Without trying particularly hard, I seem to have turned OGN8 into Online Music OGN. All right, I did book Ben Walker, geek troubadour to do a turn prior to the speakers. But it was by chance that we've got two music-tech industry gurus in to present our keynote talks.
Rhodri Marsden, who will cringe when I call him a guru, writes the Cyberclinic for the Independent, plays keyboards in Scritti Politti, and has long and varied experience with the music industry: he'll be discussing how recorded media alone will no longer support an up-and-coming band. And Ian Hogarth, who is CEO and co-founder of Songkick, will explain how recordings can channel users into , where arguably the real money is these days.
If you want to be successful in the modern music industry, and you've read Steve Albini's essay on the subject, then you could do worse than sticking round for the post-keynote questions and answers slot, where we'll invite these gurus---sorry again, Rhodri---to take questions from the floor. No asking either of them to buy your album, though.
After the Q&A session, we'll move into more traditional OGN variety fare, with talks about online payment, the open web, cloud computing and the long-awaited release of Django 1.0. If I can get it together, we should also have a book raffle. And thanks to Torchbox and Google for their sponsorship, entrance is still FREE. How can you bear to stay at home?
