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Taking place in Manchester between the 1st and 5th of May is , a festival consisting of art, music and a conference. A group of us from Audio & Music Interactive will be attending and Tristan and I will be talking about how we have been experimenting in mixing radio with social networks, games and new hardware. The conference runs over two days (1st and 2nd) and during that time we will also be basing ourselves somewhere within the Contact Theatre and building some radio related prototypes in full public view. It sounds a bit crazy but hopefully this open format will enable us to collaborate with the conference attendees by trying out ideas in the space and also inviting anyone to come and join us if they fancy getting hands on. I'm a big fan of using boards and for trying out new ideas so expect some simple but fun interactive stuff to play with. It's the first time we have ever done anything like this and I'm personally really excited about how it will turn out. One of the important aspects of being at a conference is engaging with other people and I'm hoping that this kind of open format will provide a good environment to talk, discuss and share ideas.

The theme of Futuresonic this year focuses on social futures and it brings together a range of people that are developing the next generation of social media. Facebook, Last.fm Myspace, Meebo etc have all taken the limelight in the last few years having had an impact on the way in which people use the internet. However artists and academics have also been experimenting and developing work in this area offering a different perspective on how we can use social media that goes beyond friend lists. In my view mobile tech plays a large role in the next generation of social networking apps particulary in the music space. Ethnographic research we have recently commissioned shows how the mobile phone plays a key role in how 13-18 year olds discover and share music primarily using Bluetooth. The session 'Musical Interfaces' explores the concept of the 'mobile user as a micro-DJ' and it will be interesting to hear what is discussed and shown as this concept is particulary relevant to what we are finding from our research. Such as, the rather obvious, kids playing loud music from their mobile phones on buses and even in some instances taking speakers out with them to amplify the sound even further! What is evident is that music is a social activity and personalisation happens in non-digital ways, so rather than use services like last.fm to recommend music, the recommendations are done by key influencers in social groups.

Gaming and social networking is another perspective that is being explored at the conference and from the Guardian will be talking about how 'gaming can transform social networking' so it will be interesting to hear her views on the subject and hopefully gain lots of inspiration. The session 'Urban and Social Media' also looks really promising. Over the last few years there been several projects that have explored the concept of how locative media can change the way in which we experience the city, examples include - a project that makes it easy to create location based experiences such as games and tours, - a game that is played both in a virtual city and the streets of an actual city and - a project exploring public authoring and mapping. These projects illustrate positive uses of locative technology for education and entertainment for example, and it will be interesting to see how in the future, as the technology gets cheaper and better these experiences will start to become more mainstream. This is one question that the Participatory Media session will be exploring.
, there are lots of great sessions and some fantastic speakers so there's lots to look forward to. And the talks are just one strand of the whole Futuresonic event, and also form a large part of it and I'm going to try and attend as much as I can and being a fan Wu-Tang Clan I cant wait to see the RZA in action!