Locality Switch

Over the last two weeks, I’ve been busy working on our annual school production ‘Fame at the Farms’. No, this isn’t ‘Fame’ the musical, but a concert which our school has been putting on for the past fifteen years.

I’ve been working on the show backstage for three years, but now in my fourth year I was promoted to Lighting Tech. This years show was the first in our new school hall (not built under the BER, but actually built before that started), and it was the first time I was running tech along with Nicholas and Tim, so we siezed the opportunity to be different in the way we did things.

The fact that we didn’t need to build a stage, had ample three-phase power available and already had two dimmers, some built in lighting bars and twenty four par cans made a world of difference. Building a border of truss around the stage wasn’t necessary, which in itself saves heaps of time and money. Instead we only ran 12m of truss across the back of the stage and winched that up with VMB lifters.

The typical FAME show included stack of par cans (48 or so) and a couple of profiles. There was always a need for a scissor lift to get to the ceiling to attach and focus some of these lights. The scissor had the potential to be the biggest pain, and was starting to wear out its welcome. As we had enough par cans permanently installed, there was no need for a scissor this year.

Heres a pic of a typical FAME setup in our old hall. Everything you see had to be built from scratch each year, including the stage. Normally that is a normal PE hall.

Saving money on extra rigging, multipin LX cable and three-phase extension leads, we were able to afford to throw four Martin Mac250 Entour Profiles into the order. These were fixed on the rear truss, making it dead simple to get them in the air.

Twenty four par cans were also attached on the truss, in four vertical bars of four lights, and two horizontal bars of four. Heres a photo of the basic setup:

Everything was setup on Saturday morning with about a dozen people, including Daniel from Lots of Watts (the rental company – by the way, they provided terrific gear this year, and had overall great support!).

I think overall the show went great this year. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and the things people have said to me have been great, considering this was really the first time for each of us techs at running a show like this.

Theres a few things which I think really helped:

• Preparation - we got the order in quite early, and were all very comfortable with the gear we had ordered
• Project Management – I dragged out a copy of Microsoft Project 98 and put in all the tasks we needed to do leading up to the show, so we all had a list of tasks to follow
• People – everyone was really supportive and encouraging. There was minimal negativity, and this really helped the mood which we were all in
• Power – we had a reliable power supply, with probably double the capacity than what we used. This was so valuable to us, knowing we won’t have a problem with tripping circuits! My one complaint on this is the bad locations of some of the GPOs
• Documentation – audio patching, power distribution, and lighting patching was all pre-planned and clearly documented to make sure there were no unexpected surprises, and so we all knew what went where

That being said, there was one big issue which the three of us techs suffered from: tiredness. We’ve all done this show a few times before, but this year we spent a lot more time on it. I was getting to school in the morning at 6:40am in order to get stuff done before the cast rocked up and got in the way. By the day after when we were just tidying up things before going back to class, we were really struggling to do anything at all. There was simply no energy left in our systems. To make it worse for me, I had a really bad cold starting just after the first show.

Another issue, although more minor to us (thankfully!), was a crashed lighting console. We were using a LSC Maxim with a PatPad. Sure, probably not the best desk anyway, but I’m comfortable with using it. We managed to crash it during a rehearsal. Here’s a picture of the console in a crashed state:

As you can see, the whole PatPad lit up, and obviously it was unusable in this state. A restart restored it, but then it crashed again shortly after. It turned out to be a hardware fault, with dodgy connectors on one of the circuit boards. Its a shame that with digital consoles, a single fault can render a whole console unusable. Thankfully, Lots of Watts sent out a service tech and had it fixed on site within an hour! Now, thats great service!!

The four shows went well, I learnt heaps about lighting, tech stuff in general, and how to work with other people. Overall, a great experience for me, and hopefully others, too.

I’ve got a big problem: Email. I use email for everything. If it needs to be communicated, chances are I’ve used email for it. Forget phone calls, face to face conversations, or anything which allows you to communicate emotion. Email is my answer to any communication requirements.

The thing is, I’m probably the person who needs to convey emotion the most! I can be sarcastic at times, and use wit in strange ways. When I talk with my friends, I use sarcasm and they know I am being sarcastic. Thing is, you really can’t convey emotion and vocal tones through a written email!

The way an email is read all depends on the person who reads it. I could send the same message to fifteen different people, and they could all interpret is differently. This is a massive problem. When I think to be a nice email has been interpreted by people as just plain nasty. I’m really not a nasty person, and I don’t want to be. But when 90% of communication with some people is through email, then really it isn’t hard to see why some people think I’m not being nice to them.

