Moving to Brisbane

The thoughts behind this blog, and our family’s move

Brisbane, Queensland, Australia from Mount Coot-tha

For my work, I call myself a ‘radio futurologist’. I’m helping media companies across the world to implement change, and to better deal with what the future may bring.

The future, many people tell us, is one where the weather will be hotter. Where radio will be driven by personality and talent, not solely music logs. The future should bring us a stronger economy, and more revenue being put into content on-air. And who knows, the future might be a place where DAB radio stations even broadcast in stereo.

My family and I are moving to the future. Because towards the end of this year we’re moving from London to Brisbane in Australia, where all of that is already happening: and where it’s already the future: at least, it’s ten hours ahead of here.

For me, it means that I can better serve Asian and Australian media: a varied and exciting market with some of the best audience figures, yet some of the fastest-moving and most disruptive technologies.

My partner and I have many friends across Australian radio, and we’ve plenty of family in Queensland, too. And for our daughter, it means great schools and the space she needs to thrive.

So, I’ve started a Medium “publication”, called An Englishman moving to Brisbane.

This is a place for me to write about my experiences along the way. While we’ve planned this since early this year, we’ve only formally announced it this week: and we make the move in November.

My experiences so far with finding information have been limited to a few forums online — Poms In Oz being the main one. It’s fine, but daunting: over two million posts, and lots of information, much of it out-dated, and some of it plain wrong. Nevertheless, it’s been a useful resource so far; but precious little about the nuts and bolts of moving, and experiences of doing so.

So, I hope this’ll be a list of the things others will need to know if they decide to make the leap: particularly people comfortable with technology.

It’s also a way for me to learn more about Medium, naturally, especially Medium Publications. Because life is one big learning experience.