The digital revolution has changed the music industry beyond recognition, from buying tunes to connecting artists with audiences.Lars Ulrich isn’t the only person to have struggled with the move to digital content and new forms of marketing and distribution. The news that Google is launching a new music store and Spotify’s move to Australia shows that the race for market share is far from over.

Our panel bring a wealth of experience and different perspectives, and they’ll be sharing the challenges they face and how they’re overcoming them, the potential value of new platforms  and ways of reaching audiences, as well as where they see the industry going in the next few years.

Before and after our illustrious panel we’ll have live music from some of Sydney’s finest musicians and DJs. Come to debate the future of music, stay to enjoy our Christmas party.

About the Speakers

Dan Rosen
CEO of the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) and the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA)
Prior to joining ARIA and PPCA as CEO, Dan was based in New York working as Head of Americas for KIT Digital, a NASAQ listed digital media company.  Before leaving for the States, Dan worked as an Advisor to the Minister of Communications, Richard Alston, responsible for broadband and innovation policy after starting his career as a lawyer, specializing in media and technology, with Minter Ellison.

Dan has been on both sides of the music business; his band ‘Second Dan’ won Triple J Unearthed in 2003 and has since independently released two albums and toured throughout the US and Australia. He continues to write and produce music.
Dan was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to complete his Masters of International Law and Business at New York University. He holds a First Class Honours degree in Law and a Bachelor of Commerce from Monash University in Melbourne.
Neil Ackland
Managing Director, Sound Alliance
Neil is a founding partner and Managing Director of Sound Alliance – a pioneer of niche social media with a decade of experience creating category leading web brands that cater to the interests of 18-29 year old Australians. Sound Alliance media assets include; inthemix, Faster Louder, Mess&Noise, SameSame, The Hype Machine & Last.fm. Neil has a unique understanding of how to build profitable communities online, combined with the commercial acumen to attract leading brands to engage with these communities.
Sound Alliance has grown to become Australia’s largest independent online entertainment publisher with over 1 million unique browsers per month visiting its network of websites and 350,000 registered members. It employs 40+ staff and has been named in the BRW Great Place to Work Top 50 in 2009 & 2010.
http://thesoundalliance.net
Ben Shepherd
Commercial Director, Sound Alliance
Ben is the Commercial Director of Sound Alliance, one of Australia’s leading diversified digital businesses, incorporating media assets inthemix, Faster Louder, Mess&Noise, Pitchfork, SameSame, The Hype Machine & Last.fm; creative and communications consultancy Sound Alliance Agency. Prior to joining Sound Alliance Ben was the Head of Digital for media agency Maxus and in his decade long media career has held leadership roles at Mindshare and Yahoo! In addition, Ben is the author of award winning blog, Talking Digital, and a contributing media commentator to Business Spectator and Encore Magazine.
http://thesoundalliance.net
http://talkingdigital.wordpress.com
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/talking-digital

Gareth Stuckey – Gig Piglet
Over the past 13 years, Gareth Stuckey’s experience as Production Manager for A Day On The Green festival and Tour Co-Ordinator for Civil Society have seen him work with artists as diverse as: Lionel Ritchie, Crosby Stills and Nash,  Sia, Death Cab for Cutie, The National and the many more.
He’s currently Front of House Engineer and Tour Manager for Tim Finn and Brooke Fraser and he’s done the same thing for bands such as george, Alex Lloyd, Thirsty Merc, and seven years with Machine Gun Fellatio.
Since establishing Gigpiglet Recordings he’s been involved in recording projects for the likes of Shane Nicholson, Thirsty Merc, The Beautiful Girls and Lyrics Born as well as managing the careers of Alex Lloyd, Pinky Beecroft, and Jack Carty.
His current focus is Gigpiglet Presents, a company producing events throughout Australia with clients including NOVA radio, National Geographic, Murdoch Books and most recently his very own LIVE!@GPHQ.
http://www.gigpiglet.com.au/
https://twitter.com/#!/thegigpiglet

