Vancouver International Digital Festival

What if?

A recent article in the Economist caught my attention. It was about “The Greening of the Geeks” and charted the course change of several tech entrepeneurs who had made the switch from IT companies to clean-technology firms. Most of those interviewed said that their new industry presented many of the same challenges they had met in their previous companies. They needed to respond quickly and versatilely, think systemically, and lead into the unknown learning as they went. As a sister community to these industries, digital media seems to share a lot of the same characteristics, and I would add, it also champions creativity. Creative thinking is central for all aspects of digital media workflow - from designing storyboards to nurturing clients to building truly collaborative teams. Taking a page from this article, creative thinking also means we take the vision of sustainability and see how our daily work and our projects can make digital life more rich and fulfilling but in a new key.

Here at VIDFEST HQ we’ve been re-orienting our program, opening it up to the bigger questions, and inviting a broader vision for our community’s future. What makes for the good life in a digital world? As our creative director, Kirstin, says the industry is looking beyond the question of how-to to the question what-if. Exploring the what-ifs is the engine that will allow us to draw, animate, program, design, direct, and produce a podcast, a game, a blog, a social network that will make a difference. This year, our speakers are coming from a range of industries and creative projects - from gameparks to ranching to activist design. It’s all meant to get us out of our work silos, make new connections, and build a commons for the digital community to gather, dream, challenge, and then return to the places where we have responsibility and make it better.