Yet another example of how Vancouver is a Digital Media Mecca: Vancouver Digital Week May 11 – 14 / 09.
Sign up, join the convo, submit your company for Pop Vox. Here are a few channels to get you into the mix and a lovely little vid from our friends and yours at Giant Ant from last years Digi week:
VanDigWeek Twitter
PopVoxAwards Twitter
Submit to PopVox
All of your Van Digi Week INFO
IPF

It actually happened. There *actually* is a first ever National Digital Media Day. Thanks in large part to Lynda Brown, the woman with the vision.

And check out Buzz Bishop’s story in today’s 24 Hours Vancouver.

Here is a long list of happenings (happening right now!) right across this country. Direct your content – tweets, photos, news, stories – on how you participated in the day to the new site.

• CHARLOTTETOWN: Industry Networking Event, Atlantic Technology Centre
• MONTREAL: Industry Networking Event and The Kiss!
• TORONTO: Kensington Market block party, featuring demos of a 3D digital graffiti tagging system and a Skype megaphone, as well as a writing for digital media event at 1028 Queen Street West
• WINNIPEG: Keynote by Robert L. Peters, former president of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations, and networking event at the Pastry Castle Café
  SASKATOON: BarCamp Saskatoon, at The Cellar, Senator Hotel
• EDMONTON: DemoCamp Edmonton
• CALGARY: DemoCamp Calgary
• VANCOUVER: Digital Media Party, New Media BC annual general meeting and New Forms ‘Politube’ screening event and The Kiss!

Also check out our Ning Community and Facebook Group and become a member.

I am quite certain there will be a decent amount of coverage on this year’s VIDFEST across the various channels.

Starting with the mobile, check out cellmap for mapping out your whereabouts and getting VIDFEST right onto your cell.

Moving into the internets (slash mobile to some extent), you can keep up with various bloggers and writers on the VIDFEST blog, or you’ll likely find VIDFEST coverage here here here here and here here here, and no doubt many others.

If you’re Twittering, don’t forget the tweme hash mark like so “#vidfest” for your fellow tweeters tweeting to follow and, uhm, tweet back? (what exactly is the correct cyber name for these bloody things? I stopped paying attention to all of the cute online naming conventions.)

I think you can still register… perhaps – even if it is just for one day or feature.

Enjoy the show!

Most conferences I attend or participate in, or co-produce for that matter, tend to lean a tad more toward the “geeky” type of affairs as opposed to the more creative. Working in social media and technology for the past several years, this fact is just par for the course and happens to be the kind of event I enjoy, much to my own surprise and even though some of the time those uber geeky topics and conversations are over my head. It is these conferences that have helped in convincing the rest of the world that being geeky is in style and they have assisted in bringing the affectionate term “cool geek” into the mainstream.

I definitely don’t rank in the cool geek stardom status. I can write *some* code and I built an entire Flash website from scratch, once. I was the art student who wished her ways of straight-A’s in math didn’t up and vanish from the left brain after Math 12. I love technology and everything fabulously geeky about it. I dream about better applications and how I could implement them, but I can’t build them. I think what I love most about technology is how creative it can be. I think that’s why I’m still here. What does any of this mean and where might you fall? Are you a geeky artist? Or an artsy geek?

VIDFEST is the perfect answer for the creative geek and techy artist in you. This year will be my third consecutive year at VIDFEST and it’s one of my favourite conferences for this reason. It tends not to focus so much on the business of technology or creative content, but more on creative content and contribution itself – how creativity advances technology and how technology inspires us all to think creatively. It fuels my definition of inspiring. It’s the perfect equation, if you will, of techy and creative, where geek meets artist.

If you’re visiting the VIDFEST site in these last few days and hours before things kick off, wondering if you should attend, you should, no matter what side of the brain is urging you to. The official program alone is reason enough. But if it’s not, speaking from an artsy-geekish perspective: You will meet great people, you will have memorable connections, you will have fun, you will be inspired.

Photo Credits: kk+ and Mark Busse
xposted from VIDFEST Blog