But radio can also be a source of surprisingly deep friendship. Especially, a source of comfort in hard times when loneliness might otherwise prevail.

Take a look at this short and touching video uploaded recently by a listener to LightFM:

Renee found LightFM during one of the hardest times of her life – and it gave her hope to continue on.

Another listener, Rae, uploaded a video recently, in which she said after listening to LightFM after finding out about it on the Internet, she “was beginning to heal on the inside, and be motivated into a love of life with an overwhelming sense of happiness.” At the end of her video, she includes a photo collage of the LightFM on-air team – with the heading “My Awesome Cheer Squad”.

I’ve been involved in radio for just on three years now, and I still get touched by these stories that I get the privilege of hearing time and time again. Many of them have similar themes – but they are new every single time because they always involve another person who has found a new lease on life in a unique way.

As someone involved in making relational radio, it’s encouraging to hear these stories – and sharing these stories around mean that more and more people have the opportunity to hear about a source of hope – that they might otherwise never know existed.

Melbourne’s 89.9 LightFM is running the “My LightFM” promotion until 25th June, where listeners upload a 60 second video sharing what LightFM means to them. Find out more or view the videos uploaded so far.

It’s only that much because I’m passionate about what I do. Because I’ve so many great ideas about new ventures and new and better ways to do what we do, that I want to implement them all at once.

Now if you don’t know me, or you haven’t read far into this blog before, I’m the manager of 1WAY FM, Canberra’s Christian radio station. At the moment we’re planning for Share-a-thon – it’s our annual appeal for funds to our listener base. It runs over three days, and last year we received $55,555 from our listeners. This year, we’re going beyond $55,555, and asking our friends to partner with us for a stronger reach. We haven’t set a ceiling, because we want to see how far we can go. We want to reach out to Canberra in a bigger and better way than we are at the moment, and there is so much that needs to happen for that to happen.

Planning a Share-a-thon is a big job. Being new in this job, I knew very little, and have been learning as I go. I’ve learnt now that to plan an intensive three-day campaign, you need alot of time. More time than I gave myself and my team! But we are going to make it. We just need to ask our God to bless us and the weekend and move in the ways that only he can for us to receive the financial help we need.

We have recently dropped our advertising rate for new sponsors, to help attract those new sponsors, and we’re spending some time out visiting local businesses to outline the benefits of getting themselves on air. Once this new income comes in, oh boy are there plans to spend it (and to use it to make more as well). We need to grow to a size where everyone in Canberra actually knows we exist, and there’s a lot of changes to make to get there!

We were considering some program changes. The sort of changes that some people would appreciate, and that others would be ticked off by. But the sort of change that I, at least, thought was where we needed to head.

I started rethinking it when I was reminded that alot more thought needs to be put into these sort of things (I should mention there were time-related reasons why, if it was going to be done soon’ish, it should be done now) so that they can be more well thought through and that other people, if needed, can be consulted.

Then we were praying this morning. That God would show us how to move the radio station forward this year, and that we would remember to ‘check’ things with him first – rather than doing what we believed was right. And the phone rang. While we were praying. We took the call and told the caller we’d call them back afterwards – when that was done, they made a $1,100 donation. Now that on it’s own is huge. We don’t usually get donations of that size outside of our annual Shareathon appeal.

Then he said that he’d donate an extra $1,100 if we kept on air the program that we were thinking of dropping… just like that. No prompting – it just so happened that this listener enjoyed the program, and that he realised something was missing from his life while he was up in Sydney out of the reach of our broadcast. For some reason, he felt the need to let us know his appreciation!

How’s that for answered prayer? It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear – because I thought I was right to go the other way – but it was an answer that showed, without any possible doubt, that God had things in his control. And that’s reassuring.

[See post to listen to audio]
(download file – 16.1 MB, 17:40)

At a special board meeting on Thursday I was appointed as the Acting Station Manager of 1WAY FM, beginning from 1st January (or rather, from when I return on the 7th January from my break).

I’m looking forward to it. Really. It’s going to be an immense challenge – I haven’t done anything like it before. I know that I’m going to learn a lot about managing people, especially volunteers , and I’m looking forward to getting more aquainted with the Australian radio industry. I think I’ve finally crossed the line – I’m no longer interested in IT. I still know what I knew, but I’m no longer interested in keeping up to date with things. I’m now a media nut.

