My wrapup

Here, in convenient-for-me point form is my wrapup from the 2010 CBAA conference that took place this past weekend in Hobart. I had a great time, and am looking forward to next year. There are some innovative and passionate people in the sector.

Here we go, in no particular order…

• The cbloggers were very good at raising awareness of social media. My concern with their approach is that they may have created the impression that social media is for kids, and that it’s too hard to understand. Next year, focus on outreach, integration and relevance.* I was a noisy Twitterer during the conference. Sorry, followers. I got carried away. As a result of this, the cbloggers noticed me, and went on a neverending quest to find me . They didn’t do a particularly good job.* Then, I rickrolled them. Ha-HA!* Bizarrely, after the end of the conference, those wacky cbloggers started something called #jurgenfilms . Interesting, but they missed Das Boot , which actually starred a Jurgen.* I drank too much, and didn’t sleep enough.* A theme that bothered me during many of the talks: Online media is treated differently, and people are a bit scared of it. I just see it as another transmitter: another medium through which our message can be sent. Hello, Marshall.* Lots of organisations still need to be told how to make a simple, basic website.* There are amazing and clever hardware digital audio compression solutions out there.* The funding body is being portrayed as out-of-touch. I think that’s unfair.* How to make blogs (never mind Twitter, start with blogs) relevant to small community stations.* AMRAP’s AirNet , despite the silly name, is a very useful piece of technology. Every small community station in the country ought to start using it. The bigger ones need to join me in lobbying them for an API so we can do more useful things than just embedding it into an iframe.* I’ll say this again: I met lots of people who are incredibly passionate about selflessly making quality radio. Many of these people aren’t paid for what they do. It’s seriously humbling.* Wrest Point Casino has got to be one of the ugliest buildings in one of the most beautiful locations. The disparity between the building and the location was breathtaking.* If you’re an Australian band and you don’t know AirIT , you would do yourself a great favour to get into it.* Every organisation has politics. I saw a lot of both-sides-of-the-argument stuff, as people on both sides of issues would talk to me about them. I listened, and most of the time could understand both sides of the situation. Not that I could do anything.