Hello there. I’m James Cridland, and I’ve been working in radio and new media for the last fifteen years or so. This website kindly links to my blog, and you’ll see the odd blog posting too from me here.

Last week, the great and good from the radio industry met in Westminster, London, for a conference run by the Radio Academy, which I was responsible for chairing.

The conference, Radio at the Edge, has been running for some time now, but it’s difficult to explain quite what it discusses. Its tagline, “What’s next, now”, goes a little way towards suggesting that it’s to do with new technology that makes radio programming better. Yes, things like new forms of broadcasting radio, but mainly what happens, to quote my own blog’s byline, “where radio and new platforms collide”.

I wrote up the event, while sitting at the back, in a long and somewhat badly thrown-together live blog. But if you don’t have the patience to read it (I certainly don’t), here’s what we learnt:

• Absolute Radio used their social media network to perform the UK’s largest radio rebrand in a really interesting and open way; giving unprecedented control to the listener.
• DAB Digital Radio, while suffering from some commercial pressures, is still alive and well within the UK, and can coexist well with internet broadcasting
• The BBC World Service uses the internet in a clever tactical way – from online questionnaires, to innovative broadcasting and mobile use.
• Blogs, Twitter, etc, can strengthen radio presenters’ connections with their audience, to a degree that almost means that if they change radio station, their audience will mostly follow them
• Music personalisation services like last.fm might not be the killer to radio that some people think
• Adding visuals to radio can make for a really interesting proposition, and Global Radio launched an iPhone app during the event
• Leo Laporte spoke about podcasting and radio in the US – seeing podcasting as being a useful addition to radio, but not a total replacement. And he also spoke about how he’s earning revenue from the podcasts he does.
• Andrew Collins and Richard Herring performed a live podcast in front of us, and gave us some interesting statistics about what their audience thought about their programme.

Radio conferences are sometimes a hit and miss affair. But I hope that this year, it was rather more ‘hit’ than ‘miss’. What are your thoughts on radio conferences? What are the good ones you’ve been to? Do let me know in the comments.