Some of you already know some of this but not all of it, and some of you do not know this but may have had some clues, I have been excited at times and have been dropping hints. It’s time to “spill the beans” and share exactly what’s going on.

I received an unsolicited approach in the last quarter of 07 for a possible partnership/merger between my established distance learning portal Audiocourses.com and the global face-to-face educational provider SAE Institute.

After various negotiations we have now struck a deal and I have signed on the dotted the line, so to speak.

SAE was established in 1976 (SAE History) and now operates over 50 institutions in 21 countries around the globe. SAE has an exceptionally strong brand name in the field of sound engineering and music production, and also more recently, film making, games, and other media related disciplines. If you are a musician or budding sound engineer/studio technologist etc, this is unquestionably “the” brand, SAE is in fact also the world's largest media education provider, fact.

Audiocourses.com is a pioneering distance learning portal working at the cutting-edge of educational technology since 2000. The portal has graduated students from most corners of the English speaking world, it is a specialist e-learning internet school, with vast experience and proven results. Considerable credibility has been established and the site is dominant in most areas of its core business.

Putting these two cultures together then and you can imagine the possibilities, exciting times ahead with enormous potentials.

Personally I am very excited by this deal, it is the coming of age of my company, something I started on the kitchen table and have shed pints of sweat over, uncountable sleepless nights and all the rest of that stuff you need to get your baby going. I’m chuffed!

So what will I be doing?

Primarily I will continue managing Audiocourses.com and with that comes the integration of the SAE Graduate College. I will also be engaged in helping restructure the SAE network of websites and market the online presence of the SAE brand worldwide.

These are huge projects requiring heaps of project management along with various milestones and launches and exciting strategies. Naturally I hope to share some of this with you as I work through it.

All of this will be carried out by my new-media web marketing consultancy company Audana, which some of you may recall carried out work for Crayon and Coca-Cola as well as other great clients through 07. Audana will grow steadily and aggressively extend its client base through 08.

Watch out for the official press releases soon.

Can’t wait to get stuck in, wish me luck!

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Well it has been well over a week and I’ve decided that now some time has passed I’d unload some of my thoughts into my blog, after all remember my blog is the same as you’d get from me in the pub, so join me in a drink while I mention my personal highlights.

The ACHUB MediaCampBucks07 was the first if its kind for Bucks, in fact the first of its kind for many areas in UK, the slant of this event was enabling an interface of sorts between people working in the commercial sector and academia, and you know what, we all certainly achieved that.

On the day we had three broad themes running:

• Education/Web2.0
• Audio & Music
• HR/Policy/Community

Therefore three sessions were running simultaneously in order that a variety of choice was constantly present for all the participants, it was a cracking atmosphere with everyone checking out the schedules posted-up on the session room doors, and deciding if the current topic was for them, or not.

The event started for me on Friday morning by collecting Kris Eliasson from Heathrow who was representing Sony Ericsson. This guy is an ex-student of mine who studied with Audiocourses.com the distance learning school I am CEO of. Kris started as a student and then became a Production Advisor for the school and then since those days we have become good friends, and this was the first time I got to shake his hand in real-life and move onto serious discussion about the future of mobile content distribution, was awesome.

The event also saw another ex-student of Audiocourses.com in Mike O’Hara who has gone on to make audio his main income stream having set up a thriving business around podcasting, again what a buzz to see these connections firing.

On the Friday evening many of us met up in a local venue for a couple of drinks and a chat, this was the first time most of us had met and it was a real buzz seeing the next character walk in and introduce themselves, finally putting a real face to names was amazing. Observing different groups of people with wide ranging backgrounds and jobs getting social together was a thrill.

I met some amazing people on the day too numerous to mention, you know who you are and how we interacted, and let me just say thanks so much for giving and sharing, YOU made the day a success, and I’m excited to see you again soon.

I want to personally thank a few people for making the day happen, firstly Asha Treacy for driving me to the venue first thing Saturday morning, (I had abandoned my car the evening before following 4 pints of beer). CJ for being very organised and “calling time” with 10 mins to go in the sessions, this was awesome and not planned, she just took control of that and I need to thank her for it, we needed that structure. Eaon Pritchard the talented Scott who put together the logo for MediaCampBucks07 and also came up trumps with some direction boards and banners (sponsored by Weapon7) which we placed around the campus, smart man is Eaon, though he did have me worried as he had been out on the pop the night before and was missing in action for a while. Mike for getting a serious Jam scene going on in the Glasshouse on Saturday evening, sadly I missed most of it but checked out the repeat on Ustream.tv.

ACHUB MediaCampBucks07 was a success without a doubt, we had about 60 participants throughout the day all told. I’m humbled by all of this and I feel a sense of something great, we have created a brand which has a sense of expectation attached to it, all the participants now know what to expect from an ACHUB event.

Looking to the future of the ACHUB we plan to have a virtual event take place in SecondLife before xmas, probably music heavy, and also plan to host another real-life event for some time in the new year which may be similar to MediaCamp, or may be something different completely, in fact if YOU have some ideas about that I want to hear from you, I’m keen on using the momentum we have with ACHUB to continue hosting has we have done since 06.

Just to conclude ACHUB exists in two places:

ACHUB Facebook
Wiki

Recently we have secured the domain ACHUB.ORG which will likely become the main portal before too long, and yes, with user accounts so you can participate with the content, after all it is YOURS, this is YOUR group, your brand, your dynamic to embrace and share.

As a closing statement I’d like you to continue the growth of the group by bringing someone in, a stranger someone “outside” of this web2.0, someone who needs it most.

I’m keeping this short but let me know your highlight of the weekend with a cheeky comment.

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