Making Twitter History in Yorkton, Saskatchewan

Erica — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 20:38:23 +0000

A very cool thing happened to us at this years Yorkton Film Festival. We hit the ‘top ten trending twitter topics’!

Festival Social Media Team: Lee, Karen & Tris tweeting away

Now I know what some of you are thinking, so what, we do that all the time at various events here in Vancouver. Well, what made this hit on the ‘top ten trending twitter topics’ so exciting for both Tris Hussey and myself is that it was the twitter community following along on the Interactive Storytelling Panel conversation from outside of the room that drove us up to the ‘top ten trending twitter topics’. To the best of Tris’ and my knowledge this had only ever been done with conferences and events from inside the room. Definitely a twitter first for both Tris and I.

yff09 delegate, Joanne MacDonald, tweeting for the first time.

To make this even more exciting, this happened whilst one of the main points that we were getting across is that social media is about community and building the community around you. The twitter community demoed this for the festival delegates in real time, as they illustrated to the room how a conversation could go beyond four-walls and those that could not be present could still be a part of the conversation. The highlight of this for me was not during the panel, but at the awards gala, when @heckofamom could not be present at festival to see her sister, Teresa MacInnes win two Golden Sheaf Awards for ‘Norm’, but she could follow along in real time on twitter and be a part of the night with her parents, brother-in-law and Teresa. My eyes welled up with tears and I got all choked up when they thanked Tris and I at the end of the evening.

Teresa & her husband, Kent winning the Golden Sheaf for Best of Festival for 'Norm'

Community is also the factor that makes the Yorkton Film Festival so special to me. This Film Festival is a whole community event that the families of Yorkton, Saskatchewan put on for the film community. The community made us dinner every night for heavens sake. It was pretty gosh, darn special and I feel incredibly fortunate for having been a part of it.

Members of the Yorkton Red Hat Society at Opening Night

An enormous thank you to the twitter community, Yorkton community and yff09 delegates for making this years Yorkton Film Festival so very special to us!

Raising a glass to the following tweeters:

From Outside the Room:

From Inside the Room:

Launching Ahimsa Media 2.0

Erica — Mon, 04 May 2009 23:12:38 +0000

Welcome everyone to the new and improved Ahimsa Media!!

As many of you are aware, Ahimsa Media has been undergoing some changes over the past year and a half, shifting our focus from Traditional Broadcast and Video Production to New, Social and Emerging Media Storytelling and we are loving it! In the busyness, it’s taken a while to update and rebuild the Ahimsa Media site to reflect our current focus and work, but here it is at long last!!!

So what are we up to these days?

Our main focus is on New, Emerging and Social Media Storytelling.

What does that mean? Well, that we consult with Traditional Media (films, tv series, video, books, magazines, writers, directors, advertisers ..etc), Businesses and Corporations to help them tell their stories to the new and interactive Social Media space. This involves building aspects of their stories online in an interactive manner or telling the behind the scenes story of the making of. An example of this would be Being Emme, one author’s adventures in the writing of her novels. We also built the original Sexy In Van City (2008), helped with the online promotion of the Vancouver Theatrical Release of Mark Leiren-Young’s The Green Chain, and are currently consulting on menvent.

Being Emme

As an accompaniment to New, Emerging and Social Media Storytelling Consulting, we are also busy educating on New, Emerging and Social Media Storytelling.

Photo Taken by Invoke Media at WIFF New Media Day 2009

Educational Initiatives have included:

building Bridging Media with Megan Cole
helping Achilles Media tell the stories of the 2008 nextMEDIA and the BANFF Television Festival online
co-producing the 2009 WIFF New Media Day with Maayan Cohen and Danika Dinsmore.

Upcoming educational initiatives include:

New, Emerging and Social Media Classes and Workshop s taught by Tris Hussey and Erica Hargreave
participating on a panel on Interactive Storytelling at the Yorkton Film Festival
teaching two Social Media Storytelling Classes to teens through the Delta School District

Aside from that, we are busy as always with a few Traditional Media Projects. The current projects include:

writing the scripts and education packages for four BC Health related ESL Videos for ELSA Net
writing the educational package for the movie, The Green Chain
regularly contributing to Cloverleaf Country Magazine

ahimsamedia.com » menvent

Making Twitter History in Yorkton, Saskatchewan

Launching Ahimsa Media 2.0