Radiodays Europe 2011: More of Everything

More than 650 participants from 45 countries and 27 sessions – the Radiodays Europe in Copenhagen 2011 were really a huge event. It is great that just a couple of years after the ‘death’ of the NAB Europe the interest in a European conference for radio is so high.

Congratulations to the organizers, who selected an excellent venue for the conference - the Tivoli Hotel. In comparison to RDE 2010 the conference has also improved in terms of social events – with the opening reception on Wednesday night and the ‘Taste and Sound of Denmark’ with delicious food and stunning live music on Thursday night.

The dominant topics of the RDE 2011 were social media and the move to digital. In several sessions it was discussed what these changes mean for radio stations nowadays. Another interesting focus was on ‘success factors’ of great stations such as Z100 from New York or KIIS FM in Los Angeles.

The Broadcast Partner, one of the main sponsors of RDE 2011, participated in three conference sessions:

In a very well-received session Jochen Lukas, Mike Haas and Christoph Pöschl presented ‘Market Leadership Strategies’. Several examples from market leader stations such as Radio Expres (Slovakia), Hitradio Ö3 (Austria) and Narodni Radio (Croatia) illustrated what it takes to become a strong brand with ‘innovation ability’ and to be great in the ‘art of directing’.

Mike Haas hosted the ‘Imaging & Branding’ session and introduced its renowned speakers James Stodd (Radio Producer BBC Radio X-Trails, UK), Lee Harris (1010 WINS, USA) and Ivo Samplonius (Sound Designer, TROS, NL) with an inspiring gunfire of creative ideas.

In addition to that, our friends from FosterKent demonstrated their innovative MotionMixes tool in the session ‘The World is Audio – Control it!’.

Outlook to next year

Radiodays Europe 2012 will be held in Barcelona on the 22nd and 23rd of March. Chosing one of the most beautiful cities in Europe as the location almost guarantees that it will be another mega event. The RDE organizers have indicated some changes to the conference concept, so we are highly curious for what’s to come. Our wish list includes more ‘cross-over’ sessions (such as ‘What radio can learn from other markets’) and more ‘down-to-earth workshops’ where programmers can take home even more direct input for their daily work. Let’s see what will happen!