CTV’s spectacular SuperBodies

Inspired by the forensic animation on the show CSI, SuperBodies was first introduced during the 2010 Olympic Games as a series of two-minute vignettes exploring the anatomy of elite athletes.

In February 2011, Discovery Canada aired a new incarnation – a 60-minute documentary that further explored the impact of competitive winter sports on the bodies of elite athletes.

In partnership with CTV Olympics and the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, an educational game app was created to support the doc. With 3D animation and original video segments, the SuperBodies mobile app allows users to peel away the human skin to reveal what truly happens on the inside when star athletes perform.

Online, Facebook and Twitter facilitated knowledge sharing and fan interaction with athletes and sports scientists.
With its continued success, CTV commissioned another 12 segments for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London.

This is an excerpt from StrategyOnline.ca. Click here to read the full article.

Photo courtesy of the International Emmy Awards

In recent years, FanTrust president Catherine Warren, a member of the Academy, has served on the jury. “The caliber of digital media nominees from around the world continues to push the envelope year over year. Winners blend innovation and interactivity to attain the most coveted prize in global entertainment.”

The award categories for submissions from outside the United States are as follows:

Digital Program – Children & Young People

Digital Program – Fiction

Digital Program – Non-Fiction

The deadline for entries is Thursday, November 3, 2011. Winners will be announced at a ceremony during MIPTV 2012 in Cannes, France.

Click here to access the rules, regulations, guidelines and entry form for the 2012

For additional information, please contact the Awards Department of The International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences at awardsdept@iemmys.tv or phone 1-212-489-1946.

Catherine Warren, President at Vancouver-based FanTrust Entertainment Strategies believes that “young women can do amazing things.” She will be moderating a panel called “The Executive Suite: Women on Top” at the International Women in Digital Media Summit (iWDMS 2011) in Stratford, Ontario from October 23rd to 25th, 2011.

As a preview to the conference, I spoke with Catherine about what it takes to run her own business, lead as a woman in the digital media industry, and much more. Here are the highlights from our conversation last week:

How did you get your start in the digital media industry?

Prior to starting my own business, I was a COO at a cross-platform broadcasting software startup called Blue Zone during the early days of the Internet industry. In this role, I spearheaded significant convergence broadcasting deals and developed media creation, and distribution strategies. We grew this publicly-traded Nasdaq company to a $300 million market cap. When the dotcom bubble burst, I realized it was time to go out on my own.

What is FanTrust?

FanTrust looks at how fans can transform business models for the entertainment industry. Having worked with broadcasters for years, I realized that many of them hadn’t anticipated the power of interactive audiences. I immediately recognized the opportunity to focus on digital media and fan culture.

Celebrating our 10th anniversary this year, FanTrust has influenced major media networks, fortune 500 clients, gaming and mobile companies, and advertising agencies. We focus on “hit making” to drive B2C value (including traffic) for new media platforms. We also provide our clients with new ways to capture financing, captivate audiences and capitalize on digital business development. Our client successes include Microsoft’s early push into digital content, Gemini Award-winning CTVNEWS.com and the fan strategy for the CSI television franchise.

What does it take for a woman to lead in the digital media industry?

The short answer is that it takes all of the same things that a man needs to lead. You must be ambitious, a lifelong learner, understand politics within an organization, and be very responsive to employee and customer needs. Women still face a lot of obstacles, especially when it comes to comparing their income vs. men in a similar role. The playing field won’t be level until that is sorted out.

All business is still male dominated. The digital media industry may, in fact, be better than other industries for having more women leading the charge. For example, in the casual gaming industry, women make up a big part of the customer base. So, it makes sense to hire female Sr. Executives because they understand how to cater to that audience. But there are still few female C-level executives in publicly traded companies in Canada.

I have sat on corporate boards like the Bell Fund, which has awarded $100M to convergence productions. Companies need more women on boards. It affects everything within an organization – including the bottom line. It also sets the right tone for clients, shareholders, and employees because of the diversity of viewpoints being discussed.

What is your advice for anyone starting their own digital media business?

• Surround yourself with a great advisory board.
• Pick people with different, yet complimentary skills to yours for your team.
• If you’re looking to raise money, educate yourself on the path to raising capital. It requires a completely different skill set from running your business, and can be a distraction from your core business. Talk to a lot of people who’ve been through it. Instead of trying to raise a lot of money, focus on generating early revenue. This is probably a better way to stay focused if you can avoid having to raise a lot of investor money early on.
• Work with both big and small clients. I encourage entrepreneurs to shoot for high profile clients and mix those with smaller customers.

