Chairing and presenting, meeting and discussing

It's been a busy few weeks and it looks as though the coming weeks will be equally busy.

From visits to Barcelona and New Delhi comes lots of follow-up work to do and I'm slowly managing to catch up with everything. And now I'm heading off to chair the Social TV Forum in London on 16 March and then to Moscow - BA strikes permitting - to speak about digital TV around the world at the 3rd Digital TV Russia summit.

On top of all that, my colleagues and I are working hard on the preparations for this year's AIBs - the international media excellence awards - that we are launching in mid-April. This is the sixth year of the AIBs and I have a feeling that this year will be the best yet. We're making sure that more programme makers know about the awards than ever before and are looking forward to a bumper crop of entries.

And then there's all the research work we're doing for our market intelligence briefings that AIB members around the world receive.

It's probably a good thing that the sun is shining...it makes for a more inspirational working environment which leads to getting more things done!

Awards shortlisting

We've been hard at work over the past few weeks devising the short-list for the 2009 AIBs - the international media excellence awards.

The AIBs are a celebration of the very best programming across news, current affairs, features, and specialist genres, particularly focusing on programmes that work across borders.

We've had a great crop of entries this year - slightly down on last year's record figure - but still a great number from broadcasters and production houses throughout the world - more than 30 countries are represented in this completely non-commercial competition.

The award entries are now on their way to our international judging panel - our judges are spread throughout the world to ensure that we gain a range of perspectives on the programmes submitted. From Pakistan to Ghana, South Africa to Germany, our judges will look at and listen to the work submitted and send their results and comments to us in time for the awards to be made, ready for presentation on 4 November at LSO St Luke's in London.

Join us there - you can book your place online at www.aib.org.uk - but don't delay as last year's Awards was a sell-out and we had to turn people away (that's happened two year's running now - and this is only year five of the AIBs!).

AIB working hard

It's a busy time at the AIB as we follow up on a range of work for our members throughout the world. 

As my blog on Monday reported, I've been at the FT Digital Media conference in London where I had some interesting and informative discussions with a number of people. On Friday, it's off to Doha for the fourth Al Jazeera Forum. 

In the meantime, the AIB is following up on a number of discussions that started at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. For example, we're in discussion with a company that has got mobile TV content distribution agreements in place in a large number of countries in Asia. I'm going to see how we can get our members' content onto this new platform as it comes online in the coming weeks in emerging markets. 

We're also hard at work on the research of the new AIB directory - now renamed as the AIB Global Broadcasting Sourcebook. This new sourcebook has completely revised and updated content, plus a whole lot of context to make it an indispensible guide to media worldwide. OK - a plug: you can book an enhanced entry for your company or take advertising in the sourcebook. Download the media pack here and talk to us soon!

It's all about social

Today I'm at the FT Digital Media and Broadcasting conference in London - and much of the discussion has been on the subject of social networking.

Blake Chandlee of Facebook has told the audience of a couple of hundred people that the social networking site now has 175million users and theyKve had to change subscriber reporting increments to 25million!

There's been lots of talk about how media and social networking can work together - and this is something the AIB will be reporting to and analysing for its members shortly.

Meanwhile it's good to see a range of AIB friends here such as Richard Titus and Madhav Chinnappa of the BBC, John Mangelaars from Microsoft and Raja Sharif of Barwa Media, among others.

Dinner at the FT

Last night (12 June) I was delighted to be at the headquarters of the Financial Times in London for the first of the FT's TMT Executive Forum dinners. During a champagne reception, Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, the FT's Media Editor, interviewed Antti Öhrling, co-founder of Blyk. Blyk is an advertising-funded mobile network that targets 16-25 year olds, offering free or discounted mobile calls in return for targeted, relevant advertising being received by the subscriber. It's already up and running in the UK, where around 150,000 people have signed up for the service. Now the company is heading into the Netherlands, and then into other European territories. Antti is a man with a mission, and he's able to explain his company's offer in a thoroughly engaging and entertaining way. I think that Blyk is a company to watch.
Then it was into dinner in the board room overlooking the River Thames, watching the sun set across London (a glorious evening after a day of highly changeable weather), with good food and great company. Among those I met were Mukul Gupta of Infosys, John Higgins, D-G of the UK tech trade association, Intellect, Giuuseppe Cardamone of online advertising company Monster, and Shoba Purushothaman, co-founder of The News Market.
A great evening, and well done to the FT.

What a difference a day makes

Two major international news channels took very different approaches to spreading the word about themselves this week. On Wednesday 4 June, Euronews held two simultaneous parties in Paris and London to unveil the channel's new corporate identity and on-air look.

I was delighted to be at the London event where senior media executives from Euronews and other broadcasting organisations received the first glimpses of the "pure" new look and saw the first news bulletin at 1830GMT to use the new graphics.

The following day, BBC World News held a press briefing to announce its key achievements of the past year and to unveil its new tri-media strategy. Yet somehow the BBC forgot to invite key journalists from the specialist and trade media who report on stories to the world (including the AIB and a range of colleagues whose online publications reach tens of thousands of readers worldwide), concentrating instead, it seems, on UK-focused journalists. I'm surprised by this approach at a time when the channel claims to have seen an international growth in its audience and increased ad sales revenues. Maybe it was just an oversight...

In Search of Inspiring Talent

AIB has just launched its fourth annual search for the best in international broadcasting. I thought I'd explain why.

On the face of it, you might think there are quite a lot of award ceremonies out there already. Some of them have become somewhat predictable. But that’s because they are award ceremonies that have become national television shows. Producers in the wings are more interested in what people on stage look like, and policing prize winners to say no more than 10 seconds of “thank you’s”.

We’ve also seen some awards turn into a gong factory, by having hundreds of categories, to the point where there seems to be a prize for the most creative use of punctuation. The law of averages means that if you win nothing, the programme must have been really awful.

And yet there seems to be no-one, apart from the AIB, taking a serious interest in the profession of international broadcasting, where people are trying to share ideas across borders. This is very easy to do badly. It is actually extremely difficult to do well. And in these uncertain times, there’s a chance of being misunderstood or having a message taken out of context.

In my travels as AIB CEO, I have been inspired by people who have that talent to communicate cross border and cross culturally. They are often the unsung heroes in organisations, partly because what they do is not consumed locally. They don’t get the sort of family feedback enjoyed by people working in national radio and TV stations.

Yet the world would be a much poorer place without their daily contributions to society. I believe the AIB Awards have created the right atmosphere to celebrate real success and shine the spotlight in places currently in the shade.

Interested in taking part yourself? Check out http://www.aibawards.com/