The Thirteenth Annual Interactive Music Conference and BBQ will be held October 16-19, 2008, at Canyon of the Eagles Ranch, in Lake Buchanan, Texas.

The goal of Project Bar-B-Q is Influencing Music Hardware & Software Over the Next 5 Years.

To this end, a select group of hardware developers, software developers, audio engineers, composers, tech executives, and the like will all set aside their differences and spend two days of facilitated brainstorming to formulate some ideas and solutions. The result of this work is the annual BBQ report.

An Expensive Problem

Keeping pace with the rapidly changing computer audio business is no easy task, and countless dollars and man-hours depend on it. What individual has the required level of expertise in hardware, software, music, audio, marketing, the Internet, streaming and wireless technologies, IP, law, technical standards, business politics and entertainment fads to understand where computer audio was, is, and where it's going--let alone to influence it?

A computer can sound better than a movie theater. Why do we listen through low-bandwidth connections and tiny speakers? If audio can be half of a game's entertainment value, and the game industry makes more money than the film and TV industries combined, why is audio given less than one percent of a game's development resources? Why does something as technically simple as audio account for such a high percentage of computer crashes? How much do those crashes cost big businesses? How much time and self-esteem do they cost individual computer users? If all the little entertainment and productivity machines are going to "converge" into one big machine, won't that more complex machine tend to crash even more? And if the machines don't converge, but become rather a house full of single-function appliances, how can all the companies working on all the different types of audio make their systems work together without failing? Why are pirating issues such a big deal--why don't standard business models for music distribution exist? Why haven't we better leveraged the computer's ability to help us learn about music?

And before any of these questions are even answered, the entire industry and all of its issues are born anew when somebody says, "If a computer can sound that good, what kind of audio can we squeeze through a mobile phone?"

A Unique Solution

It's a tough situation, and to answer it, many of the movers and shakers of this industry reserve three days each October to attend a big-time Texas-style think-tank called "Project Bar-B-Q", held at the lodge at Canyon of the Eagles on Texas' beautiful Lake Buchanan.

The conference is hosted by The Fat Man, George Alistair Sanger, (www.fatman.com) who has been a Texas-Sized legend in game audio since 1983. It is operated by the colossal superstars of conference production Avallone Media Group, teamed with Sanger and his wife, Linda Law, who’s known by attendees as "Mission Control." Their mission statement, which has varied only slightly since the first BBQ in 1996, is nothing less ambitious than "Influencing Music Hardware and Software Over The Next 5 Years."

Radical Tactics

Unlike conventional meetings, BBQ shuns neckties, company logos, and fluorescent lights as detrimental to group thinking processes. BBQ uses natural catalysts to deepen and broaden thought: Attendees do their work under wide Texas skies. They sit around the fire on hay bales, eat top-notch food served up Western-Style, and are given lots of equipment for making music, as well as adequate structure for brainstorming.

The conference fee covers everything from the time attendees are picked up at the airport on Thursday until the time they are dropped back off on Sunday including registration, shuttle service, food, lodging, snacks and entertainment and more than likely a hat, bandana, bolo tie, and maybe even a branding iron.

Things move quickly at BBQ. The first evening and the morning of the second day, attendees are whipped into an intellectual frenzy by free-spirited debates, heavenly meals, inspirational talks, stories of BBQ's past successes, and a series of intentionally irrefutable challenges to the validity of anybody's preconceived agenda.

The "BBQ Brothers and Sisters," as they call each other, are not assigned a problem to solve. Instead, they form "The Giant Brain" and are challenged to do the first task that's impossible for an individual--to identify the four biggest questions/problems the industry faces. Once that's done, they split into four groups to find answers and solutions to the problems, with each attendee joining the group working in the area he finds most compelling. As a climax to the event, each group makes a presentation to the whole camp, and creates a report including action items that are expected by the community to benefit the industry.

It's been said that the power of the Big Brain is too mighty to predict, and not a good thing to try to limit or control too much. The BBQ staff is instructed that sometimes it's not so important what you do, but what you don't do.

As The Fat Man says to the group at the outset of the conference, "We don’t say ‘no’ to the Muses around here. If one sits on your shoulder and says, ‘Hey, you need to be sittin' on the porch with a cigar making deals with that Microsoft guy and that AMD guy!' you'd better damn well go do what you're inspired to do. If inspiration hits you, we’ll be proud to get the Hell out of your way."  Inspired attendees are encouraged to step outside the structure of the working groups and form their own "rogue groups."  With smaller numbers and intense inspiration, these groups often act as Special Forces units, and accomplish remarkable things.

www.projectbarbq.com