scales, robert scales

Krug and I just returned from E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, in LA and what a busy week it was! E3 is the premier trade show for the video and online gaming industry.

We went down on behalf of New Media BC and the Digital Media Association of Alberta to provide coverage of the show including recording podcasts with several companies from BC and Alberta who were exhibiting at E3.

Some of the companies I interviewed includes Jarhead Games, Buena Vista Group, Piranha Games, Next Level Games, and Hal Josephson of Media Sense.

You can find the podcasts when they're uploaded on iTunes and lots of pictures from the show on Flickr.

kk and I attended a 'power breakfast' called "Gaming's Future and Cross Platform Design" with the leaders of the Canadian video game and electronic entertainment industry hosted by the Canadian Embassy Los Angeles and held at the prestigious Los Angeles Athletic Club…

"Think members only, old money, dingy rooms full of polo trophies and pictures of body builders, Persian rugs in the washrooms, and a Rembrant hanging behind the speakers podium. It was beautiful." said KK in his post (which is nearly the whole foundation for this post.. It's only fair since I did the podcast that he write the blog post!)

At the breakfast we heard Mike Yuen, Senior Director of Gaming at Qualcomm on the future of the gaming industry and Lynda Brown of New Media BC spoke as well and gave an overview of Vidfest 2006 in Vancouver and invited everyone to come up for the event.

In addition to our citizen journalism coverage of the event I spend some time working and podcasting with the boys from AskANinja.com (currently the 6th most popular podcast/videoblog on the internet… go Ninjas!).

We had some time to do some networking with our friends over at Participant Productions (yet another Drupal site!), a socially conscious film production and financing company founded by Jeff Skoll of eBay fame.

Participant's mission says: "Participant believes in the power of media to create great social change. Our goal is to deliver compelling entertainment that will inspire audiences to get involved in the issues that affect us all.". Participant Productions has been working on Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth", about global warming and climate change that premiers this week in LA and will be in theatres later this summer (June 9th @ Tinseltown here in Vancouver). Continuous sign that this is a big issues as demonstrated by another one of Raincity projects; the DeSmogBlog.

Special thanks to Lynda Brown, Duff Gardner, Ken Bautista, David Peck, KK and the Bryght boys, the RCS team, Micki, Daniel Hengeveld and Crystal (thanks for letting me stay at the Villa), Zoe Ebb, Megan, Bill Morrisson, Mark and all our other peeps who made this trip so cool and amazing. Until next time in LA, my house is open to you guys anytime.