No Excuse For Boredom
It’s true. I’ll admit it on the rumbleblog. I was in a bit of a conference slump. I regularly attend meetups, conferences, I moderate or sit on panels…and thus far I have been continuing to listen, collect and dole out business cards, take notes, formulate ideas, draw pretty venn diagrams, build strategies, write theory…but so far in 2008 something was missing from the conference circuit. Academically, a few more well-known conferences (not naming names…) left me a bit empty this year – a lot of regurgitation of principles, theories and technological nuance already discussed in depth during 2006 was glossed over – again – in 2008; it almost felt….well, as though the academic side of the New Music Economy was dumbed down. I hate to use such terms, i realize the difficult task of guiding a creative industry into a new economy supplemented by technology and the collective Cognitive Surplus of music consumers. So I’ll leave it at this: my conference “slump” was not disinterest, but rather….boredom. Much of this boredom was remedied by a very successful conference recently in Montreal: Les Rencontres, where cultures merged to define both the state of a global music industry as well as the music industry in France, Quebec and Canada. And finally the slump was eliminated, in its entirety, at SF Music Tech, last thursday, May 8, 2008, where there was a true union between Music + Tech…one that had not been tapped by most of the conferences I’ve attended since January. Finally, Finally, Finally (!!!!) there were panels so compelling that overtime was demanded. Proudly, I sat in on discussions specifically for engineers at music-tech companies (I learned about Laszlo) running parallel and perpendicular to new discussions about the very meaty middle of the long tail, the new music economy, artists & activism, streaming technology, copyright problems and how to [try to] fix them, and an interview with Tim Ferriss (author of NYT Bestseller The 4 hour work week) by CD Baby Founder & friend Derek Sivers (known to work a 110 hour work week). Kudos to Brian Zisk of Future of Music Coalition for putting together a conference which reminded me there’s no room for boredom in a forward thinking industry. Every room during the 3-track summit was packed with standing room only. Coffee, water, snacks and wine were flowing. Rumblefish was proud to provide all the music throughout the day and join our cohorts in the industry for a stimulating and thought provoking conference. Next up in my world of conferences: Popkomm 2008 in Germany? Gnomedex ‘08 in Seattle? Future of Music Summit in DC? we’ll see…..I’ll be the first to let you know!
