Village Gamer

I only have a few minutes left before I have to head off for work, so here is a quick rundown of event news:

* If you haven’t yet registered for SIGGRAPH 2011, you should do so now, because ticket prices go up at midnight on June 18th.  Having the conference in Vancouver this year is a huge opportunity for our many-faceted digital media industry, and I hope that you all take advantage of it. We’ll be at the show, and we really hope to see you there, too.

* The Full Indie Game Jam that is happening this weekend at the Centre for Digital Media is sold out, but there is a waiting list. Registration is also now open for the June 23rd Full Indie meetup event, and with limited space available, I suggest signing up now. Games from the jam will be featured at the meetup.

* SIGGRAPH Vancouver Chapter presents The Art of Lighting and Rendering Rio next week at District 319. Jim Gettinger, Lighting Supervisor, will discuss lighting and lighting design as it pertains to the overall aesthetic of Blue Sky Studios’ latest animated hit, RIO. This talk will explore the developmental work pursued by Jim and his team taking the listener through many stages of the production process at Blue Sky. Lighting and lighting techniques will be presented from concept art, through pre-visualization, master lighting, and compositing.

* The next Women In Games Vancouver Martini Night is June 23rd at Guilt & Company. Ladies, come out for a relaxing evening of socializing with other women from the interactive media industry. RSVP on the event’s Facebook page.

* Annex Pro is hosting three (and free) software events in Vancouver; please click the event links for more information and to register. The first is happening tomorrow – Test-Drive Native Performance with new Avid Pro Tools|HD Native will be held at Annex Pro. Don’t Just Edit. Finish. Autodesk Smoke for Mac OS X takes place at Vancouver Film School on June 22. On June 28th, you can spend An Evening with The Foundry: Nuke 6.3, NukeX 6.3, Mari at Rainmaker Entertainment.

* New Media Manitoba presents iPad User Interface Design on June 21st. Chris, Olga, and Lee of Velocity Branding will guide you through their methodology for project management and designing for Tablets. This is a free event, and will take place at the NMM offices from 5-7pm.

* Interactive Ontario presents Interact Networking Mixer: Special Documentary Edition on June 29th at The Annex Live from 6 – 8pm. This event is free for DOC & IO Members or $10.00 for Non-Members. You are invited to come out and mingle with professionals in the interactive and documentary media industries, with the opportunity to uncover new possibilities for creative and business partnerships. This event is co-presented by docSHIFT (an initiative of the DOC Toronto) and Interactive Ontario.

* Tech Cocktail is coming to Vancouver on July 9th. The event will be very much focused on the future as we partner with Futurists:BetaLaunch as part of the World Future Conference by the World Future Society, a 45-year old non-profit organization dedicated to advancing ideas of the future. We’re also looking to engage with the local Vancouver tech community, inviting them to participate in this exciting event.

* Amazon invites you to come out and meet the Amazon Vancouver team, where you can learn about all the job opportunities at one of Amazon’s newest Software Development Centers in Canada. Meet and mingle with all the different teams that are growing and hiring at the new office. This will be a great opportunity to meet our engineers, learn about our culture, and find out about the exciting opportunities Amazon Vancouver has to offer. Have a drink and appetizers on us, but don’t forget to bring your resume. RSVP through LinkedIn required.

* The nationwide DEMO Innovation tour is back – it will be in Vancouver on June 23rd, Toronto on June 26th, and Montreal on July 15th.  Matt Marshall, DEMO Executive Producer and the DEMO team will travel around the country to connect with the DEMO community in search of the best innovation to showcase at DEMO Fall 2011, and they invite you to submit an application for a 30 minute private meeting with the DEMO team and leading Venture capitals in a city near you. There are ten spots available per tour stop. Each company selected will also have the opportunity to address a larger audience at the DEMO Tour party in the evening open to the entire DEMO community of VCs, investors, media and PR professionals.

Remember this is just a very small sampling of upcoming events – visit our Events Page for more listings.

The Saskatchewan Science Centre has partnered with IBM and its subsidiary, ISM Canada, as part of IBM’s Celebration of Service through which IBM  employees, retirees and business partners donate their time and expertise in communities around the world during IBM’s Centennial year.

