Village Gamer

The Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance (GTMA) has made the digital media sector a priority for growth and innovation to foster a homegrown industry, and this morning it showcased student-industry collaboration results at the GTMA International Digital Media Forum.

In 10 months, Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone – a collaborative digital media workspace for young entrepreneurs – has fostered 115 jobs, supported 100 innovators and incubated 20 companies, several of which are garnering partnerships from around the world. Sheridan College opened the Screen Industries Research and Training Centre in March of 2010, and it has already provided full-time work for 25 students and exposed over 200 to its collaboration with Toronto’s Pinewood Studios, Canada’s largest sound stage complex. Meanwhile, Seneca College is a leading collaborator with the open source software industry with partners that include Mozilla, creator of the popular web browser, Firefox.

The Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance brought all of these collaborators – and more – together for a showcase of the Greater Toronto Area’s (GTA) world-class digital media education, entrepreneurship and collaboration projects. “Ubisoft’s decision to locate a major studio in Toronto that will create 800 jobs over the next decade is another leading indicator of global interest in our extraordinary focus on digital entertainment,” said Gerald Pisarzowski, Vice-President of Business Development with the Greater Toronto Marketing Alliance.

The GTA’s digital media strengths are a dream come true for companies like Toronto-based Starz Animation that, with five feature films, has the largest profile of any independent studio in the world. “The digital media sector in Toronto is very competitive and growing worldwide,” said Jeff Young, Vice-President of Finance and Business Development for Starz Animation. “There is a constant demand for talent and having the breadth of top-quality graduates right here is an advantage that allows us to keep growing. Some of the top graduates from the Toronto-area used to dream of jobs at Pixar or Dreamworks, but now they want to stay in Canada.” In its 45,000 square foot facility, Starz employs 300 artists, and a large majority of them are graduates from Ontario’s digital media programs.

“The DMZ model is really a platform for regional digital media growth,” said Valerie Fox, Director of Ryerson University’s Digital Media Zone. “We’ve already graduated three companies out into the GTA and there are 17 more in the pipeline, creating jobs right now. By bringing young people together to create products, industry solutions, new companies, jobs and opportunities, the DMZ is helping to build Toronto’s future as a global hub of innovation and economic development.”

“It’s a blending of skill sets – that’s what we are trying to do here,” said John Helliker, Director of the Screen Industries Research and Training Centre (SIRT) at Sheridan College, “Our focus with industry partners is innovation. We don’t want button pushers. Our students can combine the technical and the artistic with a sound business sense. The key is college-university-industry partnerships.” SIRT reflects Sheridan’s conscious decision to build a presence in Toronto’s film and television studio district.

The partnership programs from Sheridan, Seneca and Ryerson have created skills and products that include a Mobile Transit Companion app for sight and hearing impaired transit users of the Paris Metro, an interactive fashion runway for L’Oreal, group-buying technology for eBay’s Kijiji, interactive graphical programming software “processing.js,” 3D stereoscopic animation prototype testing, and animation for the upcoming feature film “Gnomeo and Juliet,” the largest animated feature film ever produced in Canada that will be released on February 11th, 2011.

Today’s GTMA International Digital Media Forum was beamed live to Cisco TelePresence™ locations in Europe using technology developed by the event’s sponsor, Cisco. Cisco TelePresence is a ground-breaking category of products that combine advanced audio, true high-definition video and interactive elements to create unique, “in-person” experiences between people, places and events. The event was simultaneously broadcast to London, Paris, Rome and Hallbergmoos (Munich).

There were presentations by five colleges (Sheridan, Seneca, George Brown, Humber, Centennial) and five universities (Ryerson, York, Toronto, OCAD U, UOIT) from the Greater Toronto Area. Ontario government representatives and industry representatives also made presentations.  Dean Morrison (PricewaterhouseCoopers Canada) will presented on Greater Toronto’s internationally competitive digital media-focused tax incentives and Stephen Green (Green and Spiegel LLP) spoke about immigration policies.