What do I do about it?

Scott H Young hits the nail on the head in his blog post, “The 7 Bad E-Mail Habits that Make People Want to Kill You“:

3) Wrong Medium

E-mail works best for direct and non-time sensitive information. Conversations, discussions and anything that requires a heavy amount of back-and-forth should be done on the phone or in person. Trying to use e-mail to have these conversations can be slow, time-consuming and painful.

The solution is to bridge the e-mail gap when you recognize you’re wasting time with it. Ask the person if you can discuss the issues in person or on the phone at a specific time and date.

I’m using the wrong medium. If I want to be sarcastic or witty, I need to do it elsewhere. Somewhere which allows an exchange of emotions and laughs. Somewhere, such as a telephone. Or a face to face meeting. Something; anything!

If I want to use email, I need to be direct and to the point. No wit. No sarcasm.

Just because you’re a community station doesn’t mean you will have an audience. I don’t believe marketing yourself as “community” will get you more than a handful of listeners, at the most.

If this is true, how does a general interest station market themself?

It’s a tough one, but tough problems encourage creativity. And creativity, I hope, is in our domain. After all, we are a creative medium, right?

Firstly, let’s check out what the CBAA has to say in their CBAA Handbook.

Marketing relies heavily on designing programs or policies which satisfy the needs and desires of its target market. It particularly involves research and promotion. Marketing is about discovering your clients and identifying their characteristics. More importantly, it is also about the type of radio station you are, what you want to achieve, how to go about it and how to measure your success.

Source: CBAA Handbook: Marketing

This is very wise advice. In fact, this must be my favorite chapter in the handbook, and is probably more relevant to us now more than when it was first written. At least from what I see of the general interest community stations that are around me (or what I don’t see!), I think we need help at marketing.

So, the CBAA reckons we need to “satisfy the needs and desires of its target market”. That’s all very well and good, but if you’re licensed as a general interest station for a local geographic area, your interests are probably defined as ‘whoever lives in the area’.

There is also the issue of what to market. What should we really be selling to the community? On air programs? Volunteering? Sponsorship? Donating? With so many choices, the default thing to market is everything, all at once! This is great, except people don’t like having a million things shoved down their throats. They need time to digest everything.

What should we do?

What I suggest is placing focus on a particular aspect of your station, and then push that for a couple of months. For example, you may want to have an increased amount of hits on your website (an easy way to measure an increase in awareness and interest). Go crazy trying to get your brand and URL out there. Spend two months trying to push this whole idea into your local community.

Be creative. Find all of the noticeboards in the area and get something interesting posted up on those; something catchy and memorable. Approach the local sports club and ask if you can get stuff in their newsletter. See if the local schools can do the same. What about a notice in the local newspapers?

But wait. Before you go ahead and push something like this, you need goals. This is critical. Without goals, your team won’t know what they’re aiming for. They won’t know if they’re succeeding, or doing badly. After a while of going crazy trying to push an idea, they will loose interest, because they have no metrics to measure up against.

What sort of goals should you set?

Firstly, they should be realistic, but just a bit out of reach of what you are currently are attaining. In the instance of increased website hits, there is no point saying you want 500 unique visitors this month, if you already have that amount of visitors on a regular basis.

It’s important to set goals which are measurable. If you can’t measure the response to a campaign, it’s almost pointless. Saying you want more listeners isn’t a good goal to set, because how do you measure listeners? Sure, you can do a survey, but those are expensive and take some time.

Be creative. Have goals. Have fun!

At 2CCR, we need to find someone to fill the position of Station Manager. I suggested that the best way to start was by developing a formal position description, so we know what the ideal candidate should be able to do, what their duties are, etc.

With nothing better to do after dinner one day, I decided I would give it a go. Here’s what I came up with:

Key Role:

• Must ensure the smooth day to day operation of the station

Responsibilities:

• Be the main contact person for all presenters, and emergency situations
• Maintaining regular contact with presenters, and attend to any issues arising
• Ensuring program vacancies are filled with a suitable casual presenter
• Able to troubleshoot basic technical issues, and delegate all other technical issues appropriately
• Have understanding of the policies and procedures of the station as well as codes of practice and legal requirements, and be able to enforce them as appropriate
• Providing regular written reports to the board, and attending board meetings as necessary
• Assessing newly trained presenters to ensure competency before going to air
• Welcoming new volunteers and making them feel comfortable

Requirements:

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Competency with the usage of computers to fulfill the job’s requirements
• An understanding of radio broadcasting and how it functions
• Great people skills
• Enthusiasm, commitment and passion for community broadcasting

Availability:

• Should be able to attend the station for a minimum of five hours, during weekdays, each week
• Should be available at other times to visit specific presenters as the need arises
• Should be available for attendance at out of hours meetings
• Must be comfortable being on call all of the time to resolve or delegate responsibility of emergency situations

That’s what I wrote. What is it based on? Nothing, except my own personal opinions. Remember, this is just what I feel our station needs – your station manager could have a whole other set of duties not outlined here. Also, this hasn’t been adopted by our board, so it certainly isn’t final; it’s just my contribution.

