Posts Tagged ‘events’

Input Roundup

// May 20th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Internet, broadcasting, content, events, media

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I’m back in Canada after a week in Warsaw at the Input Conference for public broadcasters. In addition to attending, I had the opportunity to present one of the programs that I do the interactive production for. I’m really pleased that both the program and my presentation were very well received by the audience. I had lots of people come and speak to me after about how we use the internet to cast the show and build an audience leading up to the broadcast. That show is always a fun project and I’m glad it received enthusiastic attention from an international audience.

In addition to my part, I got to take in a lot of other multi-platform projects as well as straight television programs from every part of the world. I saw soap operas from Palestine, documentaries from Iran, talk shows from Denmark, game shows from South Korea and more. It was interesting to see what’s happening outside of the North American media market that I normally experience.

The dialog about what role public broadcasters are taking globally in an increasing commercialized and multi-screen media world was interesting as well. I didn’t realize that most public broadcasters skew to the 50+ crowd. All of us need to grow more in the younger markets.

Myself and some of the other people that I work with that also attended the conference are organizing a mini-Input for our co-workers this fall, but for my readers now, I leave you with links to some of the projects that I saw when I was there.

Here’s a clip from Neveneffecten (armageddon episode that I saw) where one lonely nerd is returning home after the world learns that a giant comet is attracted to him and will collide with earth, ending all life as a result.

I had to pick a clip where there wasn’t much speech — I saw the show subtitled. Anyway, if you’d like to see some international shows, check out some of these projects and enjoy!

The Wisdom of Michael McDerment

// February 26th, 2008 // No Comments » // life

Third Tuesday Toronto Tonight was another in a recent run of new media events I’ve been attending. People I met over the weekend at PodCamp let me know about a monthly meet up group for people interested in social media. So, tonight I attended the first Third Tuesday meetup.

The meetup format was an informal moderated chat with about 100 people in attendance. Michael & Saul from FreshBooks were there to talk about how their company uses social media to connect with their customers. Twitter and blogging are integral parts of their customer service strategy and the humanization of their organization through these tools seems to be paying off. According to Technorati, they have nearly 10x more inbound links than their competitors and had several happy customers in the room.

I first heard of Freshbooks at the Mesh conference last year. I really wish they were around when I was running my business. The last thing a creative business owner wants to do is spend more time than required on your books. Freshbooks’ approach is to make time tracking and invoicing for service based businesses as simple as possible.

I don’t have earlier Third Tuesday sessions to compare tonight to, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. If you’re interested in social media, check if your city has a Third Tuesday group on meetup.com.

Royal Ontario Museum

// February 24th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // life

Royal Ontario Museum

On Friday, Allen, Cary Jr. and I went to the Royal Ontario Museum which Allen and I hadn’t been to since university and Cary had never been to. We spent 4 hours walking through all the exhibits and loving every bit of it. My favourite exhibits:

  • Dinosaurs
  • Ancient Egypt
  • Ancient Greece
  • The Armory

I really didn’t like the new borg cube like addition to the museum. The inside of it is sterile and industrial, more like somewhere you’d line up to renew your license than to view prized artifacts from the history of humankind.

Unfortunately, we thought that the no photograph rule from 10 years ago still held true, so nobody brought a camera. When we got there we found people taking pictures of almost everything. There were very few exhibits you weren’t allowed to photograph. Next time, we’ll bring along the camera.

We all enjoyed the experience so much and plan to go back. Allen & Cary plan to bring their sketchbooks next time.