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.