Sam Buckingham
Sam Buckingham is a self managed, fan funded, independent artist that believes in artists helping artists, social networking and thinking outside the square. Using networks online built through touring and constant social networking, she has successfully fostered an online
competition to inspire fan interaction, an online series performing newly penned songs to help build her following, a 25 date national tour seeing her play in her fans backyards, living rooms & balconies and has successfully raised $10,000 through the crowdfunding platform ‘Pozible’ to record her forthcoming album. Along with these achievements she has been a finalist 3 years running in the International Songwriting Competition, Enchanted audiences at Blue Mountains Folk, Tamworth Country Music, Peats Ridge & the National Folk Festival and has played alongside the likes of Angus & Julia Stone, Washington and Lior.
http://www.sambuckingham.com
http://twitter.com/#!/sammybuckingham
http://www.myspace.com/sambuckinghammusic
Helen Perris
Growing up, Helen Perris was fed a diet of Fleetwood Mac, Leo Sayer, ABBA and Elvis Presley courtesy of regional AM radio, alongside her classical piano and violin training. Following her introduction into the world of musical theatre, it was probably inevitable that her musical style was destined to have a timeless feel with a storyteller’s bent. Helen’s music is the love child of Tori Amos and Eddie Perfect at a suburban BBQ and is largely autobiographical. While Helen’s influences include Tori Amos, Katie Noonan and Sarah Slean, she continues to be inspired by all forms of music (even Rebecca Black).
Helen spent many years teaching and performing as a musician, dancer and actor in Brisbane, Canberra and Sydney before embarking on her recording career. It took an opportunity to play for Amanda Palmer, and the resulting positive feedback, for Helen to gain the courage to make her dream a reality. She has since played support for U.S. independent artist Kim Boekbinder and Triple J’s Brendan Maclean. Helen launched her Pozible campaign to fund her debut EP “Flesh” in October.
www.helenperrismusic.com

• This months charity partner Reachout
• A Customer Service Delivery Consultancy
• An IT & Networking Service Delivery Organisation

Perhaps you have an another pitch to add? Add your comment or DM Digital Citizens on Twitter

Looking forward to Katy, Paul and Mike distilling these challenges to provide some interesting, measurable and successful solutions on Tuesday night.

Have you got your tickets yet?

The audience and the business owner will decide on the winner – you can play along at home by watching the livestream and voting on Twitter using the hashtag #digicitz.

Come and join us on Tuesday 5th October, 2010, press the bee to buy tickets

About our Speakers

Katy Daniells is a certified Digital Marketer and social media enthusiast with a marketing degree from the University of Bristol in the UK. She works for Daemon Group as part of the Daemon TWO (formerly Daemon Digital) team. She doesn’t consider herself an expert, however does believe her experience helps her relate social strategy back to overlying business objectives.

Katy’s previous roles on the client side of a finance company means she understands the importance of marketing ROI for her current clients who include Tourism NSW, Elastoplast, Austereo and Warner Brothers.

Her passion for online and all things digital gained helping move her previous employer into the digital world. This led her to join the Daemon Digital team where she is responsible for: Ideas, strategy, making stuff happen, monitoring, content creation, moderation, engagement and client management.

Why is Mike Watkins a panellist at Digital Citizens 7?  Because he’s a strong advocate for proven social media practise in Australia.  He gets annoyed by people jumping on the ‘social media consultant’ gravy train and milking companies dry without providing any real results.  Because this leads to companies knocking his organisation back due to the damage their last ‘social media strategist’ inflicted upon them.

Mike’s view of proven social media practise is about applying a systematic approach to strategy. He can use high ROI examples like Supré on Facebook or  how he helped build niche communities for some other relatively ‘boring’ B2B brands.

He expects to use this event to put himself on the line and test his thinking in a very public arena. He hopes at the end of the event we’ll see clearly who the real social media experts are!

Paul Gray has more than ten years experience in crafting and executing strategic marketing initiatives for B2B and B2C blue-chip organisations in Australia, New Zealand and in Europe. As a senior consultant at brainmates, a boutique product management and marketing services agency in Sydney, Paul has defined, developed and deployed new products and services in a range of industries.

Over his career, Paul’s worked with brands including Disney, Austar, British Telecom and The Starlight Children’s Foundation.

Paul’s research focuses on new product development, disruptive innovation and social media and he has authored a white paper Collaborative Conversations: Using social media in product management.

Update: Cate has had to withdraw for personal reasons. We hope to see Cate on a panel in the future!

Cate Mathers has had 10 years industry experience with 4 of those years spent in New York developing global content & digital strategies for Pepsi International’s brands Pepsi Max, Doritos, Cheetos, 7-Up.

Pioneering projects with Pepsi in the digital arena involving licensing a social network and translating it multiple languages for the BRICS countries, social gaming and mobile applications, global deals with Microsoft and Facebook for Pepsi Max.

She also worked with P&Gs marketing innovation team in 2005 & 2006 on blog and influencer programs and launched some of the earliest branded MySpace and Facebook pages for Herbal Essence and Champion Apparel.

Upon returning to Sydney she freelanced at Social Media agency The Population whose clients included Fox8, Rockstar Games and Universal Music, before starting at OMD where she has been building up the agencies Social Media credentials since October last year.

Never has there been an advertising world where small businesses can compete with large corporations to get the attention of consumers.

Now, with the advent of social media, we’re seeing what used to be classed as small-fry companies increasing their bottom line, reaching their customers directly and building their reputations through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogging, to the point where they become our case studies for social media success.