There are a lot of things that 1WAY FM can do this year. We’re not that well known in Canberra, and compared to commercial stations we have a long way to go with our on air sound. Our logo could do with a facelift. Our website needs a redesign! I could go on forever but it would be boring to anyone who isn’t into radio. The first couple of weeks of 2008 will be spent putting everything in order, deciding (and praying about!) what’s more important and what we can afford, and then going full steam ahead.

I have a busy year ahead of me.

I have discovered tonight that once Windows automatic updates start, I can’t actually stop them. And whilst I can try in vain to terminate wuauclt.exe, it can always just start up again seven seconds later (and it seems to make a habit of it). Furthermore, an audio file that I wanted to post here was actually left on my computer at work so I’m attempting to download it.

This all makes browsing a much more frustrating experience, but I guess it gives me more time during page loads to write! (And I’m writing this in Word, by the way, because my blog’s login screen hasn’t loaded yet).

Oh how I remember the world of broadband. I really had forgotten how slow dialup was. Luckily sharing is turned off now – three guys trying to use the one dialup connection wasn’t fun!

So it has been an interesting few weeks, even apart from the Internet not working. I went up to Sydney for the Heart 1032 open day and learnt a lot about how a capital city commercial-like community station is run, and gathered some ideas and inspiration for things I can do at 1WAY FM. I also met Guy Sebastian. I have a photo, but of course I’ll be here for years if I try to upload it, so I won’t do that right now. I also saw Wendy Mathews, Marcia Hines, and the woman who plays Irene Roberts on Home and Away (I can’t remember her name and Google will take too long to search for it).

I’m going up to Sydney again this weekend (I think it’s my second home… I must be up there at least fifteen or so times a year) for Open House’s Christmas party – yep, I can’t get enough of Heart 1032! Having many more resources, coming naturally from being in a bigger market, there is so much to learn from what they’ve done and are doing. So my brushes with fame continue – I will be meeting Jason Stevens, and probably Darlene Zschech as well (I decided to wait out the time for Google to load to check that I’d spelt that right – turns out I had!).

Back to Canberra, and to completely change topic, there has been some interesting news for the ACT Liberals this week. Leader Bill Stefaniak and his deputy Jacqui Burke both stepped down yesterday morning after a week of turmoil in which one party member launched an attack on the leadership of Mr Stefaniak and ended up being dumped – and became an independent. It’s probably good news all around though – Jacqui Burke told me yesterday that the calm that is evident now within the party has really not been seen for three years. That must mean that they’re in a better position now to win the next ACT election in October. I get the vibe that a lot of Canberra doesn’t like Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, and having young blood in place with Zed Seselja may make the Liberals a viable alternative!

Of course, if I had broadband working, I would post the interview that I did with Jacqui yesterday, but I’m really having too much trouble downloading it from work.

Hmm… if I had broadband working I would also be able to post some audio from the Carols by Candlelight in Jerrabomberra last Saturday evening – 1WAY FM broadcasted live from the event, and I managed to grab an interview with Santa of all people! He has really moderned up this year – he turned up in a fire truck (I think his reindeers were too busy getting ready for Christmas Eve), and he’s lost a lot of weight!! His trick, he told me, is to eat lots of vegetables.

I really could write a lot more but I’ve already spent collectively about an hour on the phone tonight to Internode trying to resolve our ongoing connection problems… and there’s other things I could be doing. So until I manage to brave dialup again, or until our Internet actually gets fixed, au revoir!

I haven’t written much yet on my reflections of almost three weeks in my new job, and it’s 11 o’clock at night now so this certainly won’t be a long post. But I have a lot to write, and that will all be coming before too long. It might happen this weekend. But this weekend, the first thing I really should focus on is getting my tax done which, incidentally, was due last night. Oops.

Being appointed as a director of CCRL means that I can bring youth representation to the board. With the current General Manager, Bill Kitto, resigning as of the end of the year, this could be important as we don’t yet know who the incoming General Manager will be, and whether they will be as open to youth involvement as Bill is.

That’s not the only reason I nominated for the board though. For any organisation that I work for, volunteer for, or am involved with in some capacity I try to learn as much as I can in order to do the best I can in my job. As I see it, knowledge is power. The more you know – the more fingers you have in the pie – the better job you can do. I intend to be involved with 1WAY FM for some time, and if I can’t see things from the board’s perspective when planning and implementing new ideas in my position as Project Manager, then I’m not making the most of my capacity. Also, if I have ideas that need to go to the board first, then of course by being on the board I’d be able to present them myself and aim for a faster turnaround time.