Who is your biggest role model?

Well, I come from a family of entrepreneurs. There is sort of an expectation in my family that entrepreneurship is simply what you do. Even my grandmother was one of Canada’s first female real estate agents. My mom started her own interactive database business in the 1970s – before the Internet and search even existed. So, I’m surrounded by role models.

I believe that if you’re open to it, life can change on a dime. For example, another role model of mine is Julia Butterfly Hill. She ran a number of successful businesses in her 20s but gave it all up to spend two years living in a California Redwood tree to try and save it from being cut down. She made this decision after attending a fundraiser to save the forests. Her story is a great example of the type of dedication and courage that it takes for a young woman to lead and change the world.

Catherine Warren is just one of the many fabulous speakers who are scheduled to speak at iWDMS.

Click here to see the article published in Tech Vibes.

Video has long been a highly effective medium for getting out a message, but only in recent years — with the advent of inexpensive cameras, consumer-friendly editing software and broadband Internet — has it become truly accessible to everyone, including your nonprofit organization.

The apparent ease of production, however, does not mean video-making should be taken lightly. A well-crafted PSA or information video posted on your website and YouTube can be wonderful for garnering attention for programs, but a poorly executed one may well lack the flash to grab people’s attention on the video-saturated web.

“Just a couple of years ago there seemed to be a movement toward low-quality video,” says Mike Edgell, an award-winning video producer with the marketing firm Thornley Fallis. “It’s a connected, online generation, and for some reason people thought quality didn’t matter anymore. But would any nonprofit write a poor press release, or not prepare for an important speech, or not fix the sign on their building if it fell down? Why drop the ball when it comes to video?”

Of course, the reason is usually expense. It takes more than just a good camera to make a good video. Indeed, Edgell says that at the upper end of the scale, a video of TV-commercial quality can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thankfully, options do exist for getting the job done for quite a bit cheaper than that, from hiring students, to holding contests, to teaching courses and enlisting volunteers.

The United Way of the Lower Mainland, in British Columbia, launched the Care to Change Video Competition last March to engage with the online community, especially youth.

“I really feel it is important to engage youth,” says United Way board member Catherine Warren, “specifically using new media where they engage in dialogue and relate to their friends.”

The contest, now closed for submissions, asked youth and adults to submit videos dealing with issues such as bullying, poverty and loneliness as experienced by children and seniors. In August, a shortlist selected by an independent jury will be posted to the contest website, where viewers can vote for their favourites. Winners in a variety of categories will be announced in September, taking home prizes such as professional video equipment, computers and retail store vouchers. Top winners will be screened at this fall’s Vancouver International Film Festival and posted to the nonprofit YouTube channel VISOgive.

Warren says the objective of the contest was to foster dialogue, but she stresses it was important to make sure videos were of a certain standard. “Part of the direction we gave people was to inspire audiences, but to use artistic touches to do that,” she says. “The whole idea was to motivate the audience to act.”

To that end, the contest website offered a Video Toolkit containing links to such things as royalty-free sound effects and music, storyboarding instruction, YouTube’s tutorial page called Creator’s Corner, and a filmmaking workshop.

“We have just been overwhelmed by the content, quality and variety of submissions,” says Warren. The contest generated a total of 70 entries.

Beyond YouTube and the contest website, the finalist videos will also be made available for use by some 1,100 organizations that are part of the United Way’s partner community in the lower mainland. “They represent business, labour, public sector and nonprofits that we support or that support us,” says Warren.

This is an excerpt. Click here to read Shaun Smith’s full article on CharityVillage.com.

MOSCOW, June 16, 2011 – Executives from the world’s leading media outlets in North America, Russia, Europe and Asia will gather in Moscow on June 24, 2011 for a global forum on the future of media hosted by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti.

“The current influx of new technologies means that it’s a fascinating time for journalism all over the globe,” said editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media Alan Rusbridger in an interview with the Russian news agency. “Never before has the news industry been presented with such a proliferation of ways to gather news, communicate with the audiences and increase our influence.”

The International Future Media Forum will provide an opportunity “to debate how we can better operate in this ever-expanding digital arena, what we can learn from each other, and how we can continue to experiment in order to pioneer new forms of story-telling for our tech-savvy audiences,” said Rusbridger.

Panelists and keynote speakers include heads of media companies as well as executives from international organizations, innovation companies and analytical centers focused on media market development.

