Locality Switch

Web-based software is magic. It all runs on a server in the sky, and we don’t generally have to worry about it. No upgrades, so patches to install, and no need to worry about installing it on every machine. It’s computer bliss.

One of my favourite developers of web-based software is 37signals, who have made products such as Basecamp, Backpack, Writeboard and Highrise.

My favourite product of theirs would have to be Highrise, which is a really easy to use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. I’ve recommended it to our community station, and they have started using it for managing sponsorship deals. There’s a few different plans you can subscribe to, but we have the free version.

I want to take the time to describe how we use it to keep track of sponsorships. Previously, our tracking of sponsorships was all contained within a few different people’s heads, and in our inboxes. It was fine with limited sponsors, but once we got more than a few, it became hard to track payments, renewals, etc.

Introducing Highrise.

As Highrise is a CRM, it’s important to understand the concept. In a nutshell, a CRM will track all of your customers, your dealings with them, upcoming tasks, etc. It keeps track of business for you.

For our sponsorship tracking, we have all of the contact details of our customers contained within the system. Then, we have ‘notes’ added to each one, which describe our dealings with them. Notes, by the way, are just small snippets of text which we can attach to a company. Here’s a few samples:

• Called Rob about upgrading his sponsorship package – is excited about the possibilities. Have to email new sponsorship agreement to him
• Julie sent through the cheque for $220.00, which will give XYZ Builders 3 spots per day until 27/8/09
• Acme Warehouse is changing new management – previous management has passed on their details so we can try and establish a relationship

As you can see, notes are used to keep the whole team up to date with our dealings with individual companies.

The next aspect of Highrise we use is Tasks.

We absolutely exploit this feature (in a good way!) – we currently have twenty two tasks set for the next few months. Tasks are simple. Here’s a few examples:

• Renewal Letter – Jul 23, 6pm (Re: Julie from XYZ Builders)
• Sponsorship Finishes – Aug 29, 8pm – (Re: Acme Warehouse)
• Thank-you letter – Aug 30, 2pm – (Re: Council involvement in OB)

The beauty of Tasks is that the appropriate person gets an email reminder when an item is due, so we never miss a beat. There is no excuse to miss some important task which is time critical.

Of course, the information we receive from Highrise is only as good as the information we put in. The computer can’t read our minds – that is one feature that 37signals has failed to implement.

We love Highrise. The software is simplistic, but gets the job done really well. Hats off to 37signals for producing such a marvelous bit of software – you really have helped us a great deal as a community radio station.

When was the last time that you filled out a contact details form before downloading evaluation software? How many times has the company actually rung you about it? It’s a rare occurrence, but for Symantec it seems to be common practice.

About a month and a half ago, I was evaluating all the managed anti-malware solutions out there, with the goal of seeing which would suit 2CCR. I went through the solutions of Mcafee, AVG, Symantec, and Trend-Micro and tried them all out. All of them asked for my contact details, as I was trying out enterprise software.

Only one company has called me: Symantec. They have been great from the word “go”. All my questions I had were answered by their staff, and their customer service reps called me on my mobile on more than one occassion. Symantec have rised above the competition, and set them apart from the rest.

Regrettably, their software wasn’t quite right for us. I would have loved to go with their products, thanks to the customer service, but I couldn’t quite justify it. Their software we tried was aimed at slighty larger networks. In the end, we chose AVG 8.5 Network Edition because that worked better in our small-ish network. However, the next time I go and design a network (and I’m sure I’ll do that plenty of times in my life) Symantec will be first on the list of products to consider for network security.

Fantastic job, Symantec!!

Does your station stream over the internet? No? *Gasp* You’re missing out on a huge market your station could be reaching. Don’t worry – I’m going to take you through all you need to know to get started.

But wait, isn’t community radio about serving your local area? Well, yes and no. I’m of the opinion that we should offer as many different ways to get our station across to our listeners, whether or not they are in our local area. Sure, programming decisions should be made with the licensed area as the primary focus, but as in terms of who is listening, I believe we are responsible for reaching everyone who wants to hear our programs.

After all, community radio certainly offers a huge range of very different programming, much of which would appeal to people all around the world.

So, what do you need to get started with streaming?

