Happy Birthday Radio!

What’s the first thing I did this morning? Connected to Spotify mobile App walking to the gym and then plugged myself into the treadmill radio, running to the sound of a bit of news and some feel-good Friday tracks. So, what’s this all about? Well, Radio turned 90 this week and much like any big birthday from someone important in my life, I had a little moment of reflection.

Growing up, mine was a radio house over a TV one. We only had 1 TV but about 5 radios all over the place. My mum’s in the kitchen and my dad’s DIY spaces were filled with 5Live and sport. I was a typical moody door-slamming teenager who spent 90% of my time locked in my bedroom listening to music.  My dad once pushed an article under my door about a teenage girl who died in her room and was found weeks later, think he was trying to prove a point?! So I rarely left my poster-covered sanctuary and this pathetic world of 90’s grunge was fed by radio. C.D’s were outrageously expensive back then and anyway I didn’t need them; I’d developed a shit-hot trigger finger able to tape my favourite shows and time the pause button just right just before the DJ cut in, thank goodness I don’t need to put this much effort in, don’t think I’ve got the patience now! Then when I left home for university, I was still listening to the radio over buying music but this time I was into the garage and early grime, so the frequency was always set to pirate stations.

There may not be an actual radio in my flat today but I’m still doing it – so Radio, don’t worry, you might be getting on a bit but I’m still into you! When I get in, my bag is thrown onto the floor, heels are off and the Spotify App is up on my smart TV.  I’m a classic two-screener (rude cow) so I’ll have my laptop on too and if I get a pop-up telling me one of my mates has uploaded a Cloudcast, I’m back listening to radio. I was chatting to the guys at Mixcloud the other day, and this pretty much covered their mantra on the power of music through social sharing. Georgia Sulivan who heads up social there told me ‘Mixcloud seeks to shift radio into the rich world of discovery, recommendation, and personalisation. All Mixcloud radio content is curated by music lovers so that people of different backgrounds from all around the world can constantly discover and enjoy great music’. I totally get this! And whilst I massively respect people like Annie Mac and listen to their opinions I’m just more likely to be into a recording of a relatively unknown DJ that my mates are listening to, rather than something a bit watered down and mainstream. I work in social media too, so clearly this shift to peer-to-peer sharing brings a massive smile to my face but even away from my day job angle, there’s something really genuine about music being powered by passionate people that makes me feel excited for the future of online audio.

I’m pretty much always plugged into either Mixcloud, Soundcloud of Spotify, or I’m in BoilerRoom watching live shows from the world’s best DJ’s in LA or Berlin, listening to live and past shows and on a Friday I’ll get into the weekend mood by jumping onto on something like the Ideal ClubWorld Radio channel. Sacha the founder of Ideal uses Twitter to remind me and her thousands of other fans when a show is up, thank you Sacha!  Sacha’s been in the music industry for longer than she’d probably like me to say and she’s worked with some of the finest established & breakthrough DJ talent. She’s watched the world of music change dramatically, so I was keen to hear her opinion on radio too ‘The future of radio lies in the internet, the quality that it provides digitally and the capabilities to reach a global market far outweigh the old days of FM, when 4G becomes the norm internet radio will be unstoppable and the advances of technology mean that radio can combine with TV to become socially interactive.  Plus with the vast amount of music that is now available commercial radio run by corporate entities does not give the amount of music out there the chance to be heard. Professional Independents such as the Ideal Clubworld are now able to cover the length & breadth of new music’.

A huge thank you to the experts Georgia Sullivan from Mixcloud and Sacha the Founder of Ideal ClubWorld for your professional opinion and of course; Happy 90^th Radio!!! You’re still going strong and darling, with all these digital face-lifts you’ve been having lately, you really don’t look a day over 21!

Mozilla Festival

Technology, some people find it scary, some (like me) cannot get enough.  If I had to explain to some of my friends the stuff I learn from my team in Silicon Valley and what to expect in 2015, they’d need a diagram and a stiff drink;  it can be a real mind-bender. This was never clearer to me than when I popped into the Mozilla Festival at the super slick and suitably futuristic looking Ravensbourne University campus.

#Mozfest was all about having fun and looking to the future of the web, two things that inspire me enough to drag myself out of bed with a hangover and onto the tube on a Saturday morning.  Not so for my equally hungover housemate, but solo wasn’t a problem as the small peer-to-peer sessions held by a mixture of tech geniuses and creatives were casual enough for me to sit in on the edge or get fully into when I felt like it.

The guys at Integrated agency VCCP (creators of the Meercat campaign) held a brilliant drop in session on how their client at O2 Think Big want to get teenagers into coding. They told me how important it was for UK PLC to have talented young British coders coming up the ranks. They shared with me their ideas, one being to set up a national school challenge to teach kids to hack into pop culture magazines (with their permission) and replace the content with their own passions; hmm…I can think of a few magazine’s I’d like to see this happen to today! We talked about working with Talenthouse and I mentioned how my friends at UK Youth Org would love to get involved.

I was watching a very studious looking guy playing with what looked like a mixture of a science experiment and something from a James Bond lab, so, I approached @forresto and he told me all about a grant he was using to develop a cool Stop Animation programme to push the boundaries of page drawing and movement. I was in awe but I was pretty sure my 7 year old nephew would get it quicker than I ever could.

The day was spent chatting to people interested in technology, design and the intersections where they overlap, and I found myself drawing parallels with the technology behind Talenthouse. So, nice work Mozilla, I remain a big fan.