You’ve read the blog, you’ve downloaded the e-book, now come and hang out with me for a few days at the seminar.

Well, Pete Ashton beat me to it, but I’m happy to announce that I’ll be presenting a three-day seminar at the end of next month here in Birmingham.

It’s on from the 29th to the 31st of August at Screen Media Lab in Digbeth, and accommodation can be arranged for out-of-towners at what seem to be pretty reasonable rates. What’s more, they’ll throw in the lunch too.

The course costs £238+VAT per person or £340+VAT per person with accommodation, and discounts are available for group bookings and students.

It’d be great to see you there.

From the Media Skills website:

Course Summary
New Music Strategies examines the opportunities afforded by the online environment to independent artists, labels and other small music businesses. It looks at a wide range of new techniques, services and strategies available and helps trainees develop their own plan to leverage these techniques to their business’s economic advantage.

Course Objectives
The course will focus on the economics of the music business that have developed as a result of new media technologies. There will be a particular emphasis on what these principles mean for small music businesses and independent artists.

We will look closely at issues and phenomena such as Creative Commons and The Long Tail, and will examine a wide range of internet services that can assist with promotion, distribution and ease of communication of your message.

Course Outline
* The online world – what’s different?
* Portfolio building & workflow
* The death of the scarcity model
* Social networking as fan-building
* New opportunities in distribution
* New opportunities in promotion
* Copyright in the online world

If you read between the lines on the brochure, you’ll get the sense (correctly, as it happens) that I’ll be tailoring the content to suit the specific needs of each individual participant, so it’ll be a kind of group consultancy as well as a simple training session.

There’ll be some hands-on internet use, of course, and some familiarity building with core technologies such as RSS and so forth — but this is mainly about strategies.

I won’t be happy with simply ‘What’s going on?’ and ‘What button do I press?’… Where I think this will be most helpful is in the area of ‘What should we do under the circumstances?’…

What’s more, you don’t need any particular specialist IT knowledge. If you can open a Word document or send an email, you have all the computer skills you’ll need. You’ll come away with more skills, but this is not about software training or web design.

It’s about understanding how the online environment works, what that means for music business, and what you can do about it for your own activities. So… a bit like this blog, really.

Sound useful?

To book now call 0121 204 9883 or email info@mediaskills.org.uk

Looking forward to meeting you.

Download Andrew Dubber's new book Music in the Digital Age - or, if you already have and you've been enjoying it or finding it useful, please consider paying for it here.