Radio Days Africa 2017, heard from the seats.
RDA 2017 #futuretuned collects talks and workshops from Radio Days Africa 2017, recorded live with the applause and room announcements left in. The speakers range from the European Broadcasting Union's head of radio putting questions to an Amazon Echo to a blind software developer explaining how assistive technology lets him record and produce podcasts.
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RDA 2017 #futuretuned is a feed of session recordings from Radio Days Africa 2017, a gathering of radio people in Johannesburg. Some recordings open and close with a short tag that names the event and points to its website and the #RDA17 hashtag. Between those tags, the room is left as it was. Moderators thank speakers, call for applause and send people off to the next pair of parallel sessions, one of them on trusting technology with Arthur Goldstuck. One day-three welcome even suggests that the cooler weather might keep delegates in the venues rather than outside with their coffee. The speakers are the draw. Graham Dixon introduces himself as head of radio at the European Broadcasting Union, an organisation he says has 73 members in 56 countries. He argues that radio has outlasted predictions of its death since the arrival of television because it is cheap, effective and adaptable. Then he tests the point with an Amazon Echo, asking it for the capital of South Africa and getting an answer about three. Brendan Philipser of the RNTC, introduced as having come from the Netherlands, runs a masterclass on the ten basic formats and warns early on that nobody gets to snooze at the back. His session is participatory. He separates wrapper formats from singles, explains montage as the way to combine singles, and sends groups off to judge which formats carry facts and which carry emotion. Tony Malham describes a digital radio project aimed at public transport, with taxis at its centre, and recalls earlier work running Rise FM and Vuma FM alongside a syndicated breakfast show with DJ Spoo. Storytelling comes up more than once. One speaker recalls a shy eight-year-old named Marina who, after a weekend of improvisation workshops and the StorySpine method, was joking and telling stories by Monday night. In '#RDA17: The All Seeing Eye', a speaker who spent more than fourteen years at 5FM argues that commercial radio has lost the art of storytelling and describes a station that gives young people a platform and lets them say and play what they want. That talk speaks openly about rough language on air, about brands that want the rawness anyway, and about the daily fight over how to read the metrics. The most striking recording may be '#RDA17: C-Tru', in which a software developer who has been fully blind for about twelve years explains assistive technology while his screen reader keeps reading out whatever sits under the mouse. He points to blind user communities and mailing lists that share new podcasts, and he ends by saying that the real limits are mostly the ones people put on themselves. The rough edges stay in, and they are part of the value: a record of an industry talking frankly to itself about formats, audiences and new technology.
Made for: Suits a listener who works in radio or audio production, or is learning the trade, and wants to hear practitioners talk about formats, storytelling, metrics and digital distribution with a room of peers.
What sets it apart: These are conference sessions recorded in the room, not interviews made for a feed. Applause, group exercises and even a screen reader talking over its user are left in, so a listener hears the workshop itself rather than a recap of it.
Are you #futuretuned? Join the action at #rda17 to learn new skills and engage with new ideas.
A radio masterclass asks whether your format can hold feelings or just facts.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
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Arthur Goldstuck uses RDA 2017 #futuretuned to argue that the future has "many flaws" and should be thought about as a trust problem, not just a tech problem.
Graham Dixon, head of radio at the European Broadcasting Union, argues that radio’s relevance depends on combining stability with innovation.
RDA 2017 #futuretuned: #RDA17: C-Tru presents a blind software developer with 38 years of development experience and 12 years of total blindness explaining how assistive technology supports podcast consumption and production.
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Kath explains how The Eye, created after her 14-and-a-half years at 5FM, uses themed music shows to restore storytelling and give young people platforms.
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