About 20 of us got together at Poppy Red in Birmingham, for the Midlands Amplified event on Tuesday. Smaller numbers than anticipated, but as it only takes two people to have a conversation, we were up by a factor of 10 on the minimum that would work.

Once again, it was a day of discovery about the tech side of what we do - namely, that even when the wireless network is great for laptops, it might not work for iPhones and iPod touches… hence the lack of audioboo material from me. (though the ever-productive Phil Campbell got a couple of great audioboo interviews - embedded below).

However, it did leave me to be more involved in the conversations, and the two sessions I was in were fantastic.

First up Jez Collins of the Birmingham Music Archive introduced a discussion about the Music As Culture consultation that he’s undertaking with the Department of Interactive Cultures at Birmingham City University. It was great to see non-musicians exploring how their relationship with social technology (and digital distribution mechanisms) changed how they saw the ‘value’ in music. A big part of the purpose of the consultation is to give those for whom music is more about culture than revenue a voice - listeners and people who play music for the love of it. People who would benefit from the re-issuing of the 95% of recorded music that currently sits moldering in the vaults of record labels around the world. The conversation brought in ideas about innovative payment systems, digital rights, intellectual property and the differences between - and lessons to be learned from - other areas of publishing and broadcast, such as books and TV. Just the kind of cross-network collaborative thinking that Amplified was set up to foster, facilitate and capture! Video from this session will be available ASAP.

The second session was started by me (Steve Lawson), and titled ‘Beyond Free’ - taking Chris Anderson’s book as a start point, but moving away from thinking about ‘free’ as a purely monetary concept, and starting to think about the ‘multicapitalism’ term that came up at the Leicester event that addressed the notion that monetary is only one kind of measurable, extractable and spendable value in any venture.

I suggested that instead of thinking about Free in terms of free-to-the-consumer as a way of getting people to download/listen/watch/experience our services, we might benefit from seeing how having little or no financial cost at the start of an online venture means we can be more playful and experimental in how we explore the terrain we occupy. That may be a band making different kinds of video available to see which works, or it could be a ‘physical service’ company - print, clothing, catering etc - exploring the way social media allows them to completely rethink the kinds of communications with their users and potential customers that are of value. If you only hear from people who have complaints, and only talk to them when you want them to buy something, it’s a pretty dysfunctional relationship, when looked at in human terms… Free-at-the-point of use social media can free us up to play around with our persona - our brand - whether or not our ‘product’ is free at the end of it.

The discussion off the back of this ranged pretty far. It spent a lot of time thinking about music and the creative industries (partly because I started it, and partly to tie it in with the earlier session), but we did get into some really useful thinking about the effects of software piracy on those who have no choice but to buy licenses, and are therefor at an automatic 3-grand-a-year disadvantage over their less scrupulous competitors.

Again the range of backgrounds of the contributors added depth and breadth to the conversation. Proof that you don’t need 200 people to make a good Amplified event - the key elements are bringing people together from across different networks, and putting them together in a way that fosters creative thinking and provides ways of recording those outcomes. With that in mind, here are two audioboo recordings that phil campbell made on the day: