Raincity Studios' President Kris Krug is becoming as important to any new media event as the roof (but not quite as critical as wi-fi and coffee). Indeed, Kris Krug is in need of some serious carbon credits with all the travel but he is karmicly making up for the impact by bringing his new web savvy and business acumen to a diverse assortment of events.

The tour stop roster is getting a bit lengthy for my achey blogging fingers but here are a few forthcoming gigs to catch you up on Krug-Tour 2008 (t-shirts available soon - Kruggies, get your ducats ready!)

nextMEDIA - The Future of Digital Content

nextMEDIA is June 8 - 10, 2008 in beautiful Banff, Alberta and Kris is part of the advisory board and is responsible (with others) for:

a) reviewing possible panels and working with Achilles Media to program content for the nextMEDIA schedule;
b) bridging the disconnect between the various media mediums including: film, digital, web, MSM ...; and,
c) assembling an ace team of citizen journalists to demonstrate aggregation tools used to gather media and cross promote. Looks like social media heros Megan Cole and Erica Haregreave (fresh off the success of Bridging Media) are in his squad already.

What is the event? Well it's purpose seems to be rallying film, TV and new media production in Canada. Here's how the organizers describe the event and it's history:

nextMEDIA is where the world's leading edge content creators, aggregators, and most influential solution-providers meet to develop key business relationships. Set in spectacular Banff, Alberta the conference (June 6 - 18, 2008) once again links schedules with The Banff World Television Festival (June 6 - 8, 2008) to take advantage of the synergies connecting these two media communities.

In 2005 the conference moved to Banff, Alberta, as a complementary event to the Banff World Television Festival and was held directly preceding the BANFF Festival. nextMEDIA is guided by an international advisory board and is managed by Achilles Media, an events management firm that also produces the Banff World Television Festival and the World Congress of History Producers.

{Note: nextMEDIA offers some tips on Going Green}

Telefilm Content Creators Fellowship Program

Telefilm is the Canadian Crown Corp. primarily responsible for creating audio/visual content by encouraging original, unique Canadian cultural content. As a sponsor of nextMEDIA, Telefilm will award some valuable and prestigious fellowships to some deserving Canadian content creators.

Telefilm 2007 Judging Panel photo by KK from nextMEDIA 2007 Flickr set

To perform his duties in this process, KK is reading through an epicly huge binder with each proposal tabbed, organized and justified for consideration. This decision can really make someone's career and help a talented but under-known artist break out and have their work seen by many Canadians.

I've tried to get a peek into the tome to see the creativity sprouting from the nation but so far i've been unable to sneak into the tome under KK's watchful eye. Maybe i'll have to go to Banff to find out!

Beijing Olympic New Media Symposium

This is pretty lengthy and heavy so i'm going to save for the next post ... it'll be a good 'un!