Next Radio 2014

I love working in radio. I love the fact that we all do something that entertains or informs nearly every person in the country. I love it as a medium. I love that it's having to evolve to better look after our listeners. I love digital, I love the video, I love the website. I love someone I've never met, talking to me through a speaker. Making me laugh. Making me cry. I love hearing songs that activate a memory. I love hearing songs I've never heard before. I love looking up from my desk and saying to my colleague Joe, who sits next to me, "Did you hear that?".

I think the thing I love the most is that it's an industry based on ideas - things individuals or teams come up with. I love hearing about them, whether that's through a mate, a tweet or at a conference.

James Cridland and I decided a few years ago that we wanted to create a radio conference based on ideas. So, every year, we get around 25 brilliant people to tell you about ideas, concepts or the things that they do. Each session is either 9 minutes or 18 minutes, there are no boring panels and it covers all of radio - presenting, production, online, sales. It's called Next Radio and this year it's on Monday 8th September at the Royal Institution in London.

We also wanted to create an event that's as cheap as possible to go to as we know, from experience, that your boss won't always pay (that's if you have a boss). The Earlybird price (open for a few weeks) is just £99 and at the price we only lose a little bit of money per ticket! Yes - it's the worst business model ever! Luckily people like Broadcast Bionics generously sponsor so we can keep the price as low as we can.

If you love radio and ideas as much as we do, we would love to see you this year. Not sure? You can see what we get up to by watching videos of sessions from previous years at http://nextrad.io/. But come on, it's actually really easy. If you're the sort of person that reads this blog then you're the sort of person that should come to Next Radio.

We'll be announcing the speakers in the coming weeks. But there's people booked from the BBC, Global Radio, Bauer, Orion, the Government's website and radio stations from around the world who can't wait to tell you their ideas. You can find out more (and get your tickets!) at http://nextrad.io/.