A huge thank you to everyone who came out to VIDFEST this year - including a special shout out to our speakers and sponsors for helping to make VIDFEST 2008 the best yet.
You can revisit all the good times here: www.flickr.com/photos/vidfest
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Check out the 2008 lineup. VIDFEST speakers represent thought leaders from many fields: social media, internet economics, animation, blogging, fashion, crowdsourcing, alternate reality games, design, social action, and more. Designed to make new connections across digital media sectors and stimulate truly creative and world-changing thinking, this year’s panels will get you charged up.
Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired
Magazine; Author, The Long Tail and Free: Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
Jasmine Antonick, VP, Marketing & Communications, Cambrian House
Yoshi Arima, Interface Designer, Electronic Arts Canada; Artist, Free Spirit, Poet, www.flowerofsimplicity.com Heather Armstrong, Blogger, Dooce.com
John Perry Barlow, Co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Evan Biddell, Winner, Project Runway Canada
Susan Bonds, President and Executive Producer, 42 Entertainment
Alex Garden, CEO, Nexon Publishing North America
Dylan Higgins, Fellow, Kiva
Eric Karjaluoto, President, smashLAB; Creator of designcanchange.org
Jordan Kawchuk, Producer/Director, TV, Digital
Alex Lieu, Chief Creative Officer, 42 Entertainment
Dr. Eric McLuhan, Author and Educator, son of well-known media theorist Marshall McLuhan
Maggie Mason, Mightygirl.com; Author, No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for your Blog
Jason Mogus, CEO, Communicopia
Robert Ouimet, Producer, At Large Media
Derek Powazek, Founder, Fray.com and CEO, Pixish.com
Jason Roks, Citizen 002, digitalpeasants.com; Digital Operative, CFCmedialab, Canadian Film Centre
Jan Sircus, www.studiosircus.com, President, Themed Attraction Association (Canada) and Former Walt Disney Imagineer
Matt Thompson, Producer, Writer, Director, Campaign Strategist, ‘‘Savethe Internet.com’
Jonathan Tippett, Industrial Artist, Mondo Spider Creator
Michael Tippett, Founder, Chief Marketing Officer, Now Public
Matt Toner, President, Zeros2Heroes
Tom Williams, CEO, GiveMeaning.org
Speaker Biographies:
Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired Magazine; Author, The Long Tail and Free: Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
As editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, Chris Anderson is one of the most knowledgeable, insightful and articulate voices at the center of the new economy.
With his New York Times bestseller The Long Tail, he named the rise of the niche as a powerful new force in our economy—why the future of business is selling small quantities of more things to the few people who want those things; how all of these small communities together make up a vast market potential, and how the efficiencies of digital and web technology make it all possible.
Now Chris has published Free: Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business, first as an article in Wired magazine, soon to be a book—available for free!
As the marginal cost of digital information approaches zero, practically everything on the Web heads toward ‘free.’ How do you thrive when free has emerged as a full-fledged economy?
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Jasmine Antonick, VP, Marketing & Communications, Cambrian House
As one of the first members of the Cambrian House team (an online mass collaboration platform) Jasmine has been the forefront of the “crowdsourcing” movement since the term was coined in 2006. She has partnered with Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 industry leaders to educate organizations of all sizes about effective methods of harnessing the power of people through online tools and social networks. She has been featured in the NY Times, Red Herring Online, a Harvard Business School Case Study on distributed innovation, the We Are Smarter than Me project, and more. In August 2007, Cambrian House was labeled #3 out of the Top 10 World Shaking Business Models by Business 2.0 magazine.
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Yoshi Arima, Interface Designer, Electronic Arts Canada; Artist, Free Spirit, Poet
As everyday moves forward, Yoshi realizes more and more that the path of footsteps behind him has woven a journey of awakening.