• A spare computer at your station, and an input from your studios into the sound card
• Encoding software – I recommend EdCast
• A reliable internet connection from your studios – I have found ADSL2+ to do the job very nicely
• A streaming licence from APRA/AMCOS – this is calculated as a percentage of your income from your stream
• A streaming provider, we’re going to focus on shoutcast.
• Permission from your board / management (I’m going to assume you have this taken care of)

Before you start piceing the bits together to start streaming, you need a basic understanding of TCP/IP networking, and also knowledge of how streaming actually works. You could just build your stream from the instructions I have here, but when it all falls over, who has the knowledge to fix it?

Let’s take a look at the path your audio will take:

Audio –> PC –> Encoding software –> Internet –> Shoutcast Server –> listeners, listeners, listeners

So, your audio will come into the PC, EdCast will encode it, it will be blasted over the internet to your Shoutcast provider, who will then distribute it to all who want to listen. Simple, right? Not quite…

Let’s explore the different aspects of this audio chain through the ether:

Your encoding software has a vital part to play. It will take a feed from your soundcard and transform it to your chosen format. There are heaps of formats to choose from, but the primary ones you should consider are the MP3 and AAC+ codecs. Why? Because these are the most compatible. Choosing a codec is beyond the realm of this article, but I will try to post more on it in the future.

Within your encoding software, you also have to configure the bitrate – this is technical jargon which roughly translates to quality (and is measured in Kbps – Kilo-bits/second). The higher the bitrate, the higher the quality – however, the higher the bitrate the higher the bandwidth required by both you and the the people listening. The trick is to go for somewhere in the middle of the road, say 64Kbps for MP3 or 32Kbps AAC+. But it all depends – I suggest you try them all out, and see how it goes.

The Shoutcast provider is where all your listeners connect to. They have all the bandwidth which they let you use. Typically, providers in the USA are cheaper, but make sure you shop around for the best deal. You want reliability, heaps of bandwidth, and a reasonable price. Remember, if your provider fails, your stream will suffer – and no one will be able to listen.

Another consideration you have to account for is your internet connection at the station. Can it handle the extra bandwidth requirements? How much will it cost? The best ISPs offer un-metered uploads, meaning you don’t pay for what is being sent out of your connection. This is brilliant if you are doing streaming, because streaming is basically just a constant upload! Make sure you read and understand all the fine print from your ISP before you start – you don’t want to get into trouble.

That’s all for our getting started guide on streaming. I know it isn’t quite a step by step guide which will guarantee success within three weeks. I feel the best way for you to fully understand streaming is to get your hands dirty with it – download the software, install it on a spare box, sign up for a cheap Shoutcast provider, and see how it all works.

If you’re up to date with the latest trends in broadcasting, you ought to know that everything is going digital. Massive multi-pair cables are being replaced with inexpensive Cat6*. All the latest digital audio consoles interconnect with Cat6, and the only analogue audio in sight is converted to digital through an A/D converter anyway.

So, why is Cat6 so popular? One word: cost. Cat6 can be bought cheaper than $0.50 per meter. Compare that to bucket loads of multi-pair cable with Krone IDC blocks on every end, and Cat6 is suddenly very attractive. Not to mention the advantages you get by running all your audio over a Cat6 network – audio coming from any source can be instantly routed to any destination you like, without leaving your chair.

I love Cat6, and the advantages it has. However, there is one small problem which every piece of Cat6 in the world has – RJ45.

You want to know the problems with the humble RJ45? The problem is that it is cheap, and very easy to break. But the main thing which breaks is the little plastic clip which secures it in. I don’t know how many of these things have been broken in studios, and have come out half way through a song, leaving a very problematic situation. I am, quite frankly, fed up with having to re-crimp these things.

Surly the broadcast world would have woken up to this problem, and found a solution. After all, we are the people who have been favouring those robust XLR connectors for as long as they have been around! Surly someone would have a solution?

But wait, there is! It’s called EtherCon, and is manufactured Neutrik. EtherCon is a wonderful concept. Here’s a pic:

See, it’s a RJ45 turned XLR! Wonderful! It’s just what I’ve always wanted. I would happily replace every RJ45 in the building with one of these EtherCon wonder plugs. But there’s a bit of a problem:

I can’t find a single network switch, network card, or patch panel which supports the EtherCon connector! Sure, they will sell me a EtherCon connector to solder onto a PCB, but that isn’t what I really want. What I want is a range of devices already with the EtherCon plug on it.