But it’s not all peaches and cream – there’s a real margin for error, as well as the need for adequate resourcing. Sometimes conversation about customer service rages far out of control when social accounts are left untouched for long periods of time. How, then, do small businesses actually safeguard against all these things, participate in social media and find the time to run their day-to-day?

All of these topics – and more – will be discussed at the next Digital Citizens event, “Startups, small shops and bootstrappers: the real value in social media and digital PR for small business”.

Confirmed speakers for this event are Jeremy Somers, designer and co-founder of Sydney-based swimsuit line We Are Handsome and Craig Macindoe, head chef and owner of Mumu Grill in Crows Nest (@chefmumu) . Two more speakers will be announced in the coming weeks. The panel will be moderated by the Digital Citizens committee, along with the audience.

This event will hosted at the new home of Digital Citizens, TAO at Mr B’s ( 396 Pitt St , Sydney NSW 2000). Finger food will be served from 6:30 until 7:00 , generously sponsored by Sticky Tickets and Centric Consulting.

Three ticket types are available for purchase: $10 for a single, $18 for a pair and $30 for a group of four people. It’s a great opportunity to bring clients or friends along for what is sure to be an interesting, informative and lively debate.

50% of ticket sales will be donated to charity. Should you wish to nominate a charity, please contact the Digital Citizens committee at contact@digital-citizens.org

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

Grab your tickets now

It’s Beaney here, running this month’s liveblog, covering Crisis and reputation management Digicitz. I’m filling in for Warlach who is your usual CoverItLive-er-er for Digital Citizens.

I’ll be pulling in tweets which use the #digicitz hashtag, or you can participate below. If you’re wanting to ask the Panel a question, please use the #digicitz hashtag, and also chuck in a #question tag so we know it’s for the Panel.

I’ll catch you at the event tonight (either IRL or on the interwebz)!

~ Beaney

When conversation on social networks gets ugly, only the prepared survive. Brands can take months, or even years to recover positive sentiment after an online backlash – especially the attention traditional media gives to social networks nowadays. We’ve seen some disasters – Nestle, Dell and Jetstar deal with massive retaliation – and in some cases it seems no-one is safe from the wrath of a consumer scorned.

So, how do you safeguard against disgruntled conversations online? How do you deal with the repercussions once the chatter has begun? Once again, Digital Citizens has assembled a crack team to discuss this month’s topic, “Crisis and reputation management: How to deal when the web gets antisocial”. Confirmed speakers for this event are Matthew Gain (Edelman) and Rachael Falk (Telstra); Karalee Evans (Amnesia Razorfish) will be moderating what is sure to be a lively yet respectful debate about this topic. There are more speakers to be added – so stay tuned!

Digital Citizens is at the Burdekin Hotel on Tuesday, 20th of July. Tickets are $10, half of which will be donated to a charity to be crowdsourced at the event. If you would like to nominate a charity or propose your own, send a message on Twitter to @eCitizens or email contact@digital-citizens.org.

Panel sponsorship for this event is very generously provded by Centric Consulting.

Matthew Gain is a digital PR practitioner who lives in Sydney Australia. A passionate traveller and a keen yet very amateur photographer, he is fascinated by the internet and social media. He currently works for  Edelman in its Sydney office and am responsible for leading digital strategy for Australia. He has previous held roles at Microsoft and Edelman in the UK, and Ogilvy PR and Weber Shandwick in Australia.

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Working as a Communications and public relations professional for nearly ten years, Karalee Evans is passionate about effective and transparent communication and the future of the PR industry. Advocating the use of social media and online engagement as part of the communications mix, Karalee started out in public relations consulting, before transitioning to in-house public relations and marcomms roles, commencing with a Victorian Government agency. With an emphasis on strategic thinking and continuous measurement and evaluation, Karalee has advised many industries on best-practice communications, from media relations to crisis management and community consultation to online engagement.  Now working back in agency-land as Social Strategy Manager at Amnesia Razorfish, Karalee regularly advises clients on strategic thinking and planning for digital and social media including issues and crisis management.

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Rachael Falk is Telstra’s Lead Legal advisor on social media issues. Rachael has an in-depth understanding of the opportunities and challenges corporate Australia faces from social media.

Rachael is responsible for providing legal advice and strategy for Telstra’s social media campaigns and corporate websites and was instrumental in developing Telstra’s Social Media Guidelines and training for approximately 38,000 employees.Having recently returned from an externally funded study tour of the United States, she brings an international perspective to the field.

Rachael has been a member of Telstra’s Legal Services Group since 2002 and worked in a range of business units including Dispute Resolution and Public Policy and Communication Group. Before joining Telstra, Rachael worked in private practice in Sydney and in London.

Gavin Heaton, well known as Servant of Chaos, and a Social Media practioner within his own organisation will MC a Panel of experts discussing the topic.

The panel will include Dr. Glen Fuller, Assistant Events Manager at Gleebooks, and Napoleon Biggs the Hong Kong Based founder of Web Wednesday from Fleishman-Hillard.

