Tuesday 29 June 2010

Working on the new series of The Choice on Radio 4

Yesterday I started work editing the new series of The Choice for Radio 4.

Michael Buerk interviews people who have made life-altering decisions and talks them through the whole process, from the original dilemma to living with the consequences.

I can tell you its going to be another excellent engaging series produced by Dawn Bryan for BBC Religion & Ethics but as yet, I cannot say who is on what the stories are this year as nothing has been announced. As soon as it is, I will keep you posted.

CIPD gets it wrong on interns’ pay

The TUC "Rights for Interns" web site has posted about a new Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) report on interns rights and pay. The TUC site says....


A CIPD report out this week calls for a new National Minimum Wage ‘training rate’ of £2.50 to be applied to all internships.  In response, the TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber commented “Although this proposal is well-meaning, in practice it would represent a  significant watering-down of the current rights for most interns. The vast majority already have the right to be paid the minimum wage in full, and the problem has been in getting employers to face up to their responsibilities.  What is really needed is simply better awareness and enforcement of the existing law.”
CIPD assert that interns and apprentices share considerable similarities, warranting a common wage entitlement.  But we would question this.  Apprenticeships are governed by regulations and vocational frameworks that guarantee a certain level of quality (or at least consistency) and lead to a recognised qualification.  Internships do not, they don’t even exist in the law and their design and delivery are governed exclusively by the whim of the employer. 
The Low Pay Commission introduced a training rate in the early days of the National Minimum Wage.  It was not widely used but when it was it was often abused, with employers taking people on a reduced rate but offering little in terms of training.  Under these proposals, we see potential for similar sharp practices that a voluntary code of practice would fail to address.  Its telling to note that the LPC shelved the training rate some time ago.

Go to the Rights for Interns site for more details.

According to the People Management site....

The suggested rate of £2.50 is the same as a newly announced government rate for apprentices. This was announced at the same time as increases in the national minimum wage. The adult minimum will increase by 2 per cent in October to £5.93 an hour. Workers aged between 18 and 20 will receive a 9p increase to £4.92, while those aged 16 or 17 will get £3.64 – a rise of 7p.

It seems like one step forward and two steps back with a reduction in payment. I agree with the TUC that the alignment of internships and apprenticeships is not a valid one and the start, or even continuation, of a slippery slope.


Folks, another reason to join a union to have someone who can protect and fight for your interests.

Sunday 27 June 2010

Visual Theology - Exchange

Dave Perry who has an excellent blog "Visual Theology" has recently added an excellent post about a disused rural telephone exchange...

At the very time that this little rural telephone exchange was in its heyday the seeds of its demise had already been sown. In the minds of a few courageous digital explorers working off the edge of the map, where the dragons of outrageous newness roam and roar, this place was redundant even before the cement had dried, the last copper wire had been screwed down in place, and the first analogue call connected. Today it sits in the field as a curio of a bygone age, as far removed from the latest iPhone 4 as a fossilised dinosaur footprint is from world record breaking sprinter Usain Bolt.

I won't spoil the rest of what Dave has to say. I commend you go and read it together with the glorious images for yourself.

Saturday 26 June 2010

Would you like to listen to my handiwork?

BBC Radio 4 are repeating a programme "The Greed Imperative" I worked on with Rosemary Foxcroft first broadcast on 23rd May 2010. The repeat goes out on Monday 28th June 2010 at 11am.

Having worked in the City before becoming an academic and a nun, Dr Catherine Cowley is well acquainted with the temptations and the financial risks that city workers face each day. Dr Cowley questions whether money is the only motivation for those who work in the City and discusses whether greed is in fact a necessary and vital dynamic behind a successful economy.
Is greed linked to the endless growth demanded by our capitalist society? Dr Edward Skidelsky, lecturer in Philosophy at Exeter University, says that the economists in the past assumed that growth was a process with an end, and once that end came, people would enjoy the fruits of wealth. And as Karl Marx put it, "we'd hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon and discuss poetry in the evening".
Although the finance sector at the moment is being characterised as a hotbed of greed, would any of us, given the opportunity and the circumstances, act any differently? Are we focusing on bankers' greed so we don't have to look at our own?