On June 15, the Science Centre is hosting the third of many robotics workshops planned for this year using special educational robotics kits and laptops donated by IBM and valued at $10,000. Volunteers from IBM, ISM Canada, and the Science Centre will lead today’s robotics workshops for Imperial Community School students from Grades 6 through 8. Over the course of 2011, about 100 volunteers from IBM and the community are expected to participate in the program.

“The Saskatchewan Robotics Challenge workshop is a perfect fit for us, truly inspiring minds through science and innovation,” said Saskatchewan Science Centre Executive Director Sandy Baumgartner.  “Our volunteers make learning fun and accessible, and they help the students see the possibilities for futures in science.”

The Saskatchewan Robotics Challenge places special emphasis on reaching out to young people from First Nations and Aboriginal schools. “We’re finding that our First Nations are under-represented in science and technology careers, and we want to help change that,” said Hugh Hudson, IBM’s Senior Location Executive for Saskatchewan. “The Robotics Challenge workshop is a way of opening career doors. Students become more aware of the possibilities, and we hope they discover that the experience of building a robot with one of our mentor-volunteers sparks their interest in learning more about future careers in technology.”

In recognition of 100 years in business, the 2011 IBM Celebration of Service spans more than 120 countries where IBMers live and conduct business. The Saskatchewan Science Centre offers over 20 curriculum-based workshops designed to supplement what educators are teaching, or to introduce new concepts using resources not available at every school.

The 26^th edition of the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Film & TV Forum runs from September 27th through 30th, and New Filmmakers’ Day is on October 1st. The 2011 Forum is proud to stimulate the development, co-financing and co-production of the creative documentary by creating Storyville Vancouver, an opportunity for filmmakers based in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest to pitch their projects to an international forum of commissioning editors. Please Download the entry form and regulations (Excel .xls 151kb) from the Storyville page for complete information.

Storyville Vancouver, in partnership with BC public broadcaster Knowledge Network Corporation is scheduled for presentation during The Forum.  The Forum and Knowledge Network are delighted to have attracted some of the world’s leading broadcasters to Vancouver to help our filmmakers develop long-term strategic relationships and enhance project development. This initiative is inspired in part by the Amsterdam Forum organized by IDFA and with a nod to Nick Fraser’s BBC strand.

Pre-selected creative, feature length (minimum TV hour) documentary projects, at various levels of development, from BC and the Pacific Northwest will be publicly pitched to international commissioning editors with accredited Forum observers in attendance.

Not sure what The Forum is looking for? According to the Storyville page, “the creative documentary is the crown jewel of the non-fiction world – passionate, cutting edge, filmmaker-driven, in-depth, up close and personal…These are projects that take the writer’s/director’s point of view on a real-life subject in a ‘creative’ manner and require significant writing and research before filming begins.

The format for a creative documentary is therefore relatively free form and open to the creative team’s interpretation of the subject at hand. The style and approach used in the cinematography, editing and final composition of the film makes a statement in and of itself and reflects the filmmakers underlying POV on the topic or person being considered.

The film should be complete and contained and thoroughly explore a tangible subject or person. A creative documentary is not: open ended, investigative, educational, “DIY” in style nor like a news report, a docusoap or a reality show. A creative documentary can examine a historical event or person but, once again, it must be done in a unique and creative fashion and not simply recount the past.”

To date, the following key commissioning editors have been confirmed:

• Nick Fraser (BBC)
• Mette Hoffman Meyer (DRTV)
• Axel Arno (SVT Documentaries)
• Olaf Grunert (ARTE TV)
• Tom Koch (PBS)
• John Lindsay (KCTS9)
• Murray Battle (Knowledge Network)

The Vancouver International Film Festival runs from September 28th through October 14th, 2011.

THQ has announced that industry heavyweight Patrice Désilets has joined the THQ studio system as a creative director, working out of its Montreal video game development studio on a yet to be created title. Fresh off a yearlong break from the industry, Désilets will be charged with leading a dynamic team that will create and develop original intellectual properties for THQ.

