Things to do

I’ve been pretty busy recently, but it’s all been good stuff that I’m pretty pleased with. Some interesting projects have landed on my lap recently, and I just thought I’d list them here — mostly so I can keep tabs.

I’m in the process of putting together my PhD application. I have the paperwork, and between now and the end of next week, I’ll get that written.

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We’ve just had Arts and Humanities Research Council funding confirmed for a research project in collaboration with BBC Future Media and Technology, looking at how audiences use the internet to interact with music radio. That’ll involve going into the Beeb in London and working with the production teams for different music programmes.

Gilles Peterson and Zane Lowe are both on my list…

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Next month, the Radio Conference in Lincoln is taking place, and I’m looking forward to seeing Matt Mollgaard and Peter Hoar from AUT at that. I still have to write my paper, but I have a pretty clear idea about it. It’s called ‘New Radio Strategies’ (wring as much out of a single idea as you possibly can, I say…) and since the organisers at Lincoln are going to be publishing the conference proceedings, I’ll work that up into a decent article, rather than just a presentation.

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I’ve almost finished a piece for the Radio Journal. It’s about NZ On Air, New Zealand music, music funding and what’s happened to the idea of ‘New Zealandness’ in popular music on commercial radio. It’s in the hands of the editor to get some feedback and direction, but I’ll get it back with notes shortly, and then I can put the finishing touches on it (or rip it up and start again, if that’s the verdict).

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Just received a copy of the Communication Journal of New Zealand in the post. I have an article in it about ways of understanding radio history through the lens of changes in technology. It’s based on a chapter from my Masters thesis, so there was less writing than there was editing for sense.

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Waiting to hear if we get the funding for our Knowledge Transfer Fellowship bid, which will buy out half of my teaching time for the next two years to go and work directly with music businesses. We’re pretty hopeful — it’s a resubmit, the funders told us what we should change in order to be successful, and they kept the budget aside from the last round so they’d have enough in this one…

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New Zealand media pundit Russell Brown has asked me to collaborate with him on a strategy document for NZ On Air, concerning new digital and online broadcast technologies. Pretty quick turnaround on that one, so I should get cracking there…

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The free e-book I wrote and made available from the New Music Strategies website a few days back has been downloaded by over a thousand people now, and visits to the site have gone through the roof, comparatively speaking. Daily page views are being measured in the thousands now, rather than being counted individually (that’s a first for me), and there’s been some great feedback.

Here’s some coverage I’ve seen online:
- Fan Centric Marketing
- The Opinionated Diner
- Any Given Tuesday
- GarageSpin
- HomeTracked
- Louisville Music News
- Contract Worker
- The Entrepreneurial Mind

I think it’ll probably slow down again now, but the boost in attention in those few days will most likely increase the overall number of regular ‘repeat-traffic’ visitors. I have around 400 subscribers at the moment, which is hardly broadcasting figures — but it’s a milestone for me.

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I wrote a guest blog post on Hypebot, which is one of the more popular sites on the topic of online music, so that was nice — and Trevor Reekie’s interviewing me for Radio New Zealand National next week about the 20 Things e-book.

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I’m also going to be doing a bit of travelling (which I always love), presenting a couple of seminars about online music business.

28 June – Boost Workshops, School of Art & Design, Coventry
17 July – Boost Workshops, The Lighthouse, Wolverhampton
19 July – Musicians Union ‘Turned On’ Seminar, The Half-Time Orange, Leicester

…and I had a phonecall yesterday from the head of the Musicians Union in London, and he’s asked me to do a couple of seminars in London, Bristol and Plymouth in October. He’s getting back to me with dates. The cool thing about that was that he said the reason he got hold of me was because someone had sent him the e-book, and he’d ended up printing it out and handing it around the office.

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I’ve also got a seminar about online marketing for small companies from across the creative sector at Screen Media Lab in Digbeth on the 27th of July.

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I’m DJing a couple of times over the next week or so. Tomorrow night (Friday), I’m supporting Daddy G from Massive Attack, and next Friday (22nd), I’m on the bill with Quantic – both small gigs (100 capacity) at the Bulls Head.

Actually a bit excited about both of those…

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I went back to the drawing board on my old board game a couple of days ago. I haven’t played it for a while, and I’ve been thinking about getting a decent wooden set made. I was also thinking of ways it could remain challenging to people who had mastered the basic game, which takes a bit of time, but once you develop a good strategy and start to be able to think a few moves ahead, gameplay can get a little formulaic.

So I’ve developed a new ruleset that involves three different kinds of pieces that move differently and capture differently. It’s quite something to get your head around in play, and it’s going to require different kinds of counters (other than the standard black vs white it currently uses), but man, it raises the stakes in terms of strategy.

Thought I might investigate what it would take to get a set produced, and maybe set up a website and take orders. It’s been six years or so since I came up with it and built the first board, and there are online versions kicking about the internet. But it’s about time there were real (rather than handmade) sets in production.

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The classes for my Postgraduate Certificate in Education course has come to an end now. I just have a major assignment due in at the end of this month, and then I can completely remove that from my list of ongoing projects. I’ve enjoyed it, and I’ve picked up some good stuff about teaching — but it’s nice to have it out of the way too.
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Of course, in amongst all this, I still have a day job. It’s marking season at universities in the UK, and like everyone else who does what I do, I have a stack of student work to plough through, ranging from the inspired to the despair-inducing.

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When I lay it all out like that, it seems a bit intimidating — but still, it’s good to see it all in one place. Makes it seem like I have an interesting life, so when I’m powering through a boring bit of typing or marking a particularly inane essay, I can look at the list and think ‘actually — look at all the cool stuff I get to do’ — which makes it all seem better.
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Oh — and I almost forgot. Yesterday I spent a lovely day with Craig Hamilton and Antonio Gould. I was helping Antonio put together a podcast for 4Talent about music online.

We sat in Jibbering first, and then went out the back of Sage Wholefoods — Bobbie’s work — where there’s a community garden that not nearly enough people know about.

It’s lovely out there. Anyone can just go and sit, work on the laptop, chat with friends, relax, drink healthy juices and eat yummy seed-filled bars. And yet it’s Moseley’s best-kept secret. That’ll be my second home in summer…