The CATAAlliance initiative i-CANADA and IBM Canada have announced that IBM is becoming a Diamond Sponsor of the i-CANADA program, designed to spur the development of Intelligent Communities across the country. i-CANADA’s goal is to use advanced communications and collaborative applications to generate economic growth, build skills, support new social initiatives and improve the delivery of government and business services.

“The need to create Intelligent Communities is more urgent than ever”, said Pat Horgan, IBM Manufacturing, Development and Operations Vice President. “To compete in the 21st century economic environment, cities will need to better apply advanced information technology, analytics and system thinking to develop more entrepreneurial citizen-centric approaches to their development. By doing so, they can better attract, create, enable and retain their citizen’s skills, knowledge and creativity. Forward looking civic leaders will alter their investment strategies to optimize city services around highly skilled, innovative citizens and communities, as well as knowledge-intensive businesses. IBM supports fully the i-CANADA program of catalyzing the country as an Innovation Nation through the development of intelligent communities of world top class.”

“We are pleased to see the power and momentum of IBM enrolled in our program dedicated to the creation of intelligent communities across the country”, noted Bill Hutchison, Chair of i-CANADA. “IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative and their advanced Smart Cities Assessment tools and associated services are helping cities all over the world to identify strategic areas of competitive improvement. The world’s leading i-Nations consistently have high rankings in innovation, productivity, job creation and social prosperity. Our goal is to bring at least 30 Canadian communities into their ranks as defined by the Intelligent Community Forum in New York.”

Mr. Hutchison added that “We see i-CANADA as the new “National Dream”, much like the original railroad across the country, but with the 21st century view where communications are the rails of light, carrying knowledge and ideas between the shining communities of a global intelligent economy. The vision for i-CANADA is a nation of provincial and local Intelligent Communities large and small, urban and remote, featuring great places to live with innovation cultures leveraging unified and intelligent communication infrastructures, supporting growth in jobs and the economy in tandem with social prosperity for all citizens.”

OpenText has been awarded a framework agreement for Digital Continuity, developed by Buying Solutions and The National Archives in the UK as part of the government’s project to improve digital information management throughout the public sector.

Digital continuity is the ability for an organization to use information in the way that is needed, for as long as it’s needed. Usable information is essential if the public sector is to operate transparently and legally while maintaining accountability.

The Digital Continuity Framework is part of a broader Digital Continuity Service offered by The National Archives and provides a shortlist of suppliers which can be accessed by anyone in the public sector to help them manage their digital continuity. OpenText has been awarded a framework agreement for two Lots: digital archiving solutions and data quality solutions.

OpenText’s Senior Account Manager for Central Government, Stephen Walsh, said: “The exponential growth in digital data volumes presents a challenge to any organization; but it places particularly huge demands on public sector organizations. Without effective data management systems in place, digital information can become incomplete, unavailable or unusable over time. If government bodies cannot guarantee access to this data, it can have a serious negative impact on service provision to the public – and also threatens their ability to operate legally.

“The UK government fully appreciates the necessity of managing digital continuity, but it’s often difficult for individual public sector organizations to know how to improve their digital information management, or how to procure technology and services that will help them do this. The Digital Continuity Framework is an extremely welcome tool that makes it easy for the public sector to procure the tools they need to manage this mountain of digital data,” continued Walsh.

The Digital Continuity Framework agreement is for two years, with the option to extend it for two additional one year periods. The criteria for the Data Quality Solutions Lot of the framework required technology that enables users to access data from a variety of structured data sources; relate data between distinct data sources; and profile the data using patterns, rules and statistical methods. It also required the ability to drill-down into the actual data from a profile produced by the technology; provide a range of reporting options; and suggest or fix identified data quality issues.

The Digital Archiving Solutions Lot specified technology that can acquire information from a live system into the archive; manage retention policies applied to the archived information; place archived items on hold to override any other retention policy; and ensure the integrity of the archived information. Furthermore, it must enable user discovery and retrieval of the archived information; report on the contents of the archive; control access to the content of the archive and record provenance data about items transferred into the archive.

