Last week the local tech community had the chance to shine during Vancouver Digital Week. The week kicked off with the Convergence 09 conference and perhaps the theme stuck with me, but I couldn't help but reflect on Vancouver's position as a city of convergence.

With its film and television industries, the city has long had a reputation as "Hollywood North." It's also home to large gaming industry with many big companies like EA setting up shop in town, a vibrant arts scene and an exciting local music scene that was recently on display as the city hosted the Juno Awards. However, as it was made clear by Ethan Kaplan at nextMedia's Bands, Brands and Audiences, these creative industries can no longer remain isolated.  During Vancouver Digital Week we had the chance to see what's possible when these different industries begin to converge.

I was inspired to see so many grassroots initiatives on display. The folks from W2 and Fearless City were out all week providing awesome coverage of the events and showing off the power of community media (including Raincity's SIFT tool).  Companies like Pixton, who won a popvox award for best user generated content site, are seeing amazing things happen by putting creative tools in the hands of amateurs while others like The Substream, who won the "best digital learning initiative (technology)" award, are building a community independent filmakers and actively helping to foster visual literacy and critical engagement with cinema.These are the kind of initiatives I get really excited about - initiatives that empower individuals and a help build an informed and culturally engaged public. It was great to see companies like Switch being recognized for their cutting edge work and  Invoke Media being recognized for the success of Hootsuite alongside students like Vancouver Film School's Aaron Chiesa being recognized for the thought prevoking film, Iran: A Nation of Bloggers. It's encouraging and a sign of a healthy creative community to see innovation coming from so many different sources.

Congratulations are also in order to all the popvox awards individual standout winners: Danny Robinson for his work at Bootup Labs, Gerri Sinclair from the Centre for Digital Media, Michael Tippet of Now Public and, of course, our good friend and former Raincity President Kris Krug who took home the award for Individual Stand Out in Social Media. Great ideas always take great people who are willing to make the come to life and it seems like Vancouver has no shortage of great people.  Check out the full list of winners here

As technologies continue converge, Vancouver appears to be in an excellent position to be a leader both in Canada and around the world. We've got a lot to be excited about, but now that the celebration is done, it's time to get back to work!