Finalists at the Content 360 Interactive Educational Formats for Cross-Media - held at MIPTV in Cannes, France -  battled it out in five-minute pitching sessions to jurors Hye Chung Eun, senior researcher at the Korean Broadcast Institute, and Catherine Warren, FanTrust Entertainment Strategies' founder and president, for the $10,000 development funding prize. Selected from 56 entries covering 23 countries, the presentations were all cross-media format ideas that combined education and entertainment. "One thing that works well with all these ideas is that they connect audiences and consumers together," said Catherine Warren. "They ...

FanTrust’s Catherine Warren will be attending ICE 2008, Canada’s pre-eminent conference on interactive media in Toronto, March 26-28.

Catherine will play double-duty at the conference - as ICE advisory board member and panel moderator.

As always, here are FanTrust’s “Top 3” picks for ICE 2008:

Making It: Building entertainment properties outside the system

Why: This master class session (moderated by Catherine Warren, Fan Trust President) will explore the strategies and tactics taken by the creator of a successful, nontraditional 360-degree multiplatform property.

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Hollywood Reporter article by Nellie Andreeva and Kimberly Nordyke Sci Fi Channel has greenlighted "Sanctuary," the first television series to use live-action actors against virtual sets in the style of the features "300" and "Sin City." Sci Fi has ordered a full 13-episode season of the new scripted drama series, which originated online as the first high-definition sci-fi Web series. "Sanctuary" hails from the "Stargate SG-1" ...

FanTrust is a digital management consultancy. We work with entertainment and technology companies and investors to grow businesses around digital markets. We also serve universities and professional associations, partnering them with industry for research, talent and capital. In essence, we are digital matchmakers helping bridge different media and build innovative companies and IP. The value that we bring is a laser focus on the fans, the digital audiences and committed consumers that interact with multi-platform content.

While we work with large public companies, start-ups and everything ...

The FanTrust blog goal is to unite entertainment fans and entertainment professionals and inspire new kinds of collaboration. Share your fandom and your fan strategies. Riff on the blur between user generated and professional content. Grapple out loud with your rights issues versus your open source ethic. Above all, please join us as the story unfolds. To kick off the FanTrust blog, "where fans and entertainment meet", it had to be The Simpsons. There is no better example of multiplatform success, gigantic demographic appeal and a Mobius strip of life-imitating-art-imitating-life ...