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 are not directed from high-down to  the student, but rather encourage the students to interact. This is very much what cross-media permits.”

Read the full article, including an overview of the finalist projects, in MIPTV News.

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.

Brent Friedman’s Afterworld uses Web, gameplay and TV to tell the story of a traveling ad exec trying to get back to his family in Seattle after waking up in NYC to discover that all technology has stopped working, and the city deserted. Just as gripping: the story of how Brent covered his production costs – before selling his content in the US marketplace.

Brent has written and produced TV and film adaptations of comic books and hit video games including Tomb Raider, transferring fans – and dollars – across storytelling platforms.

We’re hoping the panelist will discuss: How a multiplatform property, without an initial TV or distribution deal, can garner commercial success and audience engagement; his approach in digital rights negotiations; and his take on the monetization model of the future.

Date: Friday, March 28^th, 10:30-11:30am

FOR THE KIDS: It’s About Connecting

Why: The kids’ interactive market is going strong – in terms of properties, audience and revenues – serving as a great case study in digital excellence. Whether your company is in the kids’ space or not, the all-star panel of award-winning, multiplatform pioneers (Sinking Ship, Tribal Nova, Xenophile and BBC Children’s) promise insightful gems on engaging audiences with nary a TV in sight.

We’re hoping the panelists will discuss: Xenophile is well known for its award-winning ARGs (alternative reality games) in the thriller genre. Certainly, the majority of ARGs have revolved around dark themes that lend themselves to conspiracy theorising. Xenophile’s case study for a lighter, kid-friendly ARG will surely spark creative new ways of approaching interactive gameplay in 360-degree entertainment properties.

We’re also hoping Tribal Nova will speak about its strategic investment by DHX Media, its newly-launched educational portal PBS Kids Play!, and the business visioning that lead to Tribal Nova’s breakout year.

Date: Friday, March 28^th, 1:15-2:15pm

SPELLING SUCCESS? A case study in social media games

Why: Who hasn’t whittled away minutes (ok, hours) playing panel guest Jayant Agarwalla’s Scrabulous on Facebook? This panel sets out to prove that that social networks can be harnessed to generate revenue. For the audience, this talk will shine light on CRM (customer relationship management) ecommerce solutions and apps (both web and mobile) – on as well as off social networks.

We’re hoping they’ll discuss: Let’s be honest, we all want to hear salacious tidbits (and debate) Hasbro’s demand that Facebook pull Scrabulous from its social network.

Date: Friday, March 28^th, Friday, 9-10am

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″ trio of star Amanda Tapping, writer-producer Damian Kindler and producer-director Martin Wood, who are executive producing the series with Sam Egan …

Sci Fi’s decision to forgo a pilot and go for a straight 13-episode series order for “Sanctuary” dovetails recent statements by NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker that the company’s new mandate is to order more projects straight to series. [Sci Fi Exec VP Original Programming Mark Stern] called that a coincidence, noting that the network’s decision was based on the fact that execs already had seen material from the Web series.

Read the full article about FanTrust client Stage 3 Media, its multiplatform approach to “Sanctuary” and its broadcast deal with Sci Fi Channel.

While we work with large public companies, start-ups and everything in between, the FanTrust approach is to build highly customized relationships with the corporate officers or owners, based on the belief that digital transformation must be championed at the top, with CEOs and CFOs. But, I’ll know that I’ve succeeded when, in five years, I’m also working with the Chief Fan Officers.

I’ve been involved in digital media for 23 years now and I’ve seen a lot of changes since the early days of digital holography and computer music. But perhaps the greatest change has taken place within the user community; the expectations and creativity that digital consumers apply to entertainment.

What I want to talk with you about today — and what our clients want — are 360-degree digital strategies. And fans are at the core of all great digital plans. You’ve probably each heard the saying that 80 percent of your business comes from 20 percent of your customers. But now these core consumers can engage with your content in numerous ways. Not just on consoles or on-air, but on rich media websites, on social networks, on YouTube, mobile phones, through alternate reality games, and the list goes on. Choosing the right mix and defining the goals – whether revenue or reach – is critical. And one of the biggest challenges is establishing how entertainment IP transforms for different channels—content can no longer be ported, it must be recreated again and again to address consumer demands and behavior.

But what are the attributes of content transformation? At its most basic you have, for example, a TV series packaged for broadband or mobile distribution. Even this simple migration of linear content needs tender loving care. On the technical front there is the encoding and tagging – one mobile company estimates 300 “industry standard” formats! On the marketing side there is the call-to-action – do you want your episode to drive DVD sales, leverage international TV sales, build your studio brand or achieve another, measurable objective?

To build community, linking strategies and social network tie-ins are critical. Underlying all of this is your deal structure with your aggregator or digital channel. Are you securing the best mix of licensing, revenue-share and marketing?

Of course as soon as you move beyond trafficking linear content to crating interactive entertainment, the strategies, opportunities and pitfalls grow exponentially. Taking time to plan your new media production and distribution is worth the investment. It pays off in many fronts: staff benefit from collaborating across departments to achieve convergence goals; business development opens into a new world of strategic partners; and C-level executives continue along the path of future-proofing their companies.

The industry is still in the very early stages of discovering what works and what doesn’t when it comes to recreations.

Ultimately, TV producers’ interactive spin-offs may reap higher rewards than their original shows. The Alternate Reality Game for the series Regenesis just won an Emmy Award as did the User Generated Content Game Zimmer Twins. There were no Emmys for the TV series. As an international judge for the interactive Emmys, I was inspired by the built-in fan engagement advanced by many of the nominees. Will this year finally be the watershed for fan relations?