While attending Sheridan College, summers were spent creating speaker support dtp booklets on a Macintosh Plus for corporate slide presentations. But in his final post graduate year at Sheridan, art and computing combined and he found what his career would be all about. A full-time position creating 2d/3d art and visual effects for commercials and television at Command Post in Toronto, led to a position at Mainframe Entertainment in Vancouver, where he worked as a 2d/3d artist for their Reboot-the-Ride Imax ridefilms and their television series. The journey continued to his current daytime job at Electronic Arts where Yoshi started off as a 2d/3d artist and eventually focused on 2D interface design. Early in his career, after many late nights, multiple revisions on projects, and highs and lows, a yearning for inner expression naturally unfolded. Thus was born his graphic design company where his freelance work happens. When all of his worlds collided together, with all of their deadlines and need for attention, he had his own, internal, ‘big-bang’ awakening and it called him back to focus on a world of simplicity.
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Heather Armstrong, Blogger, Dooce.com
I am married to a charming geek named Jon. We live in Salt Lake City, Utah, with our four-year-old daughter, Leta Elise, and our six-year-old SuperMutt, Chuck, and a four-month-old miniature Australian Shepherd, Coco. The chaos in our house is unreal.
In a previous life I was a web designer. I lived in Los Angeles, California, for several years where I worked for drug-addicted executives and discovered what life was like as a recovering Mormon. This means that life was filled with PowerPoint templates and lethal amounts of tequila.
This website chronicles my life from a time when I was single and making a lot of money as a web designer in Los Angeles, to when I was dating the man who would become my husband, to when I lost my job and lived life as an unemployed drunk, to when I married my husband and moved to Utah, to when I became pregnant, to when I threw up and became unbearably swollen during the pregnancy, to the birth, to the aftermath, to the postpartum depression that landed me in a mental hospital. I’m better now. This website now supports my family. I love bourbon, chips and salsa, Britpop, and television that excels at being really awful.
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John Perry Barlow, Co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; Fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society
John Perry Barlow is a former Wyoming rancher and Grateful Dead lyricist. More recently, he co-founded and still co-chairs the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In 1997, he was a Fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and has been, since 1998, as a Berkman Fellow at the Harvard Law School.
He works actively with several consulting groups, including Diamond Technology Partners, Vanguard, and Global Business Network.
In June 1999, FutureBanker Magazine named him “One of the 25 Most Influential People in Financial Services. He writes, speaks, and consults on a broad variety of subjects, particularly digital economy.
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Evan Biddell, Winner, Project Runway Canada
Biddell grew up in the prairies, then moved to the mountains and became a pirate. He buried Treasure in the Rockies somewhere, but he hasn’t gotten it back yet, and might never see it again. Then he sailed to Vancouver Island, dressed a few dames, and headed back to the mainland. He designed some costumes for a low rent Canadian Production in Vancity. He measured up in the eyes of a super model/mother/ceo/activist/inspirer, and was brought to Toronto. He’s been sharing a studio with the most fabulous Man in the business, Wayne Clarke, and for the past few months building his fall collection. He will then walk the plank for The Fashion Design Council of Toronto, but luckily he knows how to swim.
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Susan Bonds, President and Executive Producer, 42 Entertainment
Susan Bonds is 42 Entertainment’s President & CEO and serves as executive producer, responsible for leading the teams that design, create, produce and execute 42’s experiences. Susan has more than 20 years of experience as a producer in the entertainment and technology industries.
In 2004 Susan produced the unique ilovebees campaign for Microsoft’s marketing launch of Halo 2, which won the Games Developer’s Conference award for Innovation in Gaming and a Webby Award for Best Games Related Website. Since then, she has produced the most groundbreaking of 42’s projects, including 2005’s Last Call Poker alternate reality game for Activision/Neversoft’s FPS “GUN”, 2006’s Dead Man’s Tale interactive game for Disney/Microsoft, 2007’s The Vanishing Point, the first global puzzle game with clues to online puzzles embedded in spectacular events held in a dozen cities around the globe and designed to celebrate the launch of Windows Vista, Year Zero, an alternate reality experience for the launch of NIN’s album in April 2007, and the current Why So Serious? alternate reality experience for Warner Bros’ The Dark Knight.