Do catch it if you can otherwise catch it on iPlayer next week.

Thursday 24 June 2010

Skillset announce more than £1 million earmarked for TV training

From the Skillset press release dated 17th June 2010...

Skillset’s TV Freelance Fund (TVFF) will spend almost £1.2 million on television training in five priority areas over this financial year.

The TVFF is made up of voluntary contributions from the BBC, Channel 4, Five, the Indie Training Fund (via contributions from member companies), Sky and other cable and satellite companies, and is designed to invest in training for the entire television workforce.

The opening up of a global market, technological changes in how content is created and consumed and reduced commissioning budgets have all resulted in seismic shifts to traditional business models. Skillset argues that to remain competitive, both companies and individuals need to embrace new skills, techniques and business practices. Therefore, investment will be directed into five priority areas:


  • Multiplatform: £300,000
  • Management and Leadership: £300,000
  • New Entrants: £300,000
  • Craft and Technical: £50,000
  • Health and Safety: £25,000
Read the rest of the press release on the Skillset web site.

According to Broadcast the Multi-Platform budget has been increased by £50,000  which is good news. However yet again Broadcast + Television. Where is the equivalent radio programme?

Change Happens

Wow, another video with some incredible figures in it. You might want to be ready on the Pause button to take some of the figures in!




Social networking has outstripped email ages ago, for example. The church needs to take this on board ad it seems as if MediaLit is having an impact on this.

Thanks fro DigitalFingerPrint and JohnnyLaird for finding it.

Tuesday 22 June 2010

ITV to incorporate social media into TV news bulletins

In todays Guardian Newspaper in and amongst all the pre budget stories is an interesting announcement from ITV news about involving viewers through social media...

During this evening's 6.30pm ITV News, viewers will be invited to join the nationwide project The Cuts: Your Stories.

From those who get in touch, ITV will recruit what it calls a "giant panel", focusing on public service workers such as GPs, teachers, refuse collectors, people who deliver care for the elderly and the disabled, librarians and swimming instructors.

The ITV News editor, Deborah Turness, said: "Government cuts will dominate the news agenda for a long time to come, and our panel will show their direct impact on people from all walks of life."
Turness added that the leaders' debates during the general election campaign earlier this year had spurred on ITV News to incorporate social media into bulletins.
"The debates brought social media out of the teenage bedroom and into the living room. So many people enjoyed the experience of watching TV whilst chatting online it became a mainstream experience.
"We wanted to build on that in our news programmes and use social media as a platform to offer useful information to our viewers whilst harvesting their take on living in 'austerity Britain'."

It will interesting to watch how this experiment works to engage and involve the audience through social media.

What does it all mean

I am watching the #medialit tag on Twitter following the Media Literacy course run by Codec in Durham with Pete Philips, Andrew Graystone and Bex Lewis amongst others. Pete Philips has used this excellent video in his presentation on Communication Conviction. There are some scary numbers in this video.

Monday 21 June 2010

Radio 4 is pulling the plug on its Friday Play

Les Benedictus has written a very comprehensive article on this but also going into the background of radio drama, past, present and future. The article is well worth a read.

The reason, of course, is cost. At £23,000 per hour, the BBC spends on radio drama about one 40th of what it might pay for an hour of television. Hampton's White Chameleon is a marquee production for Radio 4, and yet there are no White Chameleon baseball caps, no Dionysian trailers, no egos being massaged (no time). Gather its entire cast and crew together, and you would not have enough people for a football match. This, BBC bosses argue, is why Radio 4's main evening slot, the Friday Play, will cease to exist from next year; it was either save there, where the audience is smallest, or cut everything else beyond the bone.

It is a shame that Radio 4 are having to drop The Friday Play but there is still a lo of drama on Radio 4 with The Afternoon Play, the Womans Hour serial, etc.

Les goes on to look at the future especially on line of radio drama....