We expect another vigorous yet respectful debate.

Questions might include;

• how can you turn a lone cheerleader into a Mexican Wave?
• how do you get buy-in from the CEO as well as opt-in from the overworked frontline team?
• Can you effect change on multiple fronts at once, or is it a case of picking your battles?
• Is using social technologies to share knowledge internally the most effective way to demonstrate their potential?

Feel free to add more in the comments section below!

In addition to our top-notch panel, we are delighted to announce our Charity Partner for this months Event.

This month’s donations  will go to Fictillimanjaro. Evan Smith is climbing Mt Kilimanjaro to help raise funds for the Humpy Dumpty Foundation and is using Social Media to document his efforts

The Humpy Dumpty Foundation purchases vital medical equipment for children’s hospitals right across Australia and now also in East Timor. Check their website to see more about their work.

Tickets for Digicitz 4 are available now for just $10, half of which will be donated to the Humpty Dumpty Foundation.

About our Panellists

Gavin is the author of Servant of Chaos, one of Australia’s leading marketing blogs. He is the co-publisher of the ground-breaking collaborative marketing book, Age of Conversation. Gavin has worked in agencies, but is currently holed up on the client side.

Gavin is an in demand speaker on topics around Social Media, Marketing and Community. Recently has spoke at the following events:

• MarketingNow! – lead generation, community and social media
• ADMA – diving into social media
• AdTech – the relevance of twitter

Napoleon has worked for 17 years in media in Asia, 13 years on the Internet, 4 years in social media, 9 months in Fleishman-Hillard and 2 days in Sydney.

As the founder and host of Web Wednesday, an independent networking community for Asian digerati, with monthly gatherings in Hong Kong, Singapore, Guangzhou, Beijing, Bangkok and Ho Chi Minh City, Napoleon is more accustomed to moderating than speaking.

He heads up Digital Integration across Asia Pacific for Fleishman-Hillard and is based in Hong Kong.

One of Napoleon’s key topics will be “Will Social Media Kill the Corporate Intranet?”

Company intranets are typically clunky and badly structured. It’s an ongoing challenge to get users to effectively engage with them, share information, brainstorm ideas, and find relevant content. Will social media become a more effective way to share ideas and manage knowledge within your company?

Our MC’s

Our Panellists

What’s Hot?

Next Up

Don’t Wait!

(You may need to use headphones for this video. Sound is a little quiet at points.)

What do you measure, how do you measure it and why even bother?

Social media has, at times, had a bum steer over the past 24 months – and one argument for its bad rep is that it’s hard to quantify and demonstrate the business case for investment in this area.

Our panellists are here to argue that you can prove exactly how many social media angels can dance on the head of a pin, and how it’s done.

From defining realistic business objectives and setting goals, to the metrics you use, through to creating KPI’s and targets, we’ll be discussing whether web analytics can help to quantify the unquantifiable.

Are there digital activities that can’t be measured, how much should you take on faith and is your Social Media Guru feeding you snake-oil on the subject of engagement metrics?

Our panellists will include Mitch Malone, @mitchmalone, Community Manager at BuzzNumbers, Marie-Claire Jenkins @missmcj, Senior Strategist at McCann Sydney and Andrew Hughes,@y0z2a,  Senior SEO and SMO Consultant for Reprise Media.

Mitch works in sales for BuzzNumbers and is also responsible for community management. Mitch is a digital native and his professional online experience extends back to 2004 in working as a community manager for deviantART – the largest art community in the world. At BuzzNumbers he is responsible for client acquisition and consulting on social media and online analytics, providing a variety of monitoring solutions to clients.

Andrew Hughes (@yo2za) has over ten years of digital marketing experience in the UK, and now works as Senior Consultant for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and SMO (Social Media Optimisation)for Reprise Media – a specialist search agency with clients throughout Australia.  He’s worked as an online marketing manager and SEO consultant for a range companies including a large multi-national pharmaceutical company and worldwide ERP Software vendor as well as numerous SME’s.  He is also an avid motorsport enthusiast; racing cars in the UK under the www.YozzaSport.co.uk team flag.

Marie-Claire Jenkins @missmcj is the Senior Strategist at McCann Sydney.  She has 7 years experience and almost (!) has a PhD in Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence. She is an expert in the semantic web and SEO and is passionate about effective measurement.

When she is not in front of her laptop you are likely to find her in the surf or on a yoga mat.

All you need to know about MCJ can be found at www.scienceforseo.com and www.slideshare.net/mcjenkins

Emcee’d by the ever debonair Damian Damjanovski, we are anticipating another evening of vigorous yet respectful debate and look forward to seeing you there!

We’re asking for a door donation to cover costs – an itemised breakdown can be found on our website – and the remainder will go to charity.