Tristan answers a question “No… it’s not working yet.”

So I didn’t quite get to Chicago yesterday.

I arrived in Manchester around 11am, just in time to see a plane take off in the distance, which may well have been the one I was meant to be on. I put the call out on Twitter (sort of like a micro-blog that you can do from your mobile phone): ‘I’m in Manchester - what’s going on?’. Within minutes, there was a message back from Tristan from BBC Music and Audio Interactive — “We’re at Futuresonic. Contact Theatre’.

After a little bit of digging and a quick phonecall to Jez, who’s doing a lot of really helpful admin and project support stuff back at the university, it became clear that Futuresonic was a fairly significant digital music and social media conference and music festival that had completely escaped my notice. And Contact Theatre is the name of the place, rather than (as I first thought) an instruction from Tristan to get in touch.

I found my way there and registered through their (rather pleasing) ‘pay what you can’ delegate scheme. The price of the conference was kind of steep, but they had 10 day passes available that could be bought on a ‘name your price’ basis. I saw that most people had paid between about £5-£20 (rather than the £30-odd it was supposed to be for the day rate) and I went for £10 as that’s what I had in my pocket and this was an entirely spontaneous time-filler for me.

I hung out with the BBC Radio Lab guys, who — over and above the presentation they were going to be making — had somehow let themselves get talked into inventing something live in the lobby while the conference was going on.

There was a box full of electronic sensors that they were trying to work into a piece of prototype software that would manipulate audio streams and video. They decided they wanted a remix of radio to be controlled by a movement sensor, so that as people walked by, the effects and alterations of the sound and image would be influenced by both chance encounter, and by people deliberately engaging with it.

I suggested they wire it up so that the volume got exponentially louder if people approach to ask them what they’re doing.

The conference was interesting. If I wasn’t heading to the States (writing this on the plane, hence the length), I’d have loved to have stayed and attended more sessions. Bigwigs from Last.fm, The Orchard, Dopplr and a bunch of other organisations were in attendance, as was my ‘nemesis’, Swiss media futurist Gerd Leonhard.

We got to have the conversation and debate in person that we’ve been having online for a year or two now, which was interesting. Very civilised, but I still think he’s wrong about most things. Such a shame he gets to say his wrong things at fabulous and well-attended media gatherings, while I say what are clearly sensible and insightful things to very small groups of people, without a champagne bottle in sight. Such is life.

Trafford Hall Hotel. Not bad for £40.

I attended a few seminar sessions, had a really good chat with Tristan (who, it turns out, I have a lot in common with in terms of musical taste), spent large parts of the day with the BBC Radio Labs guys (and ate Conor’s strawberries), and met a bunch of really nice people with whom I had dinner and drinks afterwards before retiring for the night at the cheapest hotel I could find in Manchester that wasn’t a million miles out of town.

All in all, a remarkably successful day given that it started out on the wrong train heading in the wrong direction.