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Alex Garden, CEO, Nexon Publishing North America
Alex will be introducing the VIDFEST 2008 keynote, Chris Anderson. Alex started as a videogame tester in 1989 and over the next 8 years he quickly rose through the ranks before starting his own studio (Relic) in 1997 at the tender age of 22. Relic was acquired by THQ in 2005. Seeing an opportunity to bring the North American market into the exciting world of on-line gaming, Alex left Relic in 2006 to establish Nexon Publishing North America.
Dylan Higgins, Fellow, Kiva
Dylan is an attorney and former technology consultant. For seven years, he worked at Accenture as a consulting manager helping to lead high-profile technology projects in different industries around the world. In an effort to arm himself with the tools to fight for social justice and the alleviation of poverty, however, he returned to law school and graduated in 2006. After learning of Kiva and recognizing its ability to use an internet-based microfinance platform as a catalyst for positive social change, he applied to be a Kiva Fellow and was selected to visit a Kiva partner in Ghana in February. While in Ghana for three months, he was able to see the social impact of Kiva loans and is now committed to bringing his insights back home. He is planning on starting a non-profit in the United States based on his learning.
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Eric Karjaluoto, President, smashLAB; Creator of designcanchange.org
Eric Karjaluoto is a designer, business-person, and author of numerous articles on design. He is a founding partner at smashLAB, a strategic interactive agency located in Vancouver, Canada.
Since 2000 he has served as the agency’s Creative Director, and in this role he fosters an atmosphere of pragmatism and design-focused thinking. He is a self-professed advocate of “hardcore” design, in which problem-solving, consistent methodology and accountability are held above styles and trends. He has directed many diverse projects for clients including CN, Northern BC Tourism, MDA, Canadian Heritage and a number of international organizations.
In 2007, he spearheaded Design Can Change, an effort to unite designers to address climate change. Over 1,500 designers around the world have taken the Design Can Change Pledge, embracing and committing to more sustainable professional practices. Most recently, Eric and the team at smashLAB have launched MakeFive, a community that enables people to connect through their interests and opinions. His blog on design, brands, and experience, ideasonideas, has over 60,000 readers monthly.
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Jordan Kawchuk, Producer/Director, TV, Digital
Jordan Kawchuk’s broadcasting career reflects the things that have always turned his crank: comedy, music and creative people. A former writer for This Hour Has 22 Minutes and the Western Correspondent for The Rick Mercer Report, he has written and produced two national comedy specials for CBC, a mockumentary for Bravo!, and one feature film (American Beer).
On the music side of things, Kawchuk went on to create and produce The Loop for MuchMoreMusic, direct various music videos, and develop/produce ZeD Tunes after making comedy shorts for CBC’s original ZeD. He is one of the founding members of The Dino Martinis, and has recorded three records and toured the U.S., Europe, and Japan with that band.
Recently, Jordan has directed shows for The Food Network, CBC, HGTV, and OLN. He currently produces the video podcast for CBC Radio3 (R3TV), and is a consulting producer for CBC - bridging digital, radio, and television properties - which last month, resulted in the launch of QTV with Jian Ghomeshi. He has one daughter, three cats, and a moderate amount of Facebook friends.
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Alex Lieu, Chief Creative Officer, 42 Entertainment
Alex Lieu is the Chief Creative Officer for 42 Entertainment, responsible for all creative aspects of the player experience. Alex leads the creative design efforts for game design, media, graphics, human interfaces, websites, and advertising for 42’s client campaigns. Alex is a versatile designer and manager, with a long track-record of leading development of large-scale interactive and cross-platform projects. Alex is currently leading the creative efforts for The Dark Knight’s viral campaign, Why So Serious?.
Alex was Creative Director on award winning interactive games such as Dead Man’s Tale for Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and the re-launch of Windows Messenger, and The Vanishing Point. Alex was previously Founder and President of 3Pin Media, a rich graphics and interactive company that developed cross-media experiences for a wide variety of clients in the entertainment, education, and sports markets. Prior to founding 3Pin, Alex was Vice President of Creative Development at Lightspan, a technology company that produces innovative learning resources.