Is there anybody out there? Radio drama beyond the BBC
The BBC has such a grip on radio drama in Britain that it's easy to forget about the alternatives.
Ireland's RTÉ still podcasts a Sunday Playhouse each week – go to rte.ie/radio1/drama. If you speak French you may also find something worthwhile on Arte Radio (arteradio.com).
There is a rich online supply of radio plays from the 1940s and 1950s. You can find mystery plays from Orson Welles at cjkell.squarespace.com; classic drama at classicdrama.libsyn.com; and kids' entertainment featuring Space Heroes at spaceheroes.libsyn.com.
By far the busiest group of original audio dramatists, however, are the small-scale podcasters. For the most part, this means science fiction, fantasy and mystery stories – try the Pendant Productions website (pendantaudio.com). For a polished zombie drama podcast go to zombiepodcast.com. Mystery stories can be heard at olinemysteries.com and wormwoodshow.com. One well-regarded (and British) ghost story series from 2006 is still available at paranormalists.co.uk.
You can find well-packaged guides to what else is out there at audiodramareview.blogspot.com and radiodramarevival.com. And it's all free.
Yes it may be free but how are actors, writers, technicians and producers going to pay the mortgage?

How do we as Christians relate to our communities?

I went to an excellent day of seminars led by Rev Dr Phil Meadows from Cliff College on Shaping Up for Mission. Phil is part of a new project called Inspire and they are re-imagining John Wesley's spirituality in a 21st Century context. It is amazing to see how much of Wesley's strategies still apply today.

To learn more about Inspire go to the web site. There is a national conference on July 3rd that I will be going to.

Jonny Baker has also blogged about a 'gathering' he attended with other folk from various emerging churches and communities this weekend, and in his post he shared some of the prayers they used as part of one of worship times and is based on a well known prayer but with some added explanations....


For God so loved the world - may we naturally follow suit,
That he gave his only son - may we learn the wonder of sacrifice,
That all who believe - may our love for one another be the crucial evidence,
May not perish - may we work to halt the collapse of lives, of communities and of creation,
But have eternal life - may we point to the hope you bring now and for the future.

Jonny also links Mark Berry's site which has more of the prayers they used - all very thought provoking stuff.

Is Google about to sell us a Newspass?

Roy Greenslade in The Guardian today has reported a story about Google potentially providing a 'one click' payment system for content....

For their part, publishers will be able to designate what type of payment they want to accept, including subscriptions and micropayments. People who find content from participating publishers in Google search will see a paywall icon next to that content and be able to purchase access directly from there by using Google's Checkout platform.


Read the full article here on The Guardian's web site

In the light of various business models that are coming to the fore something like this, that makes it easy to buy the bits of content as you need it,rather than having to take out a raft of subscriptions is a good idea, because for paid content to work it has to be this kind of model or for it to be included in our mobile device package.

Friday 18 June 2010

Rights for Interns


The TUC has started a new web site to help folk who are on unpaid work experience of as the Americans call it interns, a phrase that is getting used more and more here in the UK and somehow gives the idea of working for free some credence.

My own union BECTU has been very pro-active in this area as unpaid posts are prevalent in the media industry. "If you a job you are going to have to work for free so we can see if you are any good. If you are we might offer you a job...."



BECTU – fighting exploitation in the audio-visual industries
BECTU is the union that represents people working in film, TV and other audio-visual industries.  This industry is rife with unpaid work.  BECTU believe that 1 in 6 of their members is working for no pay, and they have been campaigning against the exploitation of unpaid work. In November 2009, film worker Nicola Vetta, with BECTU’s support, won a very significant Employment Tribunal case against London Dreams Motions Pictures Ltd over non-payment.


Even though there are strict regulations on this practice they don't seem to being adhered to.

Now we all sometimes need to offer a 'lost leader' to get a foot on the ladder but consider it very carefully as a business decision. Think of it as an investment. Will I get a return on this investment of my time and effort? Weigh this against your "worth".  By working for nothing you are devaluing yourself by saying you are not worth being paid anything for your services.

