Final preparations for the Digital Radio Summit 2012 are well under way, with the programme now complete and more than seventy delegates registered to attend. The event, taking place in Geneva on 15 February, will deliver an excellent overview of the state of digital radio in Europe today and an insight into how services are likely to develop in future. RadioHack 2012, taking place on the two days before the Summit, will bring radio developers for a programme of workshops.
The keynote speaker for the Digital Radio Summit will be Joël Ronez, the director of new media at Radio France (pictured right). His presentation will focus on how to build a national digital radio strategy, a topic of great importance for the many European countries where the transition from analogue to digital is the main challenge for the radio community. The morning session will also include updates from the key digital radio standards associations – DRM, WorldDMB, RadioDNS and the Internet Media Device Alliance (IMDA) – as well as reports on the work EBU TECHNICAL has been facilitating in the digital radio domain.
During the afternoon a set of case studies will look at the rollout of digital radio services in Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and France. Community radio will be an area for particular focus, with Ulrik Brinck of Kanal Plus (Denmark) and Pierre Boucard of SNRL (French community radio association) both speaking about the particular challenges that community stations face in going digital.
The final session will look at some recent innovations in the area of user experience, such as radio tagging, visual radio services and the latest multi-standard platforms for car audio. These and other innovative activities will also be on the agenda for RadioHack, a series of workshops for radio developers taking place on the two days before the Digital Radio Summit.
(Image © Philippe Brault / Agence Vu)