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Maggie Mason, Mightygirl.com; Author, No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for your Blog
Margaret Mason is author of No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog, and CEO of Mighty Mighty Media. She publishes the shopping blogs Mighty Junior and Mighty Goods, which was one of Time Magazine’s Top 50 Cool Sites of the Year. Her personal site Mighty Girl has been awesome since 2000.
She has been a professional writer and editor for over a decade. She is a contributing writer for The Morning News, a New York-based Web magazine, and The New York Times. Mason is also a sought-after expert on lifestyle issues. She has been interviewed by The New York Times, Crain’s Business Daily, The San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco’s KFOG radio.
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Dr. Eric McLuhan, Author and Educator, son of well-known media theorist Marshall McLuhan
Eric McLuhan has worked extensively with his father Marshall McLuhan on most of his major books since the 1960’s. He is co-author of Laws of Media: The New Science, and The City as Classroom. Recent books include Electric Language: Understanding the Message and McLuhan Unbound. Eric is also a Joyce scholar, and the author of The Role of Thunder in Finnegans Wake.
Eric has taught communication, media criticism, and perception training at colleges and universities across Canada and the United States. He has also lectured extensively around the world on the subject of media and the effects of technologies that surround us, most recently at the Vatican in Rome.
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Jason Mogus, CEO, Communicopia
Jason Mogus is CEO of Communicopia, a Webby Award winning online strategy and development firm supporting organizations working for sustainability and social change. His clients include new global NGO The Elders, BC Hydro, Make Poverty History, Environmental Defense Canada, and the United Nations Foundation.
He won a Webby Award in 2007 for NothingButNets, a global grassroots campaign to buy anti-Malaria bed nets that has raised $20M. Currently, Jason is creating the online strategy for new global NGO The Elders, which was founded by Peter Gabriel, Richard Branson, and Nelson Mandela.
He also founded and manages the Web of Change series of conferences, which in their eighth year have become the premier network for leaders in the social tech movement. In June 2008 Web of Change is co-creating Canada’s first ever “Social Tech Training” to create new online leaders inside social change organizations. He is a long time board member with venture philanthropy group BC Technology Social Venture Partners.
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Jennifer Ouano, President, Elastic Entertainment
Jennifer Ouano is founder and head of Elastic Entertainment, a digital media company that harnesses the power of creativity to develop, produce, strategize and collaborate on original and entertaining multimedia properties across the digital universe.
Over the past 15 years, she’s worn many hats in the media and new media worlds as an award-winning producer, director, journalist, consultant and entrepreneur. One of Jennifer’s recent accomplishments was ZeD, CBC TV’s flagship convergence program and a pioneer in social networking and user-generated content. She was awarded the prestigious 2005 Woman of Vision Award and a 2004 Leo Award, in addition to several nominations for Geminis, Leos, Yorktons and a 2004 team Emmy nomination in Advanced Media Technology for her work on the program. She also built and signed business partnerships with major brands including Apple iTunes, Yahoo! Flickr, Logitech, EMI Music, NFB, Channel 4, Corel, American Apparel, AirG, The Drake Hotel and Resfest.
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Robert Ouimet, Producer, At Large Media
He’s an award winning journalist and producer who spearheaded the creation and development of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio 3 (www.cbcradio3.com). His vision and leadership created this unique cross-media project that has won over 30 international awards, including 3 Webby Awards, multiple New York Festival Awards, Communication Arts Awards for Excellence and the Prix Italia.
His involvement with the Internet in the early 90’s led to pioneering work both within the CBC and in Internet broadcasting. His show RealTime made Internet history when it became the first interactive program heard live around the world.
Robert has been on the faculty of the Internet publishing program at Simon Fraser University’s Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing since the program’s inception in 1996. He’s worked as a producer with Radical Entertainment, a Vancouver based video game company and also sits on a number of advisory boards for new and innovative communications projects.