So if you are starting out, or changing sectors, do go and study this web site so you enter into an internship with your eyes wide open knowing what you are letting yourself in for and most importantly what your rights are.

Monday 14 June 2010

BBC Licence Fee Set For Debate

Another spin off article from The Guardian's interview with Jeremy Hunt is all about already reviewing how the licence fee might be collected...

The BBC licence fee 'under scrutiny' next year - Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt stresses support for BBC but says changing viewing habits could make annual fee obsolete.

He told Media Guardian that the coalition is "committed to the principle that the BBC should have a ringfenced pot of money over a multi-year period" and stressed his support for the BBC and its independence.

However, he believes changing viewing habits, with an increasing number of people watching TV content online, will make the annual charge for television ownership obsolete sooner rather than later.
"We support the principle of the licence fee and always have done," says Hunt in his first interview since joining the cabinet. "But we also recognise, as technology changes, we may need to adapt the way it's collected. It is not going to be possible to have a tax every time anyone buys a computer."

It will be interesting to see what ideas surface as to how to fund the BBC as the number of TV receivers to viewers decline.

What language to we use to describe God?

Jonny Baker is his blog has posted a very interesting article on the words we use to describe God.

grace on saturday night ( yes i decided to go and watch the football later...) was really good with lots of stuff to chew over for months to come i suspect. we've been having a few discussions on the language we use in grace and how it can be used to include or exclude often unwittingly. speaking of god was the first service where this has been picked up. jenny has written the service up in the grace archive, with links to prayers, confession and so on...

I do thoroughly recommend you take a look at this but please do it with an open heart. It has really made me think about the language we use to describe church and how open or closed we make God in the language we use. Do take a look at the archive, I found it very interesting the words the congregation at Grace decided to 'park'.

The whole use of language and moving away from some of the standard phrases we trot out (like those that Grace chose to park) got me thinking about musicians and some of the work we do with Wellspring helping them to free themselves from the music put in front of them and improvise.

Once you start to improvise you have to listen to what everyone is playing to make sure what you are playing fits with what others are doing. You need to listen. When playing the 'dots', you don't need to listen in the same way, you have the security in knowing that someone else has worked out that what you are playing will fit, so you don't have to think for yourself. But when improvising you have to listen, think and then decide if what you are doing is working.

Thanks Jonny and the folk of Grace for making me think.

New 'Social Creativity' site for you to try

We have all heard about social media well now we have 'social creativity' and there is a new web site from the folk at 186 Networks Ltd who are clients of mine and they have just released a new social creativity site called Stringsta

Create, learn, work, play, think together.  Stringsta™ is an amazing new way to mash-up videos, audios, images and texts collaboratively!  Work with friends all over the globe to create, edit and publish rich
media content in one simple interface.  The free, open platform is plugged straight into YouTube®, enabling everyone to make use of the world’s biggest video library.

What is it for?

Stringsta is a collaborative rich media platform where groups of people or businesses  can create, learn, work, play and think together, wherever they are, whenever they choose.

Stringsta is for collaborative film making, story writing, brand developing, news gathering, e-learning, music making, scientific researching, project managing, documentary making, lyric writing, photo sharing, speech making, consumer researching, opinion mongering, audience engaging, travel writing, intelligence collecting, data pooling, design conceptualizing, feedback giving… 

I haven't tried it yet but I know they have been working hard on this for a long while, so have a look, try it out and see what you think.

Interesting articles in The Guardian today

Following on from discussions at the Church & Media Conference some interesting and relevant articles have appeared in today's Guardian newspaper.

The first is an article from Emily Bell, and it will probably be one of the last she writes before she leaves to work in the US.

Technology giants throw news brands a lifeline - As content costs shrink and technology revenues consolidate, more tie-ins between newsrooms and newsmakers look likely.

This is an interesting article about the way technolgy and more importantly its low cost and easy availability is changing the dynamic of new provision and also the potential move of journalist jobs from media companies to technology companies as they move more and more into content provision.


The next article is all abotut citizen journalism...

