Every two years (give or take) the Radio Studies Network holds their international conference somewhere in the world. I went to my first one in Madison, Wisconsin in 2003 – and that’s where I met Prof. Tim Wall, who was the guy who arranged for me to come to Birmingham in the first place.
We were on a panel together. He gave his paper, entitled ‘The Political Economy of Internet Radio’, and I followed it with my paper, entitled ‘There’s No Such Thing As Internet Radio’. We got into a debate about it over pizza and beer, and somehow by the end of it I had the promise of a job in Britain.
The radio conference after that was in Melbourne in 2005, which I didn’t get to – and in 2007, I was at the Lincoln conference. Toronto this year has been pretty good so far, and I’ve met some really interesting people along the way. You always get some of the same faces, and it’s been good to catch up with the people I know and like already – and you add friends each time you go to one.
There aren’t too many people doing radio studies around the world, so it’s good to chat with the people whose work you read and teach from.
Upgraded then downgraded
The flight over was good. A quick jaunt to Amsterdam first (yes, that is the opposite direction to where I was heading – I didn’t book the flights) where I waited around for my flight to Toronto. There’d been some confusion and it turned out the plane had been overbooked – and so everyone’s seat number was moved around.
Somehow, I managed to get upgraded to business class in the process, which was an absolute godsend for the 9 hour flight. I arrived quite late in the evening, and so rather than chance my luck at the student halls (where I’m staying – no flash hotels for me) – I arranged for Tim to pick me up, and I stayed at his place.
Tim and his family do house-swaps when they go on vacation. And so in a suburb about 45 minutes out of the city centre, they’re living in someone’s home for a couple of weeks, coinciding nicely with the conference.
I stayed in the downstairs room – which had its own kitchen and living room, complete with massive flat screen television. But the business class comfort didn’t last for long.
We headed up to York University (another good 45 minutes out of the city in the opposite direction) to go to the conference, and I checked into the Pond Rd Halls of Residence.
Here’s a picture of my cell. Don’t be fooled into thinking that’s a bed. It’s a plank of wood with a blanket over it.
The rooms are semi-shared. That is, you enter what you think is going to be your room, but find yourself in a small kitchen and bathroom area. There are two doors beyond that, which are the little sleeping quarters you see above. I’ve stayed in worse, of course – but not much worse.
The walls are paper thin, and any movement you make can be heard by the other person in the other room – which at least means you know when they’re having a shower, so you can lie awake waiting for them to be done so you can sneak out and have your turn.
Fortunately, my room-mate is fascinating company, incredibly tolerant and, as a result of some time in the army, a very sound sleeper.
He’s a broadcast journalist, university lecturer, former biker and author of the book Sit Down, Shut Up and Hang On: A Biker’s Guide To Life – often simply quoted as Biker Wisdom.
We had a great night last night hanging out in our little kitchen, drinking Bowmore, chatting with some colleagues and a couple of students, who were pretty well wide-eyed at his stories. As, I have to admit, was I most of the time. Great craic, as my Belfast friends would say.
The kiwi crew
One of my favourite things about the whole radio conference thing is that I get to hang out with the AUT boys – (from left to right) Peter Hoar, Matt Mollgaard and Rufus McEwan. Before moving to the UK, I worked with Matt and Peter in Auckland, and Rufus is a reasonably new addition to their team.
Interestingly, while they’re a really strong team, and as kiwi radio scholars, have a great deal in common – Peter is also a classical music DJ on Concert FM, Matt is a rock DJ on Radio Hauraki, and Rufus is a hip hop DJ on Kiwi FM. It’s a good mix.
And the good news is that they’ve managed to arrange it so that the next radio studies conference will be in Auckland in 2011. Already looking forward to that one.
How it all works
If you’ve never been to an academic conference before, the format generally works like this: three people make up a panel on a related theme (say, history, technology, music, etc.). Each person speaks for 20 minutes in turn and then at the end of the three presentations, there’s about half an hour of questions and discussion. And then we go and have coffee and talk some more.
More than one panel is usually going on at a time, and so you get the chance to compare notes, and discover that you should have been in the one about CB Radio rather than the one about podcasting. But while it may seem counter-intuitive, it’s really the social side of it – the lunch, the dinner, and the long evenings at the bar down the road afterwards – where all the real work gets done.
You continue discussing the ideas, develop plans to collaborate – and you start stuff with people that you otherwise would have had no occasion to meet.
I did my paper on a panel with Tim and Chris Priestman, who studies music royalties, internet radio and radio station programming. Tim and I talked about the research we did last year at the BBC, and I focused particularly on my case study of Zane Lowe’s radio programme.
Internet friends
In downtown Toronto, I met up with some people I really only know from Twitter and the web – as well as Valerie, who I met while James and I were doing our ‘buscast‘.
As you’d expect, everyone was uniformly interesting, all doing interesting things with music and the internet, and were great company.
I’m off to Hamilton (the Canadian one, rather than the NZ one) tomorrow, where I’m spending a couple of days at a recording studio doing a bunch of consultancies for local musicians, and the plan is that I’ll head up to Montreal after that. I’ve been asked to meet up with someone in Ottawa as well, while I’m in the neighbourhood – but I don’t thing I’m going to be able to fit everything in.
Hacked off
The only thing that’s really been a downside to this whole experience (other than that poor excuse for a bed), has been the fact that the problem Jake and I have been having with hackers hitting our websites has just got worse and worse.
Jake’s site has now been blacklisted by Google as a dangerous website, because the code that the hackers have put in it can theoretically damage your computer. He’s working on a website for a band, and is on a tight deadline, but can’t do anything because the hackers have done so much damage.
I asked for some advice and help on Twitter – and very kindly, two computer security specialists offered their assistance at no cost. One of them, a guy called James, has been putting an awful lot of work in, so every spare moment, I’ve been at the laptop, working over the internet with James, trying to put everything back together.
Happily, we’ve managed to get my site (this one) back up and running and with extra, enhanced security on it. Fingers crossed, we should have solved the hacker problem at this end.
Jake’s site is, unfortunately, proving a lot more problematic. James has already put in three days work on it so far (in amongst his other stuff) and it’s definitely getting there, but we’re still a couple of weeks away from everything being fixed for him (including begging Google to un-ban his site), which must be so awful for him. Poor Jake.
However, I think by the end of today, we’ll have managed to get the band website mostly fixed so that he can put the finishing touches on it before the deadline. He’s going to have a busy weekend though… and there’ll be no blogging from him for a little while.