So, here I am at Bridging Media, a free one-day community conference on new media (I am as a wannabe digital filmmaker). I can tell you - watching the audience and goings-on is as much fun as the conference itself. Checkit:

First of all - There is no coffee. What WERE they thinking??
- for a new media conference, it’s remarkably old-school. We’re here in the Masters of Digital Media building (read: recycled factory hangar at the Great Northern Way campus in Vancouver), which is prone to electrical problems - it took an hour to get the power outage problems sorted out so we could run more than four mics and lights at the same time, and the coffee urn and tea kettle had to be plugged in in different rooms lest they upset the delicate electrical chi required to sustain the conference electronics.
- It’s so odd to see a crowd of 150-odd people in their fancy clothes and fancier buzzwords huddled up under warm sweaters and coats (the lady beside me has a fleece blanket!), clutching their iPhones and MacBooks in such, um, rustic surroundings…
- The clash of old-school broadcasters and new-media hipsters makes for an odd presentation rhythm. For the most part, the format was all new-media: a sort of “theatre in the round” style three-sided audience setup, surrounding a wooden dais about a foot off the ground that looked like a living room set from a 70’s era sit-com. Said set had four chairs facing one another, conversation-style, on a shag rug with a coffee table (and requisite laptop) in between. A power point projector and screen made the fourth side the backdrop. Somewhat non-plussed, you could tell the old-school types were distracted by the arrangement which gave no one person a direct line of sight to all presenters (but was perfectly passable given that they were discussing, not giving visual presentations - so says I, a new media wannabe). Finally, my colleague and I left when we were bored out of our skulls by the old-school - turned new-media sportscaster guy who droned on for no less than a THIRD of his whole session’s presentation time (20 minutes!), just introducing his four presenters.
- The people were largely nice, approachable, late-twenties, and had fascinating self-made careers in digital or new media industries. They reminded me of Briana, my uber-connected sister-in-law, but in a pre-baby state of single self-absorption (the people, not briana). There were a few in the 40ish age group, but these people definitely took on an air of guru status, and were from such hallowed institutions as the CBC (new media department) or the NFB.
- there were definite areas of digirati-ism and snootiness, but in that charming Canadian way. Darren Barefoot sneered at twitter for it’s “low signal-to-noise ratio” - a lingo I rapidly was able to decode (and ultimately agree with) when I heard it four times in one session - but I was interested in the new ways he’s conceptualizing the social networking universe - check out his Social Media Starfish:

Anyway, I can’t think of any other interesting ironies, but up until the droner, it was an interesting seminar with some really interesting (and inspiring) people involved. I’d go to another one if only for the seriously yummy barbequed beef burger from Vera’s Burger shack. Yay for free community conferences! I say, despite the malfunctions, I enjoyed the conference, and well-done to the organizers.

Shoutouts to some people I met there:
Monique (Mo’-Nik): So Misguided
Jess (Jess): Watch for Change - I can’t find his business card at the moment so I’ll re-post his site later.
The red-haired guy, Brandon, who seemed to take perverse delight in speaking in CompSci-ese and then providing rapid-fire snide translations where requested. Pthpllphh. Engineers.