Sorry you thought some of the Futuresonic (now FutureEverything) speakers fell flat Louise, I can promise you there is no shortage of love, passion and diligence that goes in to programming the event.

Drew

@rebeccawho Thanks for the lovely comments and glad you enjoyed it.

@Hugh thank you so very much for your wonderfully lengthy and very enlightening explanation about why radio does video. The penny has dropped for me. I love radio but my favourite stations (Radios 2 and 4) are less innovative when it comes to mixing it up. That’s fine up to a point. I hate knowing what the Archers actors look like, for example, because the joy of radio is creating a world in your head and of course I know exactly what all the inhabitants of Ambridge “look like”! I did love the film you showed, even that short clip, and I have the impression everyone else did. Certainly it was the talk of the pub afterwards! Thank you so much for clarifying everything about what you do and why. I hope you’ll return to Manchester and show us more of your stuff before too long.

Hugh was the most forward thinking talker of the day and is one of the reasons I do still have hope in the BBC.

Secondly, it’s important to understand that I am employed by BBC Audio and Music Interactive. The money that funds my projects comes from money set aside for digital projects to support radio and not making radio (in the traditional sense of radio that is). If I didn’t make Shoot The Summer the money would have been spent on another digital project and not programme making.

The question of ‘Why ‘radio’ is making ‘video’?’ is something that comes up a lot. I’ve been ‘visualising radio’ since 1997 when I made some films from Glastonbury for Radio 1. At the time it seemed like the most stupid idea ever to most of our producers. My case wasn’t helped when I would show them the results of my work… a frame every 5 seconds over a dial up was painful viewing. It was more like watching a slideshow than a video. Inevitably I would be asked ‘Why are we making video for radio?’ to which I’d inform them that one day computers would be owned by people who aren’t geeks, dial-up would be replaced by big fat pipes going into the home and watching video on your computer would be just like watching TV. How they laughed and chose to ignore me for the next 5 years or so.

When asked that question now the response is somewhat different given that broadband, youtube and the iplayer are pretty much a big part of the lives of those asking. Visualising radio is more important than ever when you consider how young people are listening to radio. The first thing to consider is the fact that the FM radio my generation were brought up with plays a very small role in how young people listen to radio. Online, mobile, digital TV or DAB are the popular choices – all of which come with a screen. Younger people who have been brought up listening via these devices have come to expect visual elements to their radio. The Radio 1 audience expect it more than most given that we’ve been making videos since Glasto 12 years ago.

There is a bigger discussion around what is broadcast that Matthew dealt with in his talk. My children consumed many hours of ‘radio’ from Radio 1’s Big Weekend via the videos we uploaded to Youtube filmed at the event. They never went near an FM radio, mobile phone, DAB radio or digital TV. Youtube is becoming the default radio/music player for many young people with the ‘recommended videos’ feature becoming their dial so we need to be on that dial. It’s hugely important for Radio 1 and the BBC to keep talking to young people which demands us taking content to them in the spaces that they hang out and in the format that they demand.

In response to “I really struggle to see how Hugh Garry can justify spending “our” money on his film”… there must be some confusion over my position. I’m an employee of the BBC. I’m paid to work on creative projects for the audience to enjoy. I’m not sure how the film is ‘mine’. Shoot The Summer represented an incredible value for money for the BBC. It cost such a small amount of money to make yet provided interactive content for different networks. It fed into Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 3 and The Proms, 6Music, Asian Network, 1Xtra and BBC Introducing. It was multiplatform in that it provided content for online and mobile as well as being screened at the Electric Proms Shirt Film Festival. It pulled together content from all over the UK including Cambridge Folk Festival (Cambridge), Nottinghill Carnival (London), Bestival (Isle of White), Proms in the Park (Glasgow), Summer Sundae (Leicester) and London Mela introducing fans of spoken word to folk to classical to hip hop to desi beats. In the 13 years I’ve been at the BBC I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a project that represented such value for money.

In response to “The BBC is certainly going to need to find a way to collaborate better with us folk who help fund it”, I think Shoot The Summer was a brilliant collaborative project and yes I’d love to see more, a point I made only last week in Arial, the BBC’s in house magazine.

Finally, in defense of Dr Mariann Hardey and the organisers, it’s very difficult to know how to pitch your talk without prior knowledge of what audience to expect. There have been times when I’ve lost a crowd within seconds and times when they’ve gained nothing from my talks. Sometimes I think that being able to see people’s tweets as you talk may help adjust mid-talk. Having said that tweets from the audience about being distracted by my trousers (as happened on Friday) would have thrown me completely… so perhaps not.

Thanks for writing a smashin’ summary of the TEDx Manchester event.

It’s excellent to see all the comments and discussion here on your blog, online, and in conversations between all kinds of people.

Soz for statin’ the bleedin’ obvious but there are so many rapid changes sweeping our planet, so many pressing issues and concerns.

We have an opportunity like never before to come together through global digital technology and talk about meaningful and important things, about ideas that can start movements, create action, and change the world.

It seems to me people are enjoying the relatively new and growing sense of connectedness, and though mediated mostly through technology, I think events like TEDx show that people love meeting together face to face.

The opportunity for more and more folk to access powerful content creation tools, tell their stories, form communities, and get stuff done, will change almost everything. The internet’s only been around for five minutes and we’re just at the beginning of these changes.

Social media is not a little bit of drizzle, it’s more a growing storm that’s picking up momentum and impacting everything it touches, and it will touch everything, to some degree or other.

Exclusive, mainstream media organisations that have traditionally suppressed talent, ideas, and opportunity for a broad range of people, in favour of keeping a tiny number in cosy positions as cultural gatekeepers, wont survive. It is irrelevant whether they “get it” or not, they simply won’t be around in their current form in the near future.

So, through our potential new connectedness, much of the stuff we can do together doesn’t require big budgets or fancy tech, but it does require an openness to discovering what gives us true value, and a sense of meaning.

What I’d like to see, and I want to work with all kinds of people who want the same, is all sorts of human interaction, tech enabled or face to face, including conferences like TEDx, beginning to focus on the big questions of meaning and purpose.

What kind of world do we want to help create for ourselves and our kids? I think we need to ask how these amazing tools can help us work out better ways for humans to live together in the world, in relation to each other, our planet, and beyond.

What’s great about TED Global (and what could be for TEDx too) is its willingness to allow space for these big, scary issues, as well as celebrating those with a worthwhile contribution to make.

We can do that too.

Much love,

Ian.

http://www.twitter.com/ianaspin

Running events at the BBC can also throw up problems. Especially as there are people who just can’t see beyond ‘it’s at the BBC therefore it is the BBC’ which denigrates the contribution of all those involved with the event . TEDxManchester was a partnership between Codeworks and FutureEverything and BBC.

From running the Manchester Social Media Cafe there, you do get a slightly different audience than if the event is run in a non BBC venue – . I also wonder whether TEDx would of been so popular (320 by my count) if it wasn’t held at the BBC?

Personally I think with this type of event the knowledge held in the audience collectively, is in excess of the knowledge held on the stage and I agree that a more consensual approach, such as unConference/barcamp/openLab is a more satisfying way of engagement – although that approach is not without its own set of challenges.
So if there is another TEDx in Manchester perhaps it should be crowdsourced rather than co-curated.