Citizen journalism: can small be bountiful? - Hyperlocal news projects that start tiny have a greater chance of success – but many find themselves with more kudos than cash.


It discusses the reliability and trustworthiness of citizen journalism and hyper local news. Interesting reading off the back of our conversations about parish newsletters etc.

Finally moving onto Auntie, there is an interview with Jeremy Hunt

Jeremy Hunt: 'We have a media policy, not a BBC policy'- New culture secretary wants to talk deregulation and innovation in his first interview.

The article starts to explore Hunts attitudes to media and the BBC, we shall see....

Want to listen to some of my handiwork

2 of the programmes I have worked on recently for All Out Productions have both been featured on Radio 4's "Pick of the Week" this week.

Hardeep Singh Kohli makes his selection from the past seven days of BBC Radio.  It's difficult in a week festooned with the frivolity of football NOT to mention the beautiful game. Hardeep Singh Kohli's Pick of the Week selects some more unusual angles on the game from as far afield as Milan, Robben Island and the Highlands of Ethiopia. There's a beautiful feature about the tragic demise of Schumann, an exploration of the iconic interviewing skills of David Frost and Nicholas Parsons recalling his days in Glasgow. The picks the week.

Today - Radio 4
The Power and the Passion - World Service
Football's Freedom Fighters
The Carabinieri Art Squad - Radio 4
Thoroughly Modern Mary - Radio 4
Philip and Sydney - Radio 4
Start the Week - Radio 4
Hello, Good Evening and Welcome - the David Frost Story - Radio 4
High Hopes - Radio 4
The eSportsmen - Radio 4
Doon the Watta - Radio 4
If I Loved You - Radio 4
Robert Schumann and the Music of the Future - Radio 4
Home Thoughts From Abroad - Radio 4

Firstly "Football's Freedom Fighters" produced by Jo Meek

When South Africa's Bafana Bafana kick the first ball of the 2010 World Cup on the 11th June in Johannesburg's revamped Soccer City stadium there will be several men in the crowd who's appreciation of the match will stretch well beyond national pride.

For Mark Shinners, Anthony Suze, Sedick Issacs, Lizo Sitoto and Sipho Tshabalala this is the completion of a long journey that started for them in the 1960s, when they first started playing the beautiful game on a rough football pitch on one of the ugliest islands on earth.

We hear how the Makana Football Association was formed, based on the principles of collective discipline and fair play. A 16-year-old Dikgang Moseneke was elected Chairman, an act that underlined the Association's commitment to excellence and FIFA-like technical rigour. We speak to Mr Moseneke, now 63 and the current Deputy Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, about how the football pitches of Robben Island were the training ground for the leaders of the future.

As the World Cup starts in South Africa, Fergal Keane travels to Robben Island with these men to the pitches where some of the country's most prominent political leaders now used football to create a space of dignity, respect and democracy at the infamous prison.

and then the first part of a 3 part series "Doon the Watta" produced by Lyndon Saunders.

Nicholas Parsons was only just 16 when his parents sent him from his relatively privileged home in London to the industrially hardened city of Glasgow. It was January 1940 and with the country still at war, the Parsons felt the best place for their teenage son was serving his country north of the border. So with the help of an uncle, Nicholas secured an engineering apprenticeship on the busy River Clyde. For 5 years he combined his studies at Glasgow university with work for the Drysdales firm.

60 years on Nicholas Parsons goes back to the place where he was sent as a boy but grew into a man. By day he had a tough education from the uncompromisingly tough men of the Clyde, but by night he had the freedom to discover his talents on stage and perform to packed out theatres and concert halls full of the men with whom he was clocking on and off.

In this series Nicholas returns back to Glasgow and retraces the life he once had, starting his journey in the YMCA digs he came to call home.

He'll also revisit Glasgow University and the department of Engineering where he studied. It's still at the centre of expertise in teaching and research in shipbuilding today. He'll find out how the profession of shipbuilding has changed.

Enjoy some excellent radio even if I say so myself, but I think I can safely say the Pick of the Week team agreed!

