I’ve spent the past couple of days showing Saskia and Piet from Veronica Holdings around Birmingham, and introducing them to some of the more interesting music industry people around town.

We’re going to be doing a project together, which involves music, students, mixing, DJs, gadgets and a trans-European party. My job, while they were here, was to make sure they saw some of the nicer bits of Birmingham, make sure we got all of the work done that we needed to do, and try and make them feel as welcome as we do when we come to Amsterdam.

Some of my friends were skeptical: “Once you’ve shown them everything that’s great about Birmingham, what are you going to do in the afternoon?” - but actually - we did okay.

Highlights:

The public space at the BBC in the Mailbox is pretty cool. I didn’t realise that if you walked around to the side of the drama studio in the upstairs bit, there’s a ‘Be On TV’ activity, where you can read the news or the weather, they’ll film it and you can email the video to your friends online. That’s more fun than it probably sounds.

The Heralded As The New Black installation by Ryan Gander at the Ikon Gallery is really pretty cool. That’s worth a look - and you should engage the people standing around wearing white in conversation. They’re phenomenally interesting about the whole thing.

Naturally we had to do the Bull… and check out the local architecture…

We did the Custard Factory and the Jewellery Quarter, Brindley Place and the canals… and a night out at the Hare and Hounds featuring the jazz/funk/soul DJ stylings of ‘Dubber vs. The Professor‘ was an added bonus.

The Professor on the decks - and the laptop

But the real highlight, of course, was the array of great people that they got to meet along the way - Bobbie, of course — as well as record producer Ian Wallman, DJ Cro, Oli from Jibbering, Oliver Carter, Robin from Friendly Fire, Stef Lewandowski, Mark from Iron Man Records, Jez Collins, Sam Coley, Dave Harte, a couple of students from BCU, and several others that we encountered along the way.

We got a whole lot of work done, made some unexpected connections and serendipitous connections, and they were pretty much dazzled by a bewildering array of smart, talented — and above all, friendly people from Birmingham.

It actually made me really proud to live here. Go us.

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Lowlights:
Actually - just one.

Man, the staff on reception at the Burlington were surly. Everything’s a hassle for them, and they speak in pre-programmed scripts that they don’t deviate from even if they’ve already had the answers to their next questions provided for them.

They’d sell you a £6(!) one-hour internet token but couldn’t get the wireless network to go… and they were generally not having any fun and didn’t see why anybody else should have a good time.

The lobby (and apparently the rooms) were about five degrees warmer than was actually comfortable, and poor Piet was treated to the sound of a party till 3am - which is obviously not actually the hotel’s doing - but you’d think that some sound insulation might be appropriate.

Avoid.