Andrew Dubber     

After the relatively slow start to 2009, and the lovely, restful Christmas break, I’ve started organising things for the year, and as I start booking things in, it looks like a pretty busy one. In fact… the past week or so has meant a rapid takeoff in the amount of work and travel I’ve been doing.

Clutch and I launched ‘Twhisky‘ on Sunday evening to coincide with Burns’ Night. Bobbie made an amazing dinner for seven, consisting of haggis, neeps and tatties – and we had cranachan for pudding (very simple recipe: cream, whisky, oats, whisky, raspberries, honey and whisky). In fact, it was a dinner for 18, but there were only seven of us at the table. Living on leftovers at the moment…

We did an online whisky tasting using Twitter (hence ‘Twhisky’) and had close to 600 people around the world following along. The distilleries like us now, and we’re being sent free stuff – which I happen to think is one of the best reasons to do anything (free records was my incentive to get started in the radio industry… and free trips to academic conferences was a good incentive to become a researcher).

It’s not all drinking whisky on the internet
I just received my book contract in the mail – I’m co-writing an undergraduate textbook called ‘Understanding the Music Industries’ with some very clever people from another university. I get to write chapter one, which provides the overview, and I’ll do some stuff about music industries online. In my spare time, of course.

There’s a massive pile of marking to be done – including a masters dissertation about digital radio. Haven’t read it yet. A bit daunted by it, because it’s more or less the same topic as my own masters thesis. What if it’s really bad? What if it’s really good?!

I’m marking all afternoon today, all day tomorrow and probably most of Friday too.

A lot of moving about
I was in London on two separate occasions last week (and it was great to catch up with Kerryn while I was there). Next week, I’m off to Manchester, and then off to UnConvention Belfast, which I’m really looking forward to. Going to be staying with Tracy Dempsey – the cousin I didn’t know I had, who I met at UnConvention Manchester last year.

Just been booked for a keynote speech at a jazz convention in Copenhagen in March, and another for a music industry convention in Mexico in April. Sometime in February, I’ll be in Amsterdam and might pop up to Groningen to visit friends of mine who started New Music Labs, and Leeuwarden for a guest lecture at the Academy for Pop Culture.

I’m going to Islay again (hooray!) for the festival in May – hopefully with my cousin Greg, who lives in the Hague – but he’ll have a reasonably new baby by then, so we’ll see… Toronto in June for the Radio Conference. Hoping to get back to Chicago sometime this year too. I’m determined to go to the Third Coast Audio Festival & Conference one of these years…

And I’m desperately trying to find a way to get back to New Zealand between now and April. I’ve been asked to present a documentary about Zane Lowe for public radio there (produced by my friend Sam), and it’s going to require me doing some interviews with some key people. I’ve got a bit of history with Zane, and I’d love to do this documentary justice.

UK people – did you know he’s a hip hop producer and rapper?
NZ people – did you know he has a radio show?

Sadly, there’s not much in the way of budget, so I’m scouting around for anything back in NZ that’ll get me over there and help pay for the travel. If you think of anything, let me know!

Disappointingly, it looks like I’m not going to South By Southwest again this year. But I’m relying on Pete Ashton to bring back all the knowledge from the Interactive bit. One day I’ll get there myself…

Jake’s away in Berlin this week (love these free school trips!), so things are a little quiet on that front. He’s also been hitting the books pretty hard the past week or so, because we agreed to his deal that if he gets an A in 5 of his GCSE subjects, he’s allowed to get a lip piercing (sorry, Mum… anything to get him to study).

Putting Stef on pause
Been doing a fair bit with Stef recently, and we’ve had one of our projects funded, which I’ll be able to tell you more about soon. We’ve also re-launched I So Wish, which is starting to get some nice attention.

Normally, Stef makes me look really slack and kind of inert by comparison, but he’s had to stop being his usual dynamo self for a day or two – because he and Emily have a brand new baby boy as of yesterday.

Everything in its right place
In the meantime, I’ve miraculously managed to organise all my papers and filing and have meticulously arranged my life through the intervention of software. I downloaded Things, which has completely revolutionised my working life. Between that, Spanning Sync, the standard Mac Address Book, Mail program and iCal – and a revolutionary paper filing system I’ve invented based on the alphabet (cunning…), I’m a complete model of productivity and organisation right at this moment.

There are no emails in my inbox. No loose papers on my desk. I know exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, and exactly what can wait. I might be going a million miles an hour right now… but I am completely stress-free about it. It’s a very cool feeling.

I give it three days tops.

Tagged: Book, Business, Internet, Music, New Zealand, Seminar, Whisky