Saturday 12 June 2010

Post CMC conference mussings

 #CMN10 #cmn11 Having read @digitalfprint very good notes from the conference and adding to the discussion from folk commenting on the need to stop whingeing and to start engaging like @georgeluke and re-tweeted by @drbexl @gavindrake and @annamdrew and also mine and others suggestions to have digital literacy workshops at the next CMN conference, it has started to strike me that in the light of the comment that everything is moving very quickly except the Christian response should we not starting to would out what we can do to start to engage now rather than wait till next year?

There is of course the excellent MediaLit course but I suppose what I thinking of is starting to experiment and strategise a valid response to bring the Christian response up to speed.

I have just listened to the most recent edition of the Guardian's Tech Weekly podcast that was talking about government IT development in the climate of a 'new government' and saying that no IT company would be expected to roll out a fully developed system that everyone can use reliably from day one. It should be try out a small scale test, iterate, iterate and then scale up. So can we start the process?

If these conversations are already taking place lets link them up, if not lets get them going. Surely an excellent role for the Network?

Discuss.....

Thursday 10 June 2010

Radio 4 controller short list gets shorter

And then there was four. George Entwistle, controller of BBC Knowledge, who was previously seen as the leading internal candidate for the role, has now ruled himself out.

So it leaves Peter Barron, former Newsnight editor; Tim Suter, former Ofcom partner; Mary Hockaday, head of the BBC multimedia newsroom; and Gwyneth Williams director of BBC World Service’s English Networks and News.

BBC announce Radio 4 controller shortlist

Tim Davies has now cut down the long list of 14 names to 5.

Peter Barron the former Newsnight editor left the BBC in July 2008 to join Google as head of communications. He spent 12 years working on Newsnight, taking up the editorship in 2004 where he introduced several digital media features such as daily emails and a vodcast. Upon joining Google he said: “Google is the most interesting and exciting company of my lifetime”.

George Entwistle, controller of BBC Knowledge,  joined the BBC as a trainee in 1989. As well as heading up the BBC’s factual output, where commissions have included the award-winning documentary Iran and the West, he was also acting head of BBC4 during the then controller Janice Hadlow’s sabbatical.

Tim Suter, former Ofcom partner, and former BBC executive - worked as a reporter, producer and editor. He was the head of the government’s broadcasting policy during the first converged Communications Act and was a founding partner of Ofcom.

Mary Hockaday, head of the BBC multimedia newsroom and replaced Peter Horrocks as multimedia newsroom boss last year, having been his deputy since 2007 where she also led the on demand and radio news teams and the internal mediawire service. She is currently responsible for all TV, radio and online news output. She was previously editor of BBC World Service news and current affairs between 2001 and 2006, before becoming deputy head of BBC radio news, overseeing output for Radio 4 programme’s Today, World at One, PM, World Tonight, and Radio 5 Live.

Gwyneth Williams, director of BBC World Service’s English Networks and News. She has been in her World Service role since July 2007 and is responsible for all the BBC’s international radio programmes in English. She was Head of Radio Current Affairs and Editor of the BBC Reith Lectures. Her department’s output included programmes such as File On 4, Analysis, From Our Own Correspondent, Moneybox and In Business.

As quite a lot of the work that passes my hand currently goes out on Radio 4 I will be watching this with interest!!

Education

The news this morning has covered the potential revision of university education as the costs have apperntly increased and are placng too higher burden on the state finances.

I am getting increasing frustrated about the pressure for more and more people to have to go to university to get a degree to stand any chance of getting a job.

Why do we have to do this. There has always been a proportion of our young people for whom an acedemic univeristy education is not the right solution and yet they feel presurised in going so as to get a good job.

I didn't go to university, instead I served an apprenticeship at Marconi Communications Systems Ltd in Chelmsford, Essex because my dad (who was in a position to know) said it was the best scheme in the country.