Feel free to use it. Adapt it. Change it. Rejig it. It’s open for you to freely use. Enjoy!

How hard can it be to give something away for free? Very, very, very hard – or so it would seem.

Jamie from the 37signals team did a great thing on Monday, and posted a blog entry with some free icons you could download. The intentions were explained pretty clearly: “They’re free for you to use and (hopefully) improve upon.”

“Not so fast!! You can’t just give something away without a formal license and some strings attached.” That was the cry from the comments.

The response from JF on the 37signals team was this:

What a perfect example of people making something more complicated than it needs to be.

…

This doesn’t have to involve the legal system at all. That’s the problem. Why do we assume that if someone wants to give something away for free, lawyers have to be part of it?

Break the chain. Lawyers don’t have to be involved in everything. This blog post can serve as the “license” or “proof” of his intention. And if you just asked Jamie to explain further, I’m sure he would. We don’t need complicated licenses or third parties. Simple statements, obvious intention, that’s plenty.

Obviously, it’s really hard to give stuff away for free. Jeff Atwood discovered this quite some time ago, and posted about it on Coding Horror.

Experienced developers won’t touch unlicensed code because they have no legal right to use it. That’s ironic, considering the whole reason I posted the code in the first place was so other developers could benefit from that code. I could have easily avoided this unfortunate situation if I had done the right thing and included a software license with my code.

[From: Pick a License, Any License, Jeff Atwood, April 3 2007]

He then provides a rather humorous comparison chart between the various licenses and even shows that the GLP is not the right license for capitalists.

Are we too caught up in the legal implications of using other people’s stuff without a proper license, even if they clearly state we can use it for free? It would seem so.

For now, it seems the simplest solution is to slap a Creative Commons Zero on stuff we want to release freely. It’s public domain, in an apparently acceptably formal and legalese manner.

Spring is coming soon, and in The Hills, we celebrate with the Orange Blossom Festival – it’s an annual festival encompassing over forty events over a two week period.

2CCR FM is the local broadcaster for this area, so it’s our duty to broadcast as much of this as we can. With the festival official community opening on the 12th September, we have only a month to get our act together. Luckily, our first meeting was last night.

I’m hoping to broadcast at least five or so of these events, mainly the outdoor fetes and markets they are holding. The general nature of these outdoor fetes means there is no phone line available, meaning we can pot any POTS codecs away (not that we ever owned a pair!). I’m hoping for Audio-over-IP all the way, man! (Using open-source software, such as IceCast)

I won’t go into the details of our meeting right now – I’ll reveal bits and pieces as the days go on.

However, here’s a few key things which I hope to work on for the festival to ensure we really reach out to our community, and make the most of it:

• Full OBs – not just live crosses The presenters, music, etc. should all come live from the venue to capture the full spirit of the event
• Heaps of people I don’t want a half-heated attempt from anyone; we need swarms of our people dresses up in the polo shirt mingling with the crowds of onlookers
• Heaps of Interviews Quick chats on-air with members of the public, as well as longer interviews with interesting people
• Particular focus on membership and sponsorship We need to make sure we talk with interested people to sign them up as members; the same goes for potential sponsors – it needs to be viable
• Heaps of brochures No one should walk past us without getting one of our fancy glossy brochures

It’s going to be a long journey to get the results I dream of, but I know we can make it. The key to making this work, in my opinion, is to make sure we involve as many people as possible from the start. When the meeting was called, I made sure I called heaps of people to confirm they could come (never rely on a mass email for anything!). That is a start, but that needs to keep happening throughout this whole thing.

Wish us luck! (And if you want to help, email me!)

This morning, commercial radio stations around the nation gathered to celebrate the launch of Digital Radio. In cities around the nation, joint outside broadcasts were held.

In Sydney, the venue was Martin Place. At 7.40am, they did a roadblock across every station, broadcasting the same audio segment. From the Digital Radio Plus news release:

In a world first, the metropolitan commercial radio industry effectively road blocked Australian metropolitan radio at 7.40 am today, when they simultaneously broadcast a four minute audio piece featuring competing commercial breakfast show presenters in each market describing their most memorable radio moment or a moment they would like to hear in the future, over a re-working of the iconic Australian song, You’re The Voice.