Even if you are in the business-to-business space, understanding your digital consumers is critical to staying competitive. Business-to-business relationships are changing, broadcasters are becoming game publishers, giving game developers brand new sales avenues and challenging TV producers to broaden their product offerings. In Canada, YTV has recently launched a multiplayer game space called The Big Rip; and Cartoon Network has hired a community director in anticipation of launching a multiplayer environment in 2008.

TV producers are also deploying games to support TV fans between seasons or fill in plotlines. “24: The Game” answers a slew of questions left unanswered in the three year gap plotted between Seasons 2 & 3.

When entertainment fans don’t have interactive content options, they will happily make their own, without any nod to entertainment rights. FireflyFans.net, the show’s premier fan site, has generated an endless stream of fan fiction, art, blogs, pod casts, meet-ups and even a fan-produced documentary — all fodder for a Firefly Multiverse game.

Interactive fans represent an enormous unpaid marketing team. They’re out there flying your freak flag – communicate with them and they will do more. Pay them and, well, the sky’s the limit.

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 in licensing deals.

The characters got their start as video shorts in the Tracy Ullman show (I breast-fed those little devils,” she once said), wound up as the longest-running American sitcom, sold record-breaking numbers of DVDs , spawned a billion dollar merchandising industry and will soon appear on the big screen with the launch of The Simpsons movie.

Bart, Lisa, Homer and Marge, and their mind-bogglingly big community, have inspired legions of fans the world over. Fansites such as Snpp generate 8.5 million monthly hits.

The relationship between the fans and Fox hasn’t always been any easy one – more mutually assured destruction than comfortable symbiosis. But in forcing Fox to test its limits for fan tolerance, The Simpson fan base is also partially responsible for the conglomerate’s other digital advances, including American Idol and 24.

From my vantage as a Monday morning quarterback (I have worked with FOX, but not on this series), The Simpsons is a case study in multimedia excellence: great writing and original animation led to a franchise way beyond TV, with games, comics, home entertainment, the movie and even an amusement park ride in the works.

The bar for creators is getting ever-higher, with everything from Web 2.0 to 360-degree content strategies influencing production orders. Today’s aspiring Matt Groening’s have the added challenge of interactive development and positioning from the get-go. But without story, everything else is a non-starter.

During this twenty year run, fortunes have been made by Rupert Murdoch, Matt Groening, writers, voice actors, merchandising artists, and eBay traders. Now 7-11 convenience stores are cashing in, with some outlets transforming to Kwik-E- Marts, Springfield’s fictitious corner store. This latest hall of mirrors for The Simpsons franchise is part of a campaign to hype the July 27 movie premiere. A dozen of the stores and most of the 6,000-plus others in North America will sell goodies, reports the LA Times, which until now existed only on TV: Buzz Cola, KrustyO’s cereal and the Squishee, itself a knock-off of the 7-11 mainstay Slurpee.

The Simpsons Movie will premiere in a real Springfield, picked from among 30 eponymous American towns. Fox has challenged Springfields across the country to prove how they typify the cartoon landscape and culture. The LA Times reports that various Springfields are weighing in with bona fides that include doughnut factories, proximity to Matt Groening’s birthplace and even a home-grown bald-headed, beaked-nosed power plant executive.

Everyone who has seen The Simpsons has a favorite character. The inconvenient truth is that mine oversees Springfield’s nuclear power plant and is the leader from hell. I live for his keyword “eeeeexcellllent” and the mesmeric tenting of his fingertips. Charles Montgomery Burns represents everything reprehensible about corporate management. And I love him BECAUSE I KNOW I CAN FIX HIM. (It’s a consultant thing.)

What does all of this success have to do with fandom and digital fans in particular? For that we turn to Chris Turner, author of Planet Simpson, who said on a panel that I moderated at VIDFEST that the interplay between TV, the VCR and the Internet allowed for a new kind of storytelling, and a new level of fan engagement. From the beginning Matt Groening built layers of pop culture, politics and in-jokes into every episode, making them rich viewing for video playback. Eventually, at the end of one episode, a fictitious news program broadcasts a list of dozens of corrections that scroll by in a couple of seconds. In no time, loyal fans trolled through the show in slow motion, transcribed all 34 jokes and posted them online.

The current Springfield contest takes fan community to new heights and may not have even been conceived, let alone possible, before the web. The series recently celebrated its 400th episode. In an era where no one can seem to feed the hungry maw of broadband, this, my friend, is a lot of valuable digital content.

Twenty years ago, when The Simpsons first went from their couch into our zeitgeist, there weren’t enough friends with modems to propel them along. Today, a quick Google search reveals 31.8 million results for the show name alone. If your idea promises to be the next Simpsons, you now have the hat-trick: connectivity, culture and fan community.

The movie, which will probably be bootlegged in real time, may unleash more digital firsts and fuel the next generation of digital fans. We do know it includes cartoon nudity (full frontal Bart), and claims a PG-13 rating for “irreverent humor”. Would that we were all known so well.

This announcement marks yet another collaboration on digital delivery and cross-platforming of HD entertainment, not to mention, the increased partnering of video games and films. This was a no-brainer for Disney given that in seven months Xbox Marketplace has seen 10 million downloads and the game platform already has a built in and engaged audience. As for Microsoft, movies have been available for digital download for some time now on rival iTunes, but not immediately in HD. It looks like in this case Microsoft is one step ahead of Apple.