9am: First up is Matt Locke, head of innovation at BBC Future Media and Technology, talking about how the Beeb is now making "atoms" not programmes, why the title 'TV department' was scrapped and why he isn't out to create another Youtube or MySpace.
I bumped into Matt last night at a post-event thing Picnic hosted and already know that this one is worth tuning in for.
I got the feeling that Matt is so far upstream with what the BBC is thinking that he was working on the kind of 'new' announcements that Ashley Highfield makes to us story-hungry hacks on a semi-regular basis about a year in advance.
The scrapping of the TV department, replaced in name at least with new content divisions, "shocked a lot of people at the BBC" but it is a signifier of how the corporation needs to focus and think going forward.
We are in an internet-enabled age for everything - including TV - with incredibly low barriers of entry (compared to launching a broadcast network for example) which means everyone is now potentially a producer and a consumer.
Here's an interesting fact: Chris Anderson, author of the Longtail book, ran a Technorati analysis of 250m blog posts to see what big brands are referenced by bloggers. He did it in response to an assertion by the author of The Tipping Point that blogging is driven by big brands and what media such as the New York Times say.
The good news is that the BBC turned out to be the most commonly referenced big brand.
The bad news is that just 0.3% of the millions of blog posts analysed referred to the BBC.
What does this all mean? It means that what the BBC does, creating programmes, is just a tiny 'atom' in the new media world and how on earth can you grow that 0.3%?
The likes of YouTube and blogs equal cheap forms of production of content.
You can't 'own' all the relationships audiences have in the web world so the best plan is to 'atomise' content, disintegrate, to 'explode' into places where they are.
The new rules of production - that the internet has commodified the process for all - means that the BBC needs to think beyond its ingrained systems and consider "new forms of social production".
It isn't quite goodbye to trained TV production people of course, but the BBC needs to look at trends such as books that are 'rehearsed' on blogs before publishing.
Why not see something like that with TV, 'rushes' and YouTube, he ponders?
Matt pauses to remind everyone that these things are just his views and not official BBC plans or policy.
Perhaps too many pens-in-hands were scribbling his words like they were gospel.
The message is that the official stuff comes from DG Mark Thompson.
Here we go, he has four rules/lessons/options for large media companies, this ought to be interesting.
Hmmm, I seem to have come out of it with 5 - perhaps one is an example.
1. The BBC is not making programmes it is making 'atoms', tiny elements going everywhere in the digital landscape. The controversial Creative Archive is an attempt to "unlock" elements, "atomise the archive".
2. Decentralising production. BBC Backstage project. Not to get too techy but this seems to be where clever people are allowed to create applications.
One chappy created a system that tailored the BBC news output into "moods" - good or bad - by scanning for key words such as 'festival'.
90 have been built in the last year and some might get commissioned.
3. Host successful sites and communities and don't try and re-invent the wheel by doing a "me too" MySpace or YouTube. They are already out there so provide content and engage with them.
And develop the BBC model of "create a web site to go with a TV show" to sometimes move away from a "broadcast-led" strategy and start with the web.
Example: The Time When website involves a community being based on storytelling from consumers. Experiment to find "triggers" in the community that may, perhaps, then lead to TV.
4. Be an aggregator. Like the MTV guy said yesterday TV channels can be aggregators. Example: Radio 1 site pulling in content that refers to the radio brand from the likes of Flickr and YouTube.
Nice plug for us pops up - he is a big fan of Comment is Free.
5. Don't panic. Linear TV is not disappearing. Broadcasters just need to take different strategies and roles in different media. Example: Creating a virtual festival complete with streaming video footage within Second Life of an event held in the real world.
As this is an hour-long session there are some questions.
Boring question, because Matt surely couldn't answer it, about whether staffers were "convinced" about Mark Thompson's digitally-led strategy.
What was the questioner expecting "I think my boss is rubbish"?
Still, Matt elaborates that because the BBC is "everywhere" (meaning all platforms) then programmes need to be thought of differently. Hence sayonara 'TV department' name.
Look at 'Lost' huge multi-platform winner including bespoke content and self-propelling user community.
Oooh, here is a goodie. Copyright clearance for the Beeb's massive archive material.
I'm liking this because Ashley Highfield's role was recently uber-expanded to included digitizing the archive. He's proud of that and can't wait to roll up his sleeves and create the BBC's "longtail".
Well, slow down. It appears there is also a "longtail of rights holders" and that behemoth of a project - useless fact: the archive material stretches 90km apparently - sounds to me like it might take a lot longer than planned.
Another tricky one. So the BBC is making lots of content with public money but what about the fact people can log in from anywhere?
There is a mass global audience it is true and some of the content has to be "geo-IP" blocked because of the public funding situation which, he admits, is "a bit crazy" but what can you do?
Someone has mistaken him for a digital God (isn't that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs?) and basically asks him the Ultimate Question for the key to broadcasters continued life.
He should have said "42", perhaps a bit British though.
Slightly exasperated he laughs off the assumption he knows all, reminding everyone that what we are seeing, and listening to, is a lot of Blue Sky stuff.
But, survival - like MTV guy said about the channel's music roots yesterday - comes down to focusing on what you do that is unique.
Let Chris DeWolfe create MySpace, Craig Newmark craigslist and Jeff Bezos Amazon, at the end of the day the BBC needs to remember that it is "not a consumer technology business we are a storytelling business".
I like this, he ends by reminding us that the likes of Second Life are way ahead in what they do. The Beeb just isn't as nimble.
"We are like a dog walking on its hind legs. We aren't necessarily the best walker but it is amazing that we can do it anyway."
Laughs all round.
10.00am: The second, and last session, MySpace's big Euro cheese, Jamie Kantrowitz, has cancelled. Something was said about 'being called back to the US'? What can this mean?
There is no replacement speaker and it's time for me to head for the airport....