Commercial Radio Australia chief executive officer Joan Warner said the aim of the Radio United outside broadcasts and the playing of the audio piece was to demonstrate the importance of radio in Australian listeners’ lives.

“Competing broadcasters have come together today in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth to celebrate the start of digital radio in Australia. The industry has united for this event and in the audio piece to illustrate the power of radio broadcasting and the effect it has on people,” said Ms Warner.

In case you missed it, the four minute audio segment can be downloaded off the internet. Sydney United Radio OB 20090806

Of course, no one was there from Community Radio. The metro community stations won’t get on DAB+ until next year, and who knows when the sub-metro and regional stations will be able to get access. Here’s some info from a CBAA press release:

The President of the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia, Deborah Welch says,

‘It is fantastic to see Digital Radio getting off the ground in Australia, and this is only the beginning. You’ll see a raft of new services coming through over the next year, and particularly the innovations that always come from community radio.’

Metropolitan community radio stations are starting later than their commercial and government funded counterparts because infrastructure funding, confirmed in the May 2009 budget, is arriving a year later than first expected.

There are more than 350 community radio stations around the country. While some are getting started on the first stage of Digital Radio, the broader sector keenly await the next phase of the roll out and looks forward to the opportunity to introduce Digital Radio in regional Australia and to sub metropolitan community radio services.

It’ll be fascinating to see what happens with all of this.

By now, I’m sure you all would be aware of the stupid stunt which Kyle & Jackio pulled on 2DayFM last Wednesday. I won’t repeat the awful details here.

Kyle and Jackio have been supended indefinently from their brekky show, and Kyle has been sacked from Australian Idol. It was stupid mistake to have the whole lie-detector segment in the first place, and it was an even bigger mistake to allow a teenage girl on the show in such a segment.

However, it has been revealed recently that 2DayFM runs it’s brekky show without a seven second delay. Why? It would seem Kyle doesn’t like it:

A 2DayFM staffer said  Sandilands believed “pure” live radio was “better entertainment” – an approach which has long made his colleagues nervous.

“Kyle believes the kill button kills the truth, but it is there for a reason and everyone who was in the studio at the time wished it could have been used,” the program source, who requested anonymity, said.

[The Daily Telegraph, Holly Byrnes, July 01, 2009]

Live radio with segments such as the ones run on 2DayFM is dangerous enough – it’s just suicide doing it without a delay.

It’s not that these delays are necessarily expensive. A basic one from Elan Audio can be bought for just over $3000. If you step up a few notches to the AirTools range, the price will increase, but you don’t need an expensive thing doing this job. If you just want to save yourself from the repercussions of airing stupid things like what we have heard, then a cheap one will do just fine.

Of course, nothing could have saved Kyle from this embarrasment – he has a bad attitude, and seems to refuse to do his show with a delay. But, that’s not a technology problem; it’s an ego problem. No amount of technology can fix that.

RadioInfo asks a simple question:

…So why do many FM announcers, like cabbies, consider it as some sort of badge of honour to travel without the simple apparatus that could save their broadcasting lives in the event of the type of emergency that occurred on 2Day… ?

[No delay at 2Day, 31st July 2009, RadioInfo]

I don’t know the answer to that.

One thing I do know is that my own station does not have a delay, but we also have a very strict rule about airing live phone calls: don’t. Sure, record it and then play it back later, but never, ever, ever, air a live call.

I would hate to be a surgeon – there’s so much stuff to remember! Do one thing wrong, and you could kill somebody. That’s a field of work I could never pursue. The World Health Organization announced last year that they are introducing checklists to make sure surgeons don’t miss anything out:

A WHO initiative to encourage surgeons across the world to use checklists when they operate on patients was launched last month.

[From WHO: Checklists Save Lives]

Brilliant! It’s so simple, but so brilliant.

We could do with more checklists in every occupation, not just the medical profession. Mechanics, librarians, council planners, plumbers, electricians, programmers, etc.

Web-based software firm 37signals has demonstrated their checklist for deploying new updates. If it is good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

Checklists are great, but they only help when you use them.

Yesterday, I was debugging a WordPress plugin which wasn’t working with the Cutline theme. The plugin seemed to be configured fine, and worked perfectly on every other theme we tried, but not this particular one. Why? After some poking around in the plugins files, I discovered that the plugin was set to run when the template’s footer loaded. That’s nice – our footer was loading, wasn’t it?