“The creative freedom that THQ gives its artists and developers–and their willingness to make games that truly reflect an artistic vision–really drew me to THQ,” said Désilets. “I plan to build an incredibly talented team at THQ, and am very anxious to get started on creating a new project.”

“Working with the top talent in the industry is one of THQ’s key strategies for creating bold, original, and high-quality games,” said Danny Bilson, THQ’s Executive Vice President of Core Games. “Patrice Désilets is one of the most innovative minds in games, and has proven it by leading the teams behind some of the most influential games of the past and current consoles. Needless to say, THQ can’t wait to unleash his talent.”

Patrice Désilets will join THQ’s already impressive roster of notable industry artists, including Double Fine’s Tim Schafer, Guillermo del Toro, who is teaming with THQ’s Volition, Inc. to develop inSANE, and Valhalla Game Studio’s Itagaki-san as he develops Devil’s Third.

Before joining THQ, Désilets served as a creative director on the Assassin’s Creed franchise, as well as Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Désilets holds a bachelor’s degree in film studies from the University of Montreal and he is represented by the Creative Artists Agency.

Calgary’s chapter of the Canadian Public Relations Society (CPRS) is hosting its annual summer social and networking event immediately following the organization’s annual general meeting at the Vue Café on Thursday, June 16, 2011. The meeting will run from 5:30pm – 6:00pm with a networking social immediately to follow. A new members’ reception will be held immediately before the meeting from 5:00pm – 5:30pm. The gallery closes at 8:00pm.

“This is a great opportunity and venue for Calgary’s PR community to connect again before dispersing for the summer,” says the Calgary chapter president, Dan Muys.

Chapter news and updates, as well as future organizational plans, will be discussed at the AGM, which is open to both members and non-members. Only members in good standing can vote. CPRS will host a summer social and networking event immediately following the meeting. The social is a chance for public relations professionals to meet and network while exchanging ideas and best practices. This event is free for CPRS-Calgary members, $25.00 for non-members. The Vue Café is located in the Virginia Christopher Fine Art Gallery on 11^th Ave SW.

Adlib Software has announced the general availability of the Adlib Content Transformation Platform, the industry’s first complete, automated transformation solution for the enterprise. The Adlib Platform is uniquely designed to streamline document-intensive business processes to improve efficiency, mitigate compliance-related risks and reduce costs. It is deployed as a shared service and can scale enterprise-wide, enabling centralized content-to-PDF transformation capabilities to multiple applications, departments and lines of business.

Today’s enterprises are challenged with increased content management demands, and struggle to find efficient ways to capture, manage, preserve and share content. Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems including Microsoft® SharePoint® help ease these challenges. However, these solutions don’t always provide the necessary content transformation capabilities needed to enable the efficient automation of document-centric business processes that are important in removing time-consuming, error-prone and costly manual intervention.

Adlib turns volumes of content and intellectual property into digital assets that can be easily accessed, shared, leveraged and archived. For example, a leading international insurance company is using Adlib to increase sales by being faster than their competitors in delivering personalized customer quotes in PDF format. In addition, Pfizer, the world’s largest research-based pharmaceutical company, is turning patents into profits by speeding time-to-market for its drugs by streamlining and automating the creation of submission-quality PDFs and eliminating the need for time-consuming, costly and error-prone manual quality control reviews. Read the rest of this entry »

Canadian small business owners say they are spending a lot of time sweating the small stuff when they could be focusing on the big picture of how to grow. According to the quarterly American Express Small Business Monitor, entrepreneurs recognize planning, hiring, and marketing as key business functions but admit to spending a big part of their day on tasks such as office administration, cleaning and repairs. It would appear a big part of Canada’s business backbone is caught between planning for success and maintaining the status quo.

More than half (59%) of respondents to the latest survey, conducted by Angus Reid Public Opinion, say their business would be in a much better position if they could spend more time doing what they’re good at. Specifically, small business owners say more than a quarter (26%) of every day is focused on activities they don’t consider core to their business. Almost half (48%) report that they can’t concentrate on growing their business because they are spending too much time running it, and many remain reluctant to hire outside help to share the workload.