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Derek Powazek, Founder, Fray.com and CEO, Pixish.com
Named one of the top 40 “Industry Influencers” of 2007 by Folio Magazine, Derek Powazek is the cofounder of JPG, the photography magazine that’s made by its community, and cofounder 8020 Publishing, the company that grew out of JPG’s success. Derek has worked the web since 1995 at pioneering sites like HotWired, Blogger, and Technorati, and is the author of Design for Community: The Art of Connecting Real People in Virtual Places (New Riders, 2001).
Derek now splits his time between working as a social media consultant, advising a handful of startups, editing Fray, the quarterly book of true stories and original art, and his newest venture, Pixish. Derek lives in San Francisco with his wife, two nutty Chihuahuas, a grumpy cat, and a house full of plants named Fred.
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Jason Roks, Citizen 002, digitalpeasants.com; Digital Operative, CFCmedialab, Canadian Film CentreJason Roks is recognized across North America for his networking and digital media distribution acumen, and for his ingenuity in predicting and leveraging new directions on the Internet and other communications technologies.
His projects include p2p content distribution models; media casting models; terminal and network computing solutions; online communities and social networks; knowledge management systems; metaphors for visualization of metadata; broadband and wireless infrastructures; internet exchanges; ambient television; xmltv; video on demand and iptv. He is currently developing a video Content Management System (vCMS) and what he calls User Generated Distribution (UGD).
Jason has been featured in various media, including Wired, Time, Maclean’s, Saturday Night, Yahoo! Internet Life, Shift, Macworld and Silicon Alley Reporter for his insights on new media economies, digital media distribution, file-sharing, online communities and social networks, piracy, copyright, and intellectual property.
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Jan Sircus, www.studiosircus.com, President, Themed Attraction Association (Canada) and Former Walt Disney Imagineer
Jan is currently President of the Themed Attraction Association, Canada and Principal of Studio Sircus, a creative consultancy. Prior to Studio Sircus, Jan was co-founder and Managing Director, Creative, of Maple Leaf Studios (MLS), Vancouver. At MLS, Jan led design for the successful Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics Bid Resort and Village in Sochi, Russia. He was also creative lead for final round competition concept bids for BC Canada Place at the Beijing 2008 Olympics.
Before Maple Leaf Studios, Jan led LIG’s planning, design, and content development for numerous high-profile projects, including master planning for the Calgary Exhibition & Stampede in Alberta, Canada, the ‘Ancient Worlds’ resort and theme park in Dubailand, Dubai, and the China Western Movie Resort and Theme Park in Xian, China. Jan was creative director for the BC Canada Place in Torino, Italy, for the 2006 Winter Olympics, and co-creative director for the Canada Pavilion at Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan.
During 25 years in Los Angeles, Jan was a Senior VP, Creative Development for Walt Disney Imagineering, leading major international Theme Park projects and heading up Location-Based Entertainment (LBE) design. He has also created award-winning media projects for the J. Paul Getty Museum and NASA. Originally from the UK, Jan holds a Master’s degree in Architecture and has taught design at UCLA and the Southern California Institute of Architecture.
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Matt Thompson, Producer, Writer, Director, Campaign Strategist, ‘SavetheInternet.com‘
Matt Thompson is an award-winning multimedia producer, writer, director and campaign strategist who specializes in viral videos for progressive causes. He recently won a 2007 Webby People’s Voice Award for his “Save the Internet: Independence Day” video, a musical UFO-style micro-documentary aimed at explaining Net Neutrality and driving citizens to help protect the Internet’s level playing field.
Matt is also a campaign consultant for FreePress.net, a U.S. media reform organization and principal organizer of SavetheInternet.com, a coalition of groups fighting to protect Net Neutrality and the public interest in America’s Internet policy.
