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DAILY NEWS
Aug 14, 2008 10:26 AM
Canada Celebrates National Digital Media Day
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It is described as a seven billion dollar industry, with tremendous opportunity for growth and expansion.
That's one reason why plans for a national celebration of digital media extend from coast to coast: recognition of its accomplishments. Yet, organizers and participants in the inaugural National Digital Media Day in Canada hope for much more.
Industry associations, new media training and education institutions, digital media content creators and distributors will gather at various physical and virtual venues in order to help connect industry participants, identify market opportunities and build an even stronger industrial base going forward.
The Canadian Interactive Alliance (CIAIC) is one of several industry organizations helping coordinate and partner on the event; individual provincial and regional industry organizations are also planning coordinated activities.
Non stop demo camps, bar camps, photo walks, mobile mobs, government relations and doing good digital deeds are planned as part of the day's celebrations.
In BC, for example, NewMediaBC plans its Annual General Meeting for the day of celebration, and it will also stage a social mixer for BC's 1000+ new media companies. ITAP, the Innovation and Technology Association of Prince Edward Island, plans to hold a combination golf tournament and tech talk event on that day.
SaskInteractive, the Saskatchewan industry association, says it plans to stage one of several BarCamps to be held across the country in which social ambience and online conferencing activities will be combined. Sessions will be broadcast online via uStream.tv.
BarCamp is an international network of user generated technology conference-slash-workshop-slash-online events focussing on web apps, social nets, open data and more.
According to stats from a recent Canadian Interactive Industry Profile (compiled and released by PricewaterhouseCoopers and CIAIC in 2006), there are some 3,200 firms engaged in interactive media across Canada.
Together, they generate a total gross revenue of between $7.07 and $7.43 billion CDN. The overall estimated total revenue from interactive media for all firms is between $4.93 billion and $5.01 billion. Including full time staff, part time staff and subcontractors, there are estimated to be between 50,300 and 52,100 people working in interactive media across Canada.
