Candian Conference Collaboration Cause Celebre!

Special kudos go to Matt Toner and Tony Raposo of the Canadian Consulate for putting together a stellar conference on animation on Monday, January 25th. Of all the countries represented in this international city, they by far have worked the hardest and created the biggest impact showing true wisdom in the new media realm and with collaborative efforts between New York and Canadian cities. This event was no different than their usual mark of class, sophistication, well organized and rich with interesting content, people and companies. The event started off with a Master Class at the Florence Gould Hall of FIT and then flipped to a luncheon at the Digital Sandbox at 55 Broad Street. In addition to the numerous Canadian companies showing their work like Fly studio, Nelvana and Sarbakan were some New York based firms like Jaime Levy's Electronic Hollywood, Buzzco Associates and the Data Motion Arts studio. After the "MetroByte" show on speech recognition software, show host Scott Rigby and partner James Talerico of Thoughtbubble came with me to the evening reception. We caught the tale end of a presentation on the making of parts of the movie Spawn. So we saw a clown morph into a dragon-lizard-scary creature about 20 times, headed upstairs for a chocolate dipped strawberry and called it a night. This well attended event was an excellent resource for seeing the amazing work and prolific companies in Canada and an opportunity to explore collaboration on new media projects.