The Vancouver International Digital Festival (VIDFEST) begins today for the fifth year and it looks to be a great event. I am very excited to be attending for the first time and I will be using my blog and other social media tools (e.g. twitter, utterz, viddler, flickr) to share what I am learning and experiencing. Anyone that is a creative leader in digital media or wants to be should register (e.g. students, artists, educators).

The Vancouver International Digital Festival is an event for the top creative minds working in digital media. Join visionaries from games and digital entertainment, Web 2.0, interactive design, animation and mobile applications, at this annual ‘must-attend’ in Vancouver, Canada. Get access to international business match-making, ‘big picture’ conference sessions on the latest trends and markets in digital media, a recruiting fair, high-level seminars for creators, designers, and producers, and loads of networking parties.

Organised by New Media BC, it is a composite of a number of events for Vancouver’s Digital Week (also including the Vancouver International Games Summit (VIGS), Convergence 2008 and the PopVox Awards).


Flickr photo courtesy of kk+

The photography for the advertising campaign is by Kris Krüg of Static Photography. The concept and branding was done by mod7 and the design and layout was by smashLAB.

The speaker list is here and the sessions will take place on Friday at the Creative Exchange Conference.

The sessions of most relevance to me are:

1. Keynote – Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief, Wired. I enjoy reading Wired. One of most interesting article I read was called ShotSpotter from March 2007, Issue 15.04

2. McLuhan 2.0 – Dr. Eric McLuhan, Author and Educator, son of Marshall McLuhan

3. Positively Charged: Do-gooding in a digital age — how digital space can be used for altruistic projects

4. Let the People Play: The future of interactive entertainment – Susan Bond, President and Executive Producer, 42 Entertainment. 42 Entertainment with Jane McGonigal brought us the ilovebees project

Check below for further VIDFEST info:

Flickr
YouTube
Facebook

There is a great article in the Georgia Straight about VIDFEST.

Friends attending VIDFEST (name/blog/twitter):
Rebecca Bollwitt Miss 604 @miss604
Jenn Lowther memelabs @jennmae
Darren Barefoot darrenbarefoot.com @dbarefoot
Monica Hamburg Me Like the Interweb @monicahamburg
Kris Krüg Static Photography @kk
Nadia Nascimento memelabs @nalei

Relevance: Vancouver is a great place for creative ideas and inovative ideas. This will be a great opportunity to network.