Thank you, and thank you for the opportunity to present this morning.
I'm Lynda Brown, the president of New Media BC. I'm joined by my colleagues Adam Gooch and Phillip Djwa.
We'd like to do a couple of things today. We want to show you some of our visual media and what's happening in Canada. We want to give you an overview of how the sector is growing in this country, because it's quite critical to this discussion. Then we'd like to give you some real-life examples with a small- to mid-sized enterprise that Phillip represents, and then discuss in some detail any questions you may pose.
First I'm going to show you a DVD, and then we're going to move into the formal part of the presentation.
[DVD Presentation]
So that's, in part, how our sector is seen by the rest of the world at this point: as a leader in digital entertainment production, which is one of the subsectors in digital media.
I'm just going to switch over to our PowerPoint presentation now so we can walk through an overview of the Canadian sector.
“Digital media” is really the term we're using these days. “New media” has become a little bit redundant. So when we talk about “new media”, we're really talking about “digital media”. They've become one and the same.
Nationally, we have agreed across the country that digital media falls into five dominant subsectors, and the six that are presented there. Generally we combine mobile content, digital film and animation, e-learning, web design--or what's called interactive design--and video games to represent the digital media industry. It's predominantly seen as the use of interactive digital content for the purposes of informing, entertaining, and educating. The term “interactive” is obviously very key to this definition and to the terminology of “digital media”.
Today—very briefly, because I know we're running short—we're going to give you a quick overview, look at some of our strengths, and tell you what we're working on as a national strategy. First of all, though, because we're all from Vancouver, we wanted to give you an idea of what's happening here.
Vancouver represents Canada's largest digital media cluster, with over 1,100 companies working in the region, generating about $2.1 billion. We're home to four out of the five world-leading game publishers. We have an over-25-year history in this sector. We also have some very prominent and internationally renowned e-learning tools, such as WebCT, and a strong reputation in the e-learning sector.
We have great strength in digital film and animation. Vancouver, as you may know, is the third largest North American production centre for film and television. The digital film and animation sector that we represent has definitely benefited from that. Now, with the merger of Rainmaker and Mainframe, we have the largest digital effects and animation studio in Canada, a world-recognized studio. We're launching a graduate program--the first of its kind, a master's degree in digital media--that will start in September of this year. We also have electronic arts largest studio in the world. It has 2,000 employees currently and is growing quickly.
We've been recognized internationally as a hub, a hot spot of digital media, right here in Vancouver. A very popular business magazine called Fast Company looked at the bohemian index to find clusters to watch. Vancouver, along with Montreal, was noted as being very prominent.
If we look at Canada overall, we have some very particular strengths. I think the first video showed you that we have huge and internationally highly recognized strengths in digital entertainment, but that's not all we're doing. We also are known for strength in new IP--or intellectual property--and original content production, and that's becoming increasingly key in this multi-billion-dollar market.
There is the emerging mobile factor. There is a growing market for the information and entertainment that you use on your BlackBerry and on your mobile phone. Canada is seen as leading some initiatives in this area.
If we look across Canada, we've got approximately 3,200 companies working in this sector, from coast to coast. We just completed a study called the Canadian Interactive Industry Profile, which goes into detail on this industry. I'd be happy to provide that after this presentation.
By and large, the industry across Canada is generating a significant amount of revenue, but I think it's important to note that the majority of our companies are still small to mid-sized enterprises, staffed at the under-20 or under-30 employees mark.
We have approximately 52,000 people working across Canada in this sector. Our friends in Montreal are also well recognized as a leading visual entertainment centre. And Toronto, of course, with its strength in film and television, has become the hot spot for convergent activities.
We're also seeing some very nice incubation programs out of Alberta and Manitoba, such as the Fortune Cat Games Studio, which is an investment program in original IT for game developers. That has been very successful and has been looked at internationally as a viable model.