In the City’s General Manager, Jon-Paul Waddington, relives the event’s 18th year.

OK so I’m biased, but if you ask me – and CREATIVE Times has – I get a sneaking suspicion that ITC found its feet this year. Of course, when you’re in the middle of it it’s hard to be objective, but I’m not the only one who thinks that.

Take Andrew Loog Oldham as an example, a legend let’s make no bones about it, who came in to act as our ‘host with the most’ – the shining light that takes a lot of pressure off the rest of us. Anyone who saw him holding court, chatting to friends new and old, would clearly see a man who was having fun. And that was one of the key features of this year’s ITC – you could see people enjoying themselves. Whether in heated debate, arguing in panels or just throwing opinions about left and right as they ran from one band to the next, people were enjoying themselves.

Sure, as with ALO, they took it seriously as well – the industry’s in flux and there are jobs and bottom lines to think about – but people were exchanging ideas and plans and opinions and, well, doing what you hope smart people will do when you put them in the same place. And Jarvis Cocker, Seymour Stein, Lyor Cohen, Richard Gottehrer, Dick Carruthers, Sean Adams, Bless Beats, Kevin Cummins, Eric Garland and the rest are certainly smart people. Boy did it show.

The bands we picked were better, the gigs better and – thanks to a lot of interaction between a lot of the best promoters and music brains in the city – there was a real sense of unity. Look at all the people who put on events over ITC and you’ll see a lot of love, so we opened the doors wide this year and luckily a lot of talented people walked right on into the fold.

But the best part of it all for us was seeing the bands we’d picked, who we invited to the Midland this year, soaking it all up. Interacting with and learning from the old heads, teaching them a thing or two themselves: the future as it happens, in a word – the young and the old, the new and the established, local and international all at ITC.

Roll on 2009…

W: www.inthecity.co.uk