I am involved with the Advanced Media Apprenticeship, which is in its 3rd year up here in Manchester, and enabling young people who wouldn't have had the opportunity to undertake a proper 18 month block release apprenticeship and are getting real jobs in this sector. However, although there is a push by government to resurrect the apprenticeship scheme following its decimation in the last recession  it doesn't yet seem to be having a positve affect on young people's expectations.

I would also add this to the UK's lack of respect for engineering and science. It was reported on BBC Breakfast this morning that we are only filling 50% of the science posts from home grown talent. The guy from Dyson was at pains to point out that if we want to get out of the current mess then we will need to start to innovate again and return to the place where we punched above our weight.

So we need to make engineering and science a respectable career as we do with other professions like law, teaching etc. In Germany they respect their engineers and in my business they have a phrase for someone who works in sound as a Tonmeister.

So come on folk respect and value your engineers and scientists and lets not force everyone to have to get a degree to get a job. Let us train people for the jobs they are going to do. Surely it is a "no brainer" as industry will get people you can do the job rather than people who can talk about it.

Wednesday 9 June 2010

Thoughts from the CMN conference

I have just got back from the Church and Media Conference "Voices From The Cloud" and thought it would be good to start with a post about my thoughts.

Monday
It was good to hear but I wasn't surprised by the opening keynote address from Roger Bolton as he repeated his comments from those he made at the Sandford St Martin Trust awards.

Next was the first opportunity to take part in the Strands. I have to say I was disappointed at the range of strands but decided to go to the 'online' strand and we had an interesting debate on social media and how organisations might use it as well as a discussion on appropriate media for various audiences.

After tea we heard from various 'catholic voices' and it was during this session I explored the Twitter feed using the hash tag #cmc10. I had to download an app for my iPhone but I was soon enjoying the comments from my fellow delegates on the debate.  This has been the first time I have felt the desire to follow an event on Twitter.

I have to say the entertainment for the first night left me fairly cold, sorry Jo Enright but it didn't work for me. Both Tony Campolo and Tony Jordan were much funnier.


Tuesday
Tony Campolo was stunning, definitely the high point of the conference so far, and perhaps without realising it, gave an excellent justification for retaining quality public service broadcasting, he talked about advertising and the desire to acquire stuff. Do go and download the talk from the CMN web site when they are posted in a couple of days and listen or even listen again to his passionate presentation.

After coffee I was interested to hear about Local Media for Local People and was especially interested in what Duncan Williams had to say about funding news online as part of the mobile phone charges because he wanted to have quality journalism on his titles and advertising on line wouldn't provide enough revenue in his opinion. I firmly believe we need to find business models and funding streams to make quality content available on line and to be able to make a living at it.

In the afternoon we had the second of the Strand sessions and we started by looking at a Child Wise report on children's media usage including things like mobile phone usage and spend.

Following on from that was an excellent session on Social Media and this session together with the two strand sessions have left me reviewing my on line presence and personnas.

After the evening meal we had an excellent session where Tony Jordan, who writes for Eastenders and Life on Mars shared with us how he came to write the script for a new BBC production of The Nativity story. He took us through the trials and tribulations of how he chose to handle the story, I can't wait to see it. It was wonderful to see how God has used him to produce a wonderful human perspective to birth of Jesus.

Wednesday
It was very interesting to hear what Aaqil Ahmed had to say about his first year as head of BBC Religion & Ethics as well as being the first dedicated Religion & Ethics commissioning editor. He shared how with the right ideas it is possible to pitch Religion and Ethics ideas and get them in main stream slots if you come up with ideas that work there.

Finally Andrew Graystone gave us the opportunity to consider in small groups what impact the conference had had on each of us as individuals and for me this blog and a new Twitter presence Sound_Mike to add to my specialised Pro Tools presence MikeProTools  are the start of this.

When it came to discuss broader thoughts about what the CMN could take on, I suggested that the Strand sessions could be used to provide a range of Digital Literacy training workshops and I offered to do a Podcasting course following my work with the media union BECTU and their Digital Tool Kit series.

So all in all an excellent 3 days with simulating presentations and discussions and great opportunities to meet old and new friends.