The CDMN Canada 3.0 Digital Media Forum

Gail Chiasson, North American Editor

The Canadian Digital Media Network, which has 10 nodes across Canada that gather – along with 2,000 delegates – once a year to tackle key issues where Canada must succeed in order to improve its position in the global digital economy, will meet in Toronto May 14-to-16, 2013.

It will be the first time that CDMN meets in Toronto, it having outgrown the Stratford, Ontario, venue that’s traditionally housed the conference during its five-year history.

CDMN is a national network of incubators and accelerators that bring together industry, government and academia to accelerate the commercialization of innovation, in turn creating companies, jobs and wealth for Canada.

The CDMN Canada 3.0 digital media forum is where the country’s best minds work together to form an action plan, discuss and debate hot topics and share best practices and success stories.

We learned of CDMN through The Communitech Hub (Digital Media & Mobile Accelerator) in the Waterloo, Ont., area – location of Christie Digital Systems, Research in Motion, and many other well-known companies. The other nodes (hubs of Canadian technology) are: Accelerate Okanagan (Okanagan Valley, B.C.); Centre d’entreprises et d’innovation de Montréal (Montreal); MaRS Discovery District (Toronto region); National Research Council Institute for Information Technology (Fredericton, N.B.); Niagara Interactive Media Generator (Niagara region); Ryerson University Digital Media Zone (Toronto); TRLabs (Western Canada Prairies); Waterloo Stratford Campus (Stratford, Ont.); and Wavefront (Pacific Northwest region).

The CDMN wants prospective attendees, speakers, partners and sponsors to play an active role in shaping CDMN Canada 3.0 2013. To that end, they’ve launched the Canada 3.0 2013 SoapBox, the deployment of a crowdsourcing application that links into the Canada30Forum Facebook Page. Created by HitSend, a startup incubated at CDMN node Ryerson Digital Media Zone, the SoapBox platform allows users to offer, gather and share ideas, which can be voted on by other users using a simple click of a thumbs up or thumbs down icon.

If the idea resonates within the group, it is then forwarded to the decision makers at CDMN who can implement user ideas. CDMN is then able to respond, pushing a message back out to the community that submitted the original thought.


Leave a Reply