“With audiences at the centre of the media ecosystem, social media jockeying for position against mass media, and new financing and revenue models shaking things up, this group couldn’t come together at a better time,” said FanTrust Entertainment Strategies president Catherine Warren, who will speak on the topic of media profitability at this Moscow event. FanTrust provides business development for the media and entertainment sectors, coalescing content, commerce and consumers.

The Future Media Forum is planned as the core of this year’s celebrations of the RIA Novosti media agency’s 70th anniversary.

“We hope that this forum will become an open platform for a broader discussion of possible paths for media development, looking beyond the media community,” said RIA Novosti Editor-in-Chief Svetlana Mironyuk. “We were keen to bring together leading representatives of the international media market and the audiences, the end consumers of these media products, to discuss the interaction between the traditional and increasingly popular innovative media.”

The sessions will be broadcast live on the RIA Novosti website in Russian and English. Questions to the panelist can be posted at www.facebook.com/FutureMediaForum.

View the Forum agenda, list of speakers and partners at www.fmf-eng.rian.ru.

With a week to go, the United Way of the Lower Mainland invites the public to make a short movie that makes a difference at www.caretochange.ca. To win prizes and receive exposure, British Columbia youth (19 and under) and adults can create and enter videos (maximum five minutes) destined to educate viewers on topics such as bullying, poverty, vulnerability and isolation, and inspire them to care for others.

Winning videos will be broadcast on the United Way’s online channels; BroadbandTV’s VisoGive YouTube channel; and the Vancouver International Film Festival, as part of the Reel Youth filmtour.

Public online voting will take place in August 2011 for the Viewer’s Choice Award. Three top prizes will be awarded in each category (youth and adult) and will be determined by an expert judging panel, chaired by International Emmy award judge and FanTrust Entertainment Strategies President, Catherine Warren. In addition, a selection of special mention prizes will be awarded. Results will be released in September, 2011.

“Care to Change is a creative and relevant way for aspiring videographers to make digital shorts that make a difference,” said Catherine Warren, Care to Change Judging Panel Chair and UWLM Board Member. “Film makers will bring a fresh perspective and unique lens on United Way Focus areas, especially those affecting kids and seniors. We want them to use video storytelling to answer the question: What does a critical issue such as poverty or loneliness mean to me and how do I care to change it?”

Be a change agent. Win great prizes. Submit your video to: www.caretochange.ca.

“Winning projects reflect an outstanding array of innovation and creativity, demonstrating the power of media to transform lives and enhance communities,” said WSA executive board member Catherine Warren.

An independent jury of eminent experts recognized three Canadian projects among the line-up of winners. Stitch Media, an interactive storytelling company, won in the Culture and Heritage category for their Redress Remix project. This three-part documentary television series and feature film tells the story of the Canadian Chinese Head Tax and movement to seek redress. The interactive portal fragments the footage and presents it in a non-linear fashion that includes the audience in a “living documentary.”

In the Inclusion and Participation category, the incredibly popular social media dashboard Hootsuite was acknowledged by the jury for making engagement across the entire social media landscape a streamlined process for millions.

Bitstrips for Schools won in the Learning and Education category as a revolutionary interactive comic-book generator. Designed to “unlock the educational power of comics” this web-only product helps teachers stimulate students and develop literacy and creative skills through colourful comics of the kids’ own making.

The WSA celebrates digital media that bridges the cultural and economic divide. For a complete list of winners Click here for the full list of winners and here for more information on the World Summit Award program.

The Content 360 gathered together MIPTV hopefuls wanting to make their mark in one of the most dynamic areas in games and entertainment. They had come not only to pitch their projects, but also to hear industry leaders debate on monetising games, attracting fans with social media and other hot issues.

Speaking after the event, Warren said: “We are seeing a tremendous increase in the standard of professionalism, not just in terms of creativity but also regarding business models, strategy, audience engagement and the calibre of the actual pitches themselves. It’s very exciting – and it comes at a time when the industry really needs it, now that many online and social games are attracting audiences of several hundred thousand or a million players.”

Warren was joined on stage by jury members: Julie Adair of the Walt Disney Company; Polar Productions’ Matt Costello; Sanoma Entertainment’s Fernando Herrera and Nordic Game Program’s Erik Robertson.

Click here to see the full article from MIPTV News and here to see the complete list of Content 360 winners.

April 12, 2011 (HONG KONG) Advances in digital media can help bring an end to poverty, hunger and disease, while providing education for all, saving the environment and giving a fair share to women.

The World Summit Award (WSA) is celebrating these very advances in Hong Kong this week, fulfilling a mandate issued by the United Nations to highlight the best technological advances that address these vital issues in support of its millennium development goals.