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Jonathan Tippett, Industrial Artist, Mondo Spider Creator
Ever since his childhood near Toronto, Canada, Jonathan has been obsessed with building cool stuff out of anything from plasticine to Lego. Equipped with a B.A.Sc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia, he launched his engineering career working in hydraulics and fuel cells, and later in medical devices. Since 2004 he has been senior engineer, designing endovascular brain and heart implants at Evasc Medical Systems. In 1996 Jonathan founded Industrialus Design as an umbrella organization to capture his creative pursuits, in 2004 he became co-owner and director of a Claytek Studios, a ceramics studio in Vancouver, and in 2007, he helped to found eatART, an international arts and education organization whose mandate is to promote environmental and energy awareness through radical art projects. Jonathan is currently eatART’s COO.
In his capacity as a consulting engineer, Jonathan’s work has focused on product, interface, and tool design, with a bias towards medical devices. As an artist, his work tends towards industrial sculpture and functional art. Jonathan’s most recent art project was as a lead engineer and fabricator of The Mondo Spider in 2006. (The Mondo Spider is a 1600lb engineered sculpture in the form of a fully articulated, hydraulically controlled, giant mechanical spider, piloted by a single operator. Since it’s debut on NowPublic.com, it has been featured on The Discovery Channel, the BBC, and has been filmed by The Hour on CBC.) The Mondo Spider represents Jonathan’s passion for things purely mechanical, his insistence on retaining style and design in functional objects, and embodies what has become the driving theme behind his works: creating unique physical experiences by reacquainting people with machines.
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Michael Tippett, Founder, Chief Marketing Officer, Now Public
Michael Tippett founded one of Canada’s first internet companies, in 1995. He has also worked internationally. Recently he lived in New York and served as General Manager at Register.com In 2005 Tippett founded NowPublic, a commercial descendent of BlueHereNow.com, which in 2002 became the first to combine camera phone photographs with breaking news events. Since then NowPublic has grown to become one of the largest participatory news organizations in the world. During Hurricane Katrina, NowPublic had more reporters in the affected area than most news organizations have globally.
He has also contributed to digital culture in fields such as media arts. In 2004 he collaborated with Kate Armstrong to produce Grafik Dynamo, a net art piece that loads live images from blogs and news sources on the web into a live action comic strip. Grafik Dynamo was a commission of Turbulence, made possible with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. He graduated with a major in Philosophy from Queen’s University.
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Matt Toner, President, Zeros2Heroes
Matt began work in the new media industry (when it actually was new) during the dot-boom. While living in New York, he was a co-founder of CanApple New Media and a founding executive of We Media Inc, an online community for people with disabilities. In 2000, he returned to Canada to become Managing Director of Oven Digital’s Toronto studio.
Following the dot-crash, Matt switched gears to meet the challenges offered by the rapidly evolving video-game industry. Moving to Vancouver, he worked as a designer and writer on a series of titles for Electronic Arts and Backbone Entertainment. In 2004, Matt was instrumental in the launch of the Vancouver Film School’s highly successful Game Design program.
In 2006 he returned to the new media space and led the development of an award-winning online television portal before founding Zeros 2 Heroes Media. Zeros 2 Heroes is a social media company dedicated to helping fanboys of all stripes and persuasions “live the dream” as comic creators, illustrators, animators… or even game designers.
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Tom Williams, CEO, GiveMeaning.org
When Tom Williams the Internet whiz kid left a lucrative career in Silicon Valley to start a philanthropy website at age 25, his colleagues must have thought he was having a premature mid-life crisis. Conventional wisdom is that Williams had a change of heart and turned his back on Internet business trends to tinker around with saving the world. But it could be that the man who started his career with Apple at age 14 had simply foreseen the intersection of charity and the Internet as the next fertile ground in a web landscape saturated with offerings for music, photos and news.
In 2004, Williams moved home to Canada and started GiveMeaning.com, an online charitable foundation that brings people together to accomplish a specific goal for a charity they choose - a philanthropic MySpace so to speak. Any interest, passion, belief or thought can form what Tom calls GivingGroups.GiveMeaning manifests the ”Power of Plenty”: by pooling individual contributions together, tangible projects become funded all over the world. The site now gets 100,000 unique visitors a month and generates 1million hits per month.
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