And I thoroughly enjoy learning. I try to learn whatever I can out of everything I do because I know that anything could be helpful to me later down the track. This is the learning phase of my life, after all. And I’m sure that I will gain alot of valuable insight and experience at the board level through this appointment.

1WAY FM’s purpose is to present the reality of Jesus Christ through radio and other media, and as the world moves forward, I think it’s important for 1WAY FM to move forward with it – and further establish itself as Canberra’s alternative music radio choice. Through this, it can bring more people to Christ and challenge those who are already saved to continue stepping forward.

There was alot of discussion tonight about the appointment of the new directors – including the fact that it could be a conflict of interest having a salaried staff member on the board. That was largely put aside with the suggestion that I could be asked to temporarily stand down for any decisions where that conflict of interest would come into play.

I guess I saw my appointment tonight as an endorsement, and as encouragement, to continue pursuing further involvement in this new phase of my life. The vast majority of my time will now be spent on 1WAY FM – using my skills and ideas to make changes, in order to take 1WAY FM into the future and help it effectively accomplish its mission.

That’s what I think – based on what God has revealed to me so far – that my life’s purpose is. To use my unique skills to help missions accomplish their God given mission. Once I have done my season at one mission, another one will be awaiting me. This is what I’m pretty sure I’m heading towards. But you know, this could only be part of it. God could have anything in mind for me!

I have been working with AussieHQ since March 2005. From early February – in my capacity as General Manager/Owner/everything else of Focus Web Design – I was sharing an office with AussieHQ. Business began to pick up and I had spare time to help them out, so I did so on a casual basis. What followed was months of challenging – but enjoyable – work where I learnt quite alot about web hosting and running a business. Then, after selling Focus Web Design and spending some time overseas, I moved to full time work.

What followed from that was almost two years of diverse, challenging work in many different positions with many different responsibilities. I became good friends with Michael McGoogan (Managing Director of AussieHQ), my direct manager for the majority of my time there. Michael is only 20 years old, but has wisdom beyond his years. I know this is a cliché – but I don’t think I can quite put it all into words. He has unshakable confidence, integrity and is smart enough to know what he doesn’t know. Through working at AussieHQ under Michael’s leadership, I have found confidence, been pushed to the next level, and the next few levels beyond that, and have much higher self esteem than I did two years ago. He truly is a larger than life leader.

It’s the end of my ‘AussieHQ era’ now. At the end of next week I’ll be walking out of the doors of what is really the first job I’ve had. Maccas and Hoyts don’t count, and Focus Web Design was mostly an experiment – I didn’t really know what I was doing but through some great situations and the help of my parents it became a successful one. But no, AussieHQ was the first job where I’ve worked alongside other people and found out what it really means to have a job you enjoy – and a job where you will do the best you possibly can because you know your boss deserves it. Put quite simply, I was spoilt. I enjoyed every minute of it. I think it’s going to be a little sad to wind it all up…

As much as I love nostalgic reminiscing (even as I write this I’m listening to songs from my teeny-bopper years – what happened to all the good music?) I am looking forward to the future. I don’t know what lies ahead. But for this next season of my life, beginning on Monday 15^th October as I walk into 1WAY FM, I’m excited. I thrive when I learn new things, especially when they’re in fields I’m passionate about. And I have so much to learn about radio. I have enjoyed radio ever since I was young – ever since in primary school when we were running our pretend radio stations from our bedrooms. Ever since I did fake news reports on our family videos (ok, that’s not radio, but it’s the same passion showing through). And now I have the chance to do it in a more professional capacity – and full-time! Yes!

My exact duties at 1WAY FM have yet to be confirmed. But it’s going to include some on air time, behind the scenes technical support, and management of projects that just need to get done – such as web streaming, phone talkback facilities and new ways to present programs. I can’t wait.

It is exciting the ways that technology can be used to proclaim the Word of God. Radio can reach many places that people can’t. There’s the Internet which we all know, there’s audio-visual presentations which present ministries in heart changing ways, there’s even communication solutions like VoIP which make communication across borders affordable and easily accessible. I don’t know what the future has in store for me, but if it’s utilising technologies that I know how to use – and helping and teaching others how to use them – in order to spread God’s Word, then it’ll be a gripping experience!

