Day two: another personal conclusion

Exciting two days, a fascinating round of devoted radio makers, thrilling discussions. But questions remain.

Everybody has been talking about multimedia for the past ten years. That was just the wrong discussion. It never was about multimedia. It's about media instead. About stories, thoroughly researched and artfully crafted. Stories told on all channels there are today: radio, TV, the web, games, audio guides, pods and pads, mobiles, virtually any device capable of reproducing sound.

Of course: Radio documentaries are expensive, and budgets are cut down. Yet, the audience will always be in need of good stories, and public radio managers will always be in need of good content. And: There are a number of options.

• There's inventive and participatory projects, there's user-generated content.
• There's viral marketing, social media communication, crowdfunding.
• There's radio events engaging young listeners as well as producers.
• There's new multimedia platforms minimizing the distribution costs.
• There are different backgrounds for radio docs, like classical or rock and pop channels.
• There's collaboration with other feature makers, cross-company, cross-country.
• There's cooperations with other broadcasters, with newspapers, telecom and mobile companies, universities, museums.
• There's new forms and formats, fascinating combinations of radio doc and other art forms.

And above all: There's all those original, weird, fantastic ideas making original, weird, fantastic pieces of audio art. This is what it's all about.