Well, sort of. The footer was loading, but it was not telling the WordPress engine when it was loading. A simple addition of <?php wp_footer(); ?> to the footer file seemed to sort the issue out! Simple. How could this have been missed out of the theme? If there was a WordPress theme checklist, then this could have been avoided.

But wait – there IS a WordPress theme checklist! It’s a shame the Cutline theme developer didn’t follow the checklist. A small oversight, I’m sure. It’s an easy mistake to of made (hey, even I didn’t know this checklist existed until recently).

I’ve since emailed a fix to the developer, so let’s hope they get it and can release a fix – all in the name of good software.

This has got me thinking, how could I reduce errors at my radio station if I had checklists? Here’s a checklist I just made which could be run through every time I finish work on a studio:

• Do all mics work?
• Does the on air light activate and deactivate when the mics are in use?
• Does the console send an output to the DAs?
• Does the on-air switcher still activate the studio?
• Do the CD players load CDs, trigger from the console, and play through the correct fader?
• Do all computers log on to the network, load the correct software and play audio to the console?
• Do the telephones function?
• Are the studio monitors functioning?
• Is everything in phase?
• Do all headphones function?

This should be second nature to every technician, but it can’t hurt to have a checklist for this stuff. Here’s another place a checklist could save dramas: new sponsorships

• Does the sponsor have an agreement filled out?
• Has the agreement been approved by management?
• Has the money been received in the station’s bank account?
• Has the copy for the ad been approved by station management?
• Does finished recoding sound audible through studio monitors and cheap mono speakers?
• Does the finished track have the end date embedded in the ID3 tags for automatic deletion?
• Is the client happy with their track?
• Has the finished track been added to the correct folders?

This one is a bit more complex becasue it required multiple people to fill it out, but in essence it’s still simple and could save trouble later down the track.  If checklists are helping the medical profession, wouldn’t they help us?

I always love it when someone new comes along and wants to get involved with the technical aspects of our radio station. My positions requires that I be the one doing the majority of training for new techies, which is good because I enjoy passing on my knowledge.

I want to share my experiences on training new techs. Sure, I’m only sixteen myself, and have been doing this for two years. Am I qualified to be training new people? I feel that even though I am only fairly new to the industry, I should be out there on the front line, helping enthusiastic young people to get a start in the industry. I don’t know everything, but what I do know, I want to share.

Firstly, let me make this clear: we are talking about training people with no background in radio. We’re talking about people who are enthusiastic to help out, and want to learn on the job. Also, the things which I mention in this article are very general – your training you do for the new-comers will vary wildly, depending on if they have past experience in related areas (such as IT, or telecommunications). For example, it would be unnecessary to teach a telephone technician how to use a Krone tool, or a system administrator how to use remote desktop to connect to a server.

When I am showing the ‘newbies’ how things run, I generally like to start with the grand tour and explain each piece of equipment, what it does, and how it helps us. This is their induction. I encourage heaps of question asking on their part. Sometimes I even get asked things which I don’t know, which is great, because we can then go and research it.

After they have been through this induction, I like to get them to look over my shoulder as I perform my day-to-day operational tasks. We’re talking about stuff such as file backups, computer updates, re-jumpering connections, updating wiring documentation, etc. All the grass-roots jobs which have to be performed on a regular basis.

It is even benificial to get them to perform some of these tasks after first seeing how it is done. Need some XLR connectors soldered, a hard-drive swapped or a standby transmitter tested? Your junior tech can do that, even if you still have to be there to provide advice. In fact, it is a good idea to always supervise your junior techs until they are confident (and responsible enough not to pull the station off air).

After a while, it’s time to give your junior tech a more permanent set of duties which will keep them involved. Potential duties are:

• Performing weekly computer backups
• Ensuring the asset register is up to date with new equipment
• Checking the faults log for any issues, and either fixing them, or reporting them back to you
• Weekly testing of the standby transmitter, standby STLs, and UPS batteries
• Checking internet usage, and reporting on potential issues
• Performing weekly checks on the status of free hard drive capacity

Those are just a few suggestions, some of which may not even be applicable to your station. Whatever duties your junior techs are assigned, it’s important that they are comfortable with them, but also feel happy. They need to be doing interesting things at least some of the time – if you give them boring tasks 100% of the time, they will probably leave.

It is also a good idea to get them involved with special events or projects, such as outside broadcasts or studio reconfigurations. You want to make sure they feel a part of the team, so make sure they are included on these things. Make sure that there is no discrimination because they are new.

By the way, if you have any suggestions about how to better train junior techs, please send me an email or share a message in the comments area.