“The award of the Framework agreement for Digital Continuity recognizes OpenText’s expertise in the field of digital data management; and we look forward to working with public sector bodies to help them ensure that key digital information remains accessible and usable in the long term,” said Walsh. Read the rest of this entry »

Congratulations to the Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood writing team who picked up the Writers’ Guild of America award last night for Video Game Writing: Story by Patrice Desilets, Jeffrey Yohalem, Corey May; Lead Script Writer: Jeffrey Yohalem; Script Writers: Ethan Petty, Nicholas Grimwood, Matt Turner; Ubisoft

TELETOON Canada Inc. is taking the original TELETOON Pilot Project concept and turning it into an online, user-generated contest called the TELETOON At Night Pilot Project, which began yesterday, February 6th. This initiative calls on aspiring and professional animators to put their creative skills to use for a chance to win $10,000 CDN and the opportunity to attend North America’s largest animation conference and festival, the Television Animation Conference and Ottawa International Animation Festival.

“The TELETOON at Night Pilot Project is an important initiative which offers a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for animation enthusiasts,” said Russell Ward, Vice President, Marketing, TELETOON Canada inc. “As an active player in the animation industry, this project gives TELETOON the opportunity to recognize and open a door of possibility to raw and undiscovered creative talent.”

From Sunday, February 6 to Friday, July 15, 2011, contestants are invited to submit original, funny and unique animation or animation-related short films. Eligible submissions must be no more than five minutes in length and can either be entered through the English-language contest on teletoonatnight.com or the French-language contest on teletoonlanuit.com. The winner of each English and French contest will be awarded:

* $10,000 CDN
* Two roundtrip airline tickets from the closest Canadian commercial airport to the winner’s residence to Ottawa
* Four nights accommodation in Ottawa
* Two delegate passes to the Television Animation Conference and Ottawa International Animation Festival

All eligible submissions will be featured in a video gallery on teletoonatnight.com and teletoonlanuit.com, where the public can select their “Fave of the Week” each week. The five final contenders selected by a TELETOON jury for each of the English and French contests will be revealed on Sunday, July 31. The public can then vote for their favourite video until Saturday, August 28. The video that receives the most votes by the end of the voting phase will be crowned the winner and revealed on-air and online on Sunday, September 18.

The original TELETOON Pilot Project launched in fall 2007, exclusively inviting Canadian producers to submit proposals to produce a pilot in either English or French to be broadcast on TELETOON. Ten projects were selected as finalists from over 200 submissions, straddling a wide range of topics, animation styles and comedy sensibilities. TELETOON recently announced that the first TELETOON Pilot Project winner, Fugget About It, has been officially greenlit for production into a 13-part series in English and French.

And just to add to the bandwidth cap angst, Sony of Canada has launched “Video On Demand powered by Qriocity™”in Canada with titles such as “A-Team,” “Get Him to the Greek,” “Inception,” “The Last Airbender,” “Salt,” and Disney-Pixar’s “Toy Story 3.”

“Video On Demand powered by Qriocity™” is a premium streaming video service that allows film fans to rent from a growing library of hundreds of Hollywood blockbusters from NBC Universal Television Distribution, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, The Walt Disney Studios, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment LLC and Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, as well as films from local studios, straight to their Sony 2010 and 2011 network-enabled BRAVIA® TV, Blu-ray Disc™ player, or Blu-ray Disc Home Theatre system.

Rental prices for High-Definition content will range from CA$4.99-5.99 while those for Standard-Definition content will range from CA$3.99-4.99. After renting a film, consumers have up to 30 days to start watching their movie, and once playback is started, they have up to 24 or 48 hours to watch the film as many times as they like.

“Video On Demand powered by Qriocity” started in Japan on January 26 and is already available in the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the U.K. and is an entertainment network service platform that connects many of Sony’s network-enabled devices and allows consumers to enjoy high quality entertainment across multiple devices. Via Qriocity, Sony will deliver a variety of digital entertainment content and services that are “powered by Qriocity”, including video, music, game applications, and e-books over time. Through these services, and in combination with its networked devices, Sony aims to bring new and exciting entertainment experiences to customers.