The hardest thing about presenting radio for me is finding something to talk about. The first few shows weren’t too difficult, but once I had exhausted my potential topics of conversation and had run out of enthusiastic interviewees, disaster struck. There were some mornings when I had done no preparation whatsoever – due to the fact that once I started back at work in the second week, I was getting about one hour in the evening before I’d have to go to bed. That gave only enough time to hastily listen to an aircheck whilst eating dinner, reading the news, and trying to think about the next morning. Some nights all four of those essential activities didn’t happen and I just went straight to bed… making the next morning’s show rather difficult.

There are some airchecks that I haven’t listened to yet and honestly don’t want to. Most mornings I had people SMS’ing, e-mailing or Facebook’ing me saying what a good job I had done. On those mornings of tiredness and zilch preparation they either weren’t listening, or they agreed that I certainly hadn’t done my best, and didn’t want to discourage me by letting me know that. That’s quite ok – I was well aware!

So preparation is absolutely paramount. Of course I had already been told that, but me being me I have to actually see something like that to believe it. I know now that I don’t want to be sitting there again during a voice break saying ‘um, what did this German MP say about marriage again? Oh yes, she, um wants it to be limited to seven years. I think that’s, um, a very bad idea and is a sad indication of the lack of importance of the institution of marriage in society these days, yeah, um, I think that’s all, ok let’s go to another song’. Stupid. There was alot more I could have said about that if I had prepared for it.

So I’ve learnt that preparation is very important. Ok. But the hard bit is actually thinking of topics to talk about. Not only that, but knowing enough about these topics to make my commentary on them interesting. And, being confident that the listener would actually find it interesting! Breakfast shows with two or three people are certainly easier to present – the amount of interestingness I have to provide is firstly only 50 or 33% of what I would have had to provide before, and as a bonus I can think about what I want to say next whilst the other person is talking!

But I didn’t always have the luxury of doing my shows with more than just me. I mean, who else wants to get up at 5am?

A friend told me that I should think of announcing as being a ‘verbal blog’. That makes a lot of sense. I could actually go and read this post out on air. It probably wouldn’t be the best topic to read out on air, but now that I’ve written it, I’d know exactly what I want to say, and since I have written it and proofread it and basically know it back to front, I’d know how to jump around in the post if I decided I wanted to do that whilst reading it. There we go, that’s preparation taken care of!

Now to topics. Well, I often blog about topics I’m interested in. But, if you look back through my recent blog posts, you’ll see there’s quite alot of time in between them. Maybe you don’t think it’s quite alot of time. But it is for a blogger. And if I’m on the radio every morning and if I’m going to start using my blog posts as my inspiration for my on air conversing, then my blog is certainly lacking quantity. Just to give an idea, I have maybe 18 voice breaks in a two hour breakfast show. Some of them are easily filled – here’s the latest news, the latest weather for Canberra, weather around the country, the time, the current temperature, the current unleaded fuel price or an event from the community calendar that may be of interest to some listeners. But that leaves at least 12 voice breaks. Perhaps it’s a good morning and I have two interviewees. Take six, leave six. I still need at least three topics, assuming there’s enough to talk about to cover two voice breaks each.

Gosh it actually sounds very easy when I break it down like that. Maybe that’s the key. I’m thinking as I’m writing here – that’s something I can’t do on air unless I want to be silent for a few seconds after every sentence!

So if that’s the key, I need to blog more. Hey, that could work well. I could blog often about topics that are of interest to me, and then talk about them on the air. I would have two media to communicate with the listener – and they could comment either by commenting on my blog, or by calling me while I’m on air. This could actually work well!

Thank you, dear reader, for helping me come up with this idea.

I recorded an aircheck of part of my 3 hour slot yesterday, which you can listen to here:

[See post to listen to audio]

Airchecks in the radio industry are often recorded for the purposes of critique. I’m quite happy with how this one turned out, considering this was my second time on air by myself, but after listening to it I have come up with a few points of improvement:

• I sometimes speak too quiet (or have the mic turned down too low), and occasionally almost mumble a few words
• There are lots of ums and ahs
• I could start talking sooner at the end of songs, during the outros rather than waiting right till the end

I’ve noticed I also seem to say ‘intrested’ rather than ‘interested’. But I’m wondering, is this just personal preference (sort of like the differences between how ‘garage’, ‘adult’ and ‘either’ are pronounced), or is pronouncing the ‘e’ the correct way of doing it?