“We know small business owners put their heart and soul into everything they do, so a reluctance to rely on others is only natural,” said Eric Nielsen, Vice President & General Manager, Small Business Services Canada, American Express Canada. “But looking for outside help for even a few tasks can allow owners to focus on the work they love and the reason for starting their own business in the first place.”

Exactly what non-core tasks are small business owners taking on themselves? Findings show owners are spending valuable time on such tasks as secretarial work (49%), technical support (48%), office/property repairs and cleaning (40%), and doing their own website construction (30%), rather than hiring outside help. Control is a key consideration for them: 56 per cent don’t want to give up control over any aspect of their business, even if it means doing everything themselves.

It’s not that small business owners don’t recognize the dilemma: 38 per cent of respondents say they waste a lot of time doing things that other people would be more qualified to do. Nevertheless, they are reluctant to outsource for a number of reasons, including a desire to maintain quality (38%), and the time it takes to hire and manage outsourced contractors (24%). The single greatest factor, though, is that outsourcing is seen by more than half (52%) as too expensive. Read the rest of this entry »

Canada’s top educators are expanding their traditional teaching methods to reach beyond reading, writing and arithmetic.  The new cornerstones of learning in their classrooms include social media, cyberspace and digitized projects.

Twenty-two remarkable teachers from across the nation are receiving national attention for bringing ‘history to life’ for their students.  These passionate educators are encouraging their students to digitally record interviews with World War II veterans and Holocaust survivors, create multimedia resources on Indian Residential Schools, and produce a film featuring Canada’s connection to the fatal voyage of the Titanic.

For their innovative and interactive teaching approaches, Canada’s History Society has selected the following twenty-two educators as the finalists of the 2011 Governor General’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History.

Lindsay Anderson, Niv Stilman & Yossi Suissa – Calgary Jewish Academy – Calgary
Kimberly Bartlett – Pickering College – Newmarket
Raymond Bédard – D’éducation Internationale de McMasterville – McMasterville
Sarah Beech & Chad Howie – Valley Creek Middle School – Calgary
Gregory Birkett – Nelson A. Boylen Collegiate – Toronto
Shantelle Browning-Morgan – Walkerville Collegiate Institute – Windsor
Pam Calvert – Oakville Trafalgar High School – Oakville
Marie-Laure Chevrier – École Anne-Hébert – Vancouver
François Desmarais – École Secondaire de Mortagne – Boucherville
Flora Fung – Oshawa Central Collegiate – Oshawa
Cynthia Mundell Hahn – Wes Hosford Elementary School – Sherwood Park
Clint Lovell – Eastview Secondary School – Barrie
Scott Masters – Crestwood Preparatory College – Toronto
Gilles Paulin – Centre Scolaire et Communautaire La Fontaine – Neguac
Elizabeth Phipps – Mayfair Community School – Saskatoon
Sylvia Smith – Elizabeth Wyn Wood Alternate High School Program – Ottawa
Andrew Stickings – École Grosvenor Wentworth Park School – Halifax
Michael Sweet & Raymond Tomasino – Lester B. Pearson High School – Montreal

Now in its 15^th year, the Awards recognize the outstanding contributions of Canada’s history teachers, ranging from elementary grades through to secondary schools.  Deborah Morrison, President and CEO of Canada’s History Society says, “Teachers like this years finalists not only change students’ perceptions of Canadian history, but they’re changing our perceptions of teaching as well.”

A national judging panel will next select six recipients out of the 22 finalists, based on a submission outlining the nominee’s innovations and achievements in the field of teaching Canadian History or Social Studies.  Those six recipients will receive $2,500, a gold medal and a trip this fall to the Awards ceremonies at Rideau Hall.  Their respective schools will also be awarded a cash gift of $1,000.  The program, including the Awards prizes are made possible through the generous support of TD Bank Group.

“Few things are more powerful than a teacher’s passion for their subject.  Their in-class enthusiasm can excite, inspire and even transform the lives of their students,” says Frank McKenna, Deputy Chair, TD Bank Group.  “TD is proud to support the 2011 Governor General’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching Canadian History recognizing the incredible contributions our Canadian history teachers are making in the classroom.”

