Other Oceans to open studio in St. John's NL

Other Ocean Group Inc. announced plans to create a 62 person studio in St. John's. The studio will focus on design work, art work, production and coding of games for Xbox 360, Apple iPhone, Nintendo DS and Wii.

http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=169667&sc=79
http://www.thetelegram.com/index.cfm?sid=169899&sc=82

Breaking News from The Globe and Mail

Harper defends cuts to arts programs

JAMES BRADSHAW

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Prime Minister Stephen Harper defended $44.8-million in planned cuts to arts-and-culture programs for the first time yesterday. At the same time, the Conference Board of Canada released a report attesting to the economic benefits of investing in Canadian culture.

Harper said the government's “changes” to more than a dozen programs is the only responsible path, and echoed recent assertions by his communications director, Kory Teneycke, and Canadian Heritage Minister Josée Verner that the government has managed to walk a tightrope, trimming the fat from its culture portfolio while simultaneously increasing overall spending.

“What this government has also done in that area, as it's done across the government, is we've instituted an expenditure-management system, where over a period of five years we comprehensively review every program and we make sure that we're spending on priorities and spending on those programs that are most effective,” said Harper. “Some programs in arts and culture have increased in funding, others have gone down – in total it's gone up.” Federal investment in culture for the 2007-08 fiscal year was $3.4-billion, up from $3.2-billion in 2006-07.

Harper also painted promises from Liberal Heritage critic Denis Coderre to reinstate the eliminated programs, should the Liberals be elected, as irresponsible. “The opposition has a view that you can never cut any single program, ever. If that's how they want to run the country, you'll have two consequences. You'll either have out-of-control spending or you will have a flat amount of program funding that is increasingly less effective over time,” he said.

Tom McSorley, executive director of the Canadian Film Institute, is frustrated with the Conservatives' stance. He believes the driving force behind the cuts is the “ideological adamant rock” that funding the arts is not the federal government's domain, something the Conservatives have repeatedly denied.

“I don't think they listen with any degree of interest to the fact that the economic impact of the arts is demonstrably positive,” says McSorley. “To fall into the fallacy that it's really about moving money around – well it isn't.”

The Prime Minister's comments come in the wake of a recently released report from the Conference Board of Canada, in collaboration with the federal government, that confirms high economic returns on cultural investment. The report, entitled Valuing Culture: Measuring and Understanding Canada's Creative Economy, calls the cultural sector's role “as a magnet for talent, an enhancer of economic performance, and a catalyst for prosperity” a universal phenomenon.

The Conference Board estimates Canada's cultural sector generated $46-billion, or 3.8 per cent of Canada's GDP, in 2007. The sector's total impact including “indirect and induced effects” on other sectors leaves an economic footprint of $84.6-billion, or 7.4 per cent of GDP, the report states. Those revelations paint a picture of industry stability: Statistics Canada reported culture accounting for an identical 3.8 per cent of GDP in 2006.

The report put 2003 employment in the cultural sector at 616,000 jobs.

Including direct and indirect contributions to employment, the report estimates that culture accounted for 1.1 million jobs in 2007.

Canada's culture sector is being driven by growth in digital technology and expanding Internet use, the report states.

© The Globe and Mail

Ontario 2012: Stimulating Growth in Ontario's Game Industry

A 37-page report summarizing the opinions of the Ontario game industry on growing the industry. The cheat sheet is page 6.
http://www.omdc.on.ca/AssetFactory.aspx?did=6290

THE ELEVATOR PITCH

BlackBerry Partners Fund

On 12 May 2008, RIM, RBC and Thomson Reuters announced plans to launch the BlackBerry Partners Fund. The Fund is a $150 million venture capital fund being formed to focus on applications and services for the BlackBerry platform and other mobile platforms including mobile commerce (payments, advertising, retailing and banking), vertical and horizontal enterprise applications, communications, social networking, location-based applications and services (navigation and mapping), media and entertainment, and lifestyle and personal productivity applications. The Fund will consider all stages of development. The Fund is to be co-managed by JLA Ventures and RBC Venture Partners.

www.blackberrypartnersfund.com.

So how do you Jalloo?

June 11 - 12, Miramichi

Jalloo is the Festival of Animation and Gaming that celebrates the industry and its members with networking events, panels, workshops, keynote speakers, and showcases of professional and student work.

Jalloo is bringing in guest speakers - from the Atlantic region as well as folks from the United States, Germany, and Iceland. Guests include animator Willy Ashworth (Babar, Ewoks, CareBears, Tiny Toon Adventures), 3D artist Chaz Sutherland (The Matrix: Path of Neo, Medal of Honor: Rising Sun, The Golden Compass), animator Ron Doucet (Johnny Test, Oliver's Adventures, Speed Racer), game designer Ryan Shwayder (EverQuest II, Fighting Legends), and game artist Ben Mathis (Tony Hawk Project 8, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Ghost Recon 2).

Don’t forget to register by May 30th to guarantee a seat at our main networking event: Boat Ride on the Miramichi and Lobster Dinner.

Registration is FREE! At http://www.jalloo.net/register.htm

For a complete list of events and guests visit http://jalloo..net or contact John O'Shea, Events Coordinator, NBCC Miramichi at (506) 778-6997 or 1 (877) 773-6222.

The WB Returns As TheWB.com

April 28, 2008, 4:03 pm

By Brian Stelter

“Gilmore Girls,” starring and Lauren Graham as Lorela (left) and Alexis Bledel as Rory (right), ended its run on the CW last year, but the archived episodes will be available online on a new Warner Brothers Web site later this year. (Warner Bros.)

The beta site is online now at TheWB.com.

The WB brand, born as a broadcast network in 1995 and closed in 2006, will return as an online video Web site combining short original series with classic shows, the Warner Brothers Television Group announced Monday.

TheWB.com, and a complementary site for children called KidsWB.com, are part of a “digital destination” strategy by Warner Brothers, a subsidiary of Time Warner, to tailor Web sites to specific audiences.

In trying to compete for consumers’ time, Warner Brothers and other media companies have sought new outlets for content, sometimes bypassing the traditional network structure and creating broadband Internet channels.

“My 20-year-old daughter and her friends are watching ‘One Tree Hill’ and ‘Pushing Daisies,’ but not on television,” Bruce Rosenblum, the president of the Warner television group, said. “They’re watching on laptops and cellphones. Here’s the interesting part — to them, that is television.”