I arrived this morning into Toronto just after 6am (wow, red eyes are certainly to be desired), grabbed an easy cab ride into town, checked into a posh, comfortable hotel next to Massey Hall in the midst of all the Young Street action in the downtown core, and found light jazz wooing me into the room from the corner, crisp, white bed sheets turned down, enough space to cleanly execute a cartwheel across the floor and wifi! Exhausted from my fabulous flight, I slept, out like a light.

Good start.

Enough of the fluffy stuff – here’s where the ‘what’s happening here is important’ bit is best illustrated. This afternoon, all of the finalists of this year’s CNMA gathered at the Canadian Film Centre for a BBQ. This welcoming afternoon provided an informal time for the finalists to get to know one another. Adam Froman and Ana Sorreno both had a few casual, friendly, welcoming words to say. But what they said is the good part: this award show is 100% about celebrating great Canadian work. What more can you ask for? Especially when it’s coming from a group of leaders who throw this together and pull off 2 full days for the finalists, and it’s all stemming from a passion for recognizing work in digital media in this country.

Ana Serrano travels around the world, most recently having just returned home from Cannes, and she made a point emphasizing the fact that the world is watching Canada and the amount of fantastic work coming out of our country – the CNMA show is one example of highlighting Canadian talent. Why not embrace this?

I know that award shows are the most likely target (and easy) for slagging and negativity in any industry, but what is being celebrated here in Toronto this week is fantastic for the industry. I’d love to see the many talented people in technology in this country play a role and get involved in the event. What I see as an important element to this celebration continuing to being successful is to write, blog, talk about, advertise, whatever what’s going on across the board in digital media in the country – to do just that, we all need to support the cause and write about what we’re all doing! Our culture does not celebrate our own near enough.

(And as an FYI: the people organizing are not adverse to this show hittin’ the road, in fact, they encourage it moving across the country to another city – anyone up for the challenge?)

After Monday night’s show, there will be plenty of footage, interviews and wrap info on the last 24 hours on the CNMA blog – this is one place where the conversations can continue about who is making waves and which people and companies are paving the way in technology and digital media in Canada on the world’s stage.