Canada’s relatively low number of people with advanced qualifications— such as PhDs—could be contributing to our failing grade on innovation, according to The Conference Board of Canada’s latest How Canada Performs analysis.

“The education and skills of the labour force are the underpinnings of innovation. Canada gets excellent results from its education system as a whole. However, Canada’s performance begins to slip as we climb the educational ladder. Indeed, Canada falls to the back of the pack when it comes to advanced knowledge and skills, such as graduates from PhD programs and science and engineering disciplines,” said Michael Bloom, Vice-President, Organizational Effectiveness and Learning. “Our analysis finds a link between a country’s innovation performance and the number of PhDs and science and engineering graduates.”

Canada ranked 14^th out of 17 peer countries in overall innovation performance in the Conference Board’s How Canada Performs Innovation report card (published in 2010). Moreover, Canada has obtained consistent “D” grades in innovation performance since the 1980s. Yet Canada is a consistent top performer overall in the Education and Skills report card, ranking second only to Finland in the most recent release. Canada’s ranking slips, however, as we move from high-school completion (second) to university completion (fifth) to PhD graduates (last of 17).

The Conference Board found a positive relationship between higher PhD graduation rates and a country’s patenting activity. Patents are a commonly used measure of innovation activity, tracking how knowledge is being transformed into invention. Countries that rank high on patents – such as Switzerland, Sweden and Germany – also have high PhD graduation rates. Canada ranked 14^th out of 17 countries on patents by population and last on PhD graduates. Read the rest of this entry »

OpenText™ has released a new version of OpenText Integration Center featuring an enhanced, native connector to OpenText ECM Suite 2010. Customers can help better leverage their structured and unstructured content to reduce costs and improve efficiency. OpenText Integration Center unifies access to multiple sources of disparate information from OpenText ECM Suite for applications such as business systems integration, legacy decommissioning, in-place content management and content migration.

Most integration technologies focus on either structured data in databases or content in document repositories, but not both. Now with OpenText Integration Center, which inherently understands both structured data and unstructured content, customers can give business decision makers easy access to corporate information assets through ECM Suite 2010. This allows them to take advantage of powerful analytics, semantic search and rich interactive user interfaces to boost productivity and improve decision making.

“The current economic conditions are forcing organizations to reduce the number of information sources by bringing structured and unstructured content together under the roof of a single business process and repository,” said Eugene Cherny, General Manager for OpenText’s Connectivity Solutions. “By combining these worlds in the OpenText ECM Suite, we give customers a powerful solution that helps them reduce costs during a tough economy, while enabling them to do more with their information.”

The latest release of OpenText Integration Center, together with OpenText ECM Suite 2010, provides enhanced, integrated ECM support making it easier to design, integrate, and implement content integration projects. Typical applications include:

Content Migration — OpenText Integration Center offers complete migration features to move content from one or many repositories to any new destination with all its metadata and context. It helps to automate the movement of content while delivering content integrity and operational efficiency.

Legacy System Decommissioning – Finally turning the off switch on old systems can lead to substantial cost reduction. Customers can archive data from any application and automatically apply lifecycle management rules, such as records management classifications, retention rules, and schedules through ECM Suite 2010.

Data Archiving — With a global policy to integrate retention of structured and unstructured content into one archiving system, customers can be assured of speedy and accurate collection of historical information with a full audit history.

Systems Integration — OpenText Integration Center represents a new generation of integration solutions that transforms, cleanses, enriches and directs information across the entire spectrum of decision support systems and corporate applications, for integrations that include data warehouses, data marts, mainframe systems, ERP systems, CRM systems, and content management platforms.

Leading industry analysts such as Susan Feldman, IDC’s Research Vice President for Search and Discovery Technologies, have identified unified information platforms as a new and fast-growing segment in enterprise software. Facilities like OpenText Integration Center will support enterprise strategies to implement such platforms.

“Businesses of all sizes are wallowing in too much information, without being able to make sense of it. Our survey of IT buyers demonstrates that they are eager to fix the information quandary by investing in software that gives them a single access point to all their information silos. We expect this demand to fuel a new wave of growth in information access software,” writes Feldman in a report published in April 2011 titled “Unified Access to Information: Less Seeking, More Finding.”