At Radio 1's Big Weekend 2011 we are testing a new mobile feature that allows the audience to say "I'm here now" to their friends while watching their favourite artists throughout the day. The key thing is that they have to be present at a stage to check in.

So why are we doing this? This is an experiment to help the BBC explore privacy issues around Check Ins and ask whether the technology can enhance our audiences' experience of similar events. By using the latest mobile location technology, Facebook Places and a bit of web design, we've built a prototype that let's our audience share the experience with their family and friends in a way in which they're used to. We decided to use Facebook Places because we believe most of the audience at the event will have an account.

At the BBC I run a number of social media projects and we've been wanting to do something involving the audience at festivals and listeners at home for quite a while. The challenge I set myself here was to find a new and engaging way for the BBC to encourage users to share their festival experiences, good or bad, with the wider world.

The 'Check In' experiment is my proposed solution. It was initially developed on a beer mat in December 2010 but after a late night or two and hard work from the Future Platforms team it was delivered on time. It will only be available to smartphone users with Facebook accounts, attending Radio 1's Big Weekend in Carlisle. Participants are able to share a number of things: which stage they're at, who they're listening to and what they think of the performance. This information will be shared with friends via the user's Facebook newsfeed.

Here's how it works:

The site asks users to verify their location by either checking their 3G cell or using their GPS location. Privacy has been a concern on this project from the outset. We have taken great care in making sure that this site is an example of how to be safe whilst using Check Ins. By default, our site only publishes information and comments to a user's friends via their Facebook newsfeed.

The prototypes database tells us how many people have checked into a performance and how many times they have checked in but the BBC does not hold any users' personal data. The system is completely anonymous, so while we can visualise the numbers of users we're unable to tell who they are. We also signpost that users can amend Facebook privacy settings to decide how and with whom they share this information. As Radio 1's Big Weekend is a ticketed event, we felt that this would be the perfect choice for an experiment of this kind as it reduce concerns of the audience sharing where they are. We also felt that this was a great opportunity to raise awareness with our audience of location privacy. The way we are doing this is to promote how to stay safe on-line as well as providing top tips for anyone using location based services.

From the start, allowing users to say where they were as one of our prototypes was going to be an interesting shift in what we do. We defined a set of criteria to be evaluated and we are carrying out three stages of audience research focusing on qualitative research at the event with 6 young people. They'll be given phones for the day and asked to evaluate the experiment and the promotion.

This has been a truly challenging and thrilling project to work on with some great people but there'll be no rest until the final evaluation in a few weeks. I'll be doing a further post after next weekend with details of how it went. - RM

Richard Morland - Senior Producer Social Media - A&M Interactive

NB: This is an experiment so unfortunately we cannot make it work on all mobiles. If you are attending then your handset will need to have location detection enabled and a browser that can handle HTML5 web code. For example: the iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, Sony Ericsson X10, Samsung Galaxy and Galaxy S, HTC Desire, Desire HD and Nexus One, and any phones using Android 2.1 operating system and above (excluding tablets and small-screen devices such as Samsung Galaxy Mini, Sony Experia X10 Mini and HTC Wildfire).

I've recently returned from a sort of sabbatical. One that involved learning more about the ways mobile technology is an integral part of peoples' daily lives (not just folk in the media).

I've learnt that Facebook has been the trigger for some of my new friends to get mobile internet, that practically all of my new friends capture and share pictures daily on their mobiles and that many use their mobiles to listen to podcasts or FM radio on the move (I've also learnt how to change nappies and function on very little sleep).

One of the best parts of my jobs at BBC Audio & Music Interactive is market insight: finding trends in new media, learning from colleagues inside the Beeb and further afield, and exploring how they effect what we do.

This Friday, we're running a conference on mobile. It's a few hours where the whole department can get some thinking time outside of our usual routines. The event begins by looking at audiences. It's a lot more scientific than my impromptu focus groups. We'll be exploring how people currently interact with BBC radio and music on mobile. Ariane van de Ven, Head of Future & Trend Insights at O2 will be sharing how organisations can understand more about their audiences through mobile usage.

Mobile internet is expected to overtake desktop by 2014. We'll be talking about how changes in mobile usage impact on how audiences might want to consume BBC radio and music in the future. And how that, in turn, impacts on what we do.

BBC Audio & Music Interactive already offers some great content for mobile users. Earlier this year we announced live radio streaming via our rather fine set of optimised mobile sites. As well as hearing about mobile projects across the BBC we'll be getting an external perspective on what the BBC's Commercial Partners are doing on mobile from Nick Piggott, Head of Creative Technology at Global Radio. James Whatley, co-founder of The Really Mobile Project and Simon Cross from Facebook will also be offering their insights.

The meeting is a chance to discuss where we are now and where we go next. When does mobile content add value or reach new audiences? What sort of content works best on mobile? Should mobile be thought of as an integral part of what radio broadcasters do?

We'll let you know how the meeting went on the Radio blog and you can follow the event on twitter using #BBCAMI.

This blog post was written on an Android-based smartphone.

Emily Chaplin is Business Administrator at BBC Audio & Music Interactive and producer of the #BBCAMI mobile conference

• The BBC Audio & Music mobile conference takes place between 1030 and 1330 on Friday in the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House. It's not open to the public but participants will be tweeting throughout so keep your eye on the hashtag #BBCAMI for a rolling commentary and - quite possibly - some useful mobile insights.
• Follow @BBCAMI, BBC Audio & Music Interactive's official Twitter account.
• We'll also be displaying a stream of tweets from the event on screens around the Radio Theatre using a nifty app called Dextr.
• The illustration is by BBC Audio & Music's head of mobile James Simcock.