The only things I have found with EtherCon built in are expensive live audio consoles (of the PA variety), such as the beautiful-but-expensive Allen & Heath iLive series. Digital live consoles have EtherCon built in, but the broadcasting world hasn’t quite caught up. Neither has the world of Network Interface Cards.

So, for now, it’s back to re-crimping those broken RJ45 connectors for me.

* I have been using the term Cat6 throughout this post for simplicities sake – Cat5e could be substituted into this post without any trouble.

I love plans. I love being strategic. At my local radio station, I make sure we put a lot of thought into a quarterly departmental strategic plan. This plan is generally only two or three pages long, but it outlines all the goals we want to achieve over the next quarter, and how much money we plan to spend. This is then delivered to the board, and they say yea or nay.

But, I’ve recently come to realise that a plan really isn’t a plan. Plans can change. Plans aren’t really a good name: Guessing would be a much better word to describe what we are doing. Jason Fried from 37signals describes it well:

Planning’s too definite a term for most things. We often use planning when we really mean guessing. And what we call it has a lot to do with how we think about it, do about it, and devote to it. I think companies often over think, over do, and over devote to planning.

[ From Let's just call plans what they are: guesses ]

You don’t really come to realise the what this means until your plan actually fails. It can be frustrating at best, embarrassing at worst, when this happens, especially when you put so much effort into the planning.

But failing doesn’t have to be a bad thing!

I experienced this recently when my quarterly plan fell to bits due to some proposed equipment being discontinued (and similar models not available, either). This sent us back to square one. For a couple of days, I was annoyed. But then I went and examined the alternatives. We sat down and thought about it, and we came up with a solution which was actually $600 cheaper! Success!!

Failure can lead to success. Failure is what you make of it. Never plan to fail, but be ready for it when it does.

Radio must be one of the most effective communication technologies out there. It reaches so many people every day. It can be left on in the background all the time, or be turned up a little to become the focal point of the moment. And it costs next to nothing to listen to!

Behind the radio set is a team of people making it all run. It’s not always an easy job. It can be expensive. It can test your relationships with people when things go wrong. Making radio work day in day out can take a long time to get right, and when you finally get it right, technologies change and you’re back to square one.

Every radio station has three distinct groups of people:

• Management
• On Air Talent
• Technologists

Sure, this may be a very broad generalisation on my part, but I think it’ll do. In community radio, the line between these three groups can be blurred (everyone love to dabble!), but one very distinct division usually remains in tact. We end up with the following two groups:

• On Air Talent / Management
• Technologists

This isn’t to say Technologists can’t be on air, but when we are looking at the way groups join together, we generally see that management will join with the On Air Talent, rather than help out with the technology side of things. Why do things pan out this way?

Is it because management sees radio as a creative business rather than a technical business? I think this is what many people see radio as – you can’t really blame people for thinking this way! After all, who is it that can be heard on the other side of the radio? The talent, of course!

This division in the ranks can lead to trouble down the tracks. If you put all your energy and resources into building a programming committee and developing the skills of your on air talent, then what is left to build a team of technologists? And what then happens when the transmitter fails? John Maizels sums it up nicely in his article in the CBX Magazine [November 2008]:

So why should you focus on building a technology team? Well, Broadcasting is a technology business. Without technology – and the technologists to make it work – when you turn on the microphone, nothing happens. Your creative juices go precisely nowhere.

So, is radio a Technology business, or a Creative business?

My answer would be: both. One cannot function without the other. Well, I’m sure a devoted team of technologists could build some clever automated machine which has a computer voice announcing the weather and all the tracks coming up, but that wouldn’t make very good radio!

If you’re in management: make sure you balance out your focus between the Technology and the Creative. That isn’t to mean you have to know how everything works and how to fix it yourself, but you at least need to take time to give your technical team some attention, and provide them with the support required to do their job well.

If you have the right people doing the right jobs at the righ time, then you will have a fantastic radio station!