“The WSA is a global initiative to help bridge the content gap by selecting and promoting creative content and innovative applications,” said Mr. Alex Hung, Chairman of the WSA Grand Jury 2011 Organizing Committee in Hong Kong.

The WSA brings together a multitude of experts from all continents with backgrounds in the creative industries, telecommunications, advertising, journalism, research and engineering, representing 32 countries, including Ghana, Tunisia, Ecuador, New Zealand and Russia. They were tapped to name winning media entries in eight categories, such as entertainment, business and education.

Catherine Warren, President of FanTrust Entertainment Strategies and one of the jurors naming winners from among 460 websites, apps and games submitted from 105 countries, is providing the Canadian and U.S. perspective in picking top “digital media for a better world.”

“The WSA is more than just a celebration of technological progress in the digital media industry,” Warren said. “It’s about recognizing the innovative ways companies from around the world are using social media to positively impact those most in need.”

Warren, who is also an executive board member of the World Summit Award, provided insight on mobile entertainment and apps as part of the expert roundtable.

While in Hong Kong, the WSA jurors also met with local companies, institutions and government. The events included a reception at the premises of the Consul General of the Republic of Austria to Hong Kong SAR Gerhard Maynhardt, where consuls from several countries met with the jurors to discuss implications of media transformation in their home countries.

“It is not technology itself that changes the world; it is the use of technology and content,” said Prof. Peter A. Bruck, chairman of the WSA board. “We need to narrow the digital divide between those who have and those who have not. It is not only an access and cost divide, but also a skill and content divide.”

Different approaches to topics ranging from social media to mobile apps and cloud computing were presented to the public during the jury’s opening conference.

The jury runs until April 14th evaluating the submissions to the World Summit Award from all over the world.

The winners of this global UN-mandated initiative to select and promote the world’s best digital contents will have the chance to present their projects, network with business partners and meet other experts in the field of ICT at the WSA 2011 Winners event in the Fall of 2011.

About the WSA

The World Summit Award (WSA), organised by the International Center for New Media (ICNM) in Salzburg, was started in 2003 as part of the UN’s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). It is a global initiative to select and promote the world’s best e-Content and innovative information and communications technologies applications; to date more than 160 countries are actively involved. Through national pre-selections and contests and a global jury process, WSA demonstrates the local diversity and rich creativity of ICT use. WSA is a global hub for everyone who values the crucial importance of local content to make today’s information society more inclusive.

For further information, go to www.wsis-award.org or contact wsa@icnm.net.

For names, positions and professional details of all jurors go to: www.wsis-award.org/contest/jury

Prize winners will receive exposure of their videos on United Way’s online channels; select winners will also gain exposure through the Viso Give Channel on YouTube – an initiative of Broadband TV – and the Vancouver International Film Festival, as part of the Reel Youth filmtour.

Videos will be uploaded to the www.caretochange.ca homepage for public voting to determine the Viewer’s Choice Award. Public online voting will take place in August 2011. In addition to the Viewer’s Choice Award, three top prizes will be awarded in each category (youth and adult) and will be determined by an expert judging panel, chaired by International Emmy award judge and FanTrust Entertainment Strategies President, Catherine Warren. In addition, a selection of special mention prizes will be awarded. Results will be released in September, 2011.

“Care to Change is a creative and relevant way for aspiring videographers to make digital shorts that make a difference,” said Catherine Warren, Care to Change Judging Panel Chair and UWLM Board Member. “Film makers will bring a fresh perspective and unique lens to United Way Focus areas – poverty, bullying, vulnerability and isolation. We want them to answer the question: What does one of these issues mean to me and how do I care to change it?”

“We’re excited about this project and the opportunity it brings us to engage caring people in a new way,” said Michael McKnight, President and CEO of United Way of the Lower Mainland. “I look forward seeing creative videos that will motivate people to change the way they think and care about others.”

United Way of the Lower Mainland leads social change in the Metro Vancouver region by understanding social issues through research and dialogue; bringing together partners and coordinating action; influencing public attitudes, systems and policy; measuring community change and evaluating investments. United Way supports vulnerable people and works to prevent social problems. United Way of the Lower Mainland and its partners are focused on helping seniors and helping children. The following organizations provided generous sponsorship support for the Care to Change Video Competition at the Supporting Level: The Beat 94.5FM, The Province and VISO Give.

For more information on the Care to Change Video Competition, visit: www.caretochange.ca

For more information on the United Way of the Lower Mainland, visit: www.uwlm.ca

Click here to view the full press release.