesy of Arqiva. Previous days have been very interesting; but when going through the programme on Monday night, I was in two minds whether I ought to be going - it was all mobile TV, and there was no radio there at all. Aided by a fortuitous missed train, I decided to go into work. Glad I did: I spent a whole £22 of the company’s money on Google ads as an experiment, and learnt an awful lot. A fascinating lot.
Wednesday was the Channel 4 press conference; a Radio Academy ‘Radio at the Edge’ conference planning meeting; and a fascinating evening event called ‘TEN’, organised in part by a nice man called Rufus Evison who I first met as an eager techie working for analytics company Clickstream. I met a lot of interesting people within the internet world; including a splendid person called Merry, who uses an antiquated Apple Mac, running OS9, to run her company accounts because there is no decent accounts package for small businesses on OSX. There’s a concern.
Thursday, to Broadcasting House and the BBC Audio and Music Festival, an internal event for the clever chaps and chapesses who work within the corporation; I was on the panel discussing “what radio looks like”. Concerningly, I was introduced as “James Cridland who works for Virgin Radio and has a blog about radio, new platforms, and beer: go and visit it at james.cridland.net” - the first time this blog has been mentioned as part of my intro! A perfectly organised conference panel: brilliantly hosted by Spencer Kelly from Click (on BBC News 24 and BBC World), it left me highly impressed that the corporation puts this much time and effort into an internal event. (Also quite cool being in the ‘green room’ with no other than Alan Shearer. Naturally, too shy to go over and say hello. Anyway, I know nothing about football.) Thursday ended, after a few job interviews (me doing the interviewing, I’m not going anywhere!), with the London Beer and Cider Festival; too tired to do it justice.
And today, Friday, a couple of interesting chats with a few people, including a government department that came to discover how radio is changing, and a play on a PS3 which a colleague has thoughtfully brought into the office so we can get the Virgin Radio Player working on it. After getting it working (the player’s now compatible with the PS3 and the Wii), we then played the racing game it had on it, on our big screen in the office - the new controller takes a lot of getting used to.
This weekend will be mostly spent reading up for a meeting I have on Monday; sleeping, and getting rid of this damn cold.
And that is the end of my diary. Was it exciting?