NMBA promotes staffer as association to grow membership, activities

Ontario’s New Media Business Alliance (NMBA) is set to embark on a major expansion in membership and scope of activities in keeping with new momentum in the interactive media industry. To stickhandle the bolstered roster of initiatives, head Ian Kelso has given Kathleen Webb, hired a year and half ago (CNM, March 3/04), a promotion. She takes on the title of director, programs and development, and will largely have responsibility for seeing the association through a growth phase that will see NMBA reach out to the e-learning community as well as others to expand the communities it serves in the province. The young organization, formed out of the ashes of the Interactive Multimedia Producers Association (CNM, May 18/00, May 31/00), but which only really found its feet in the summer of 2001 (CNM, July 12/01), can boast of an impressive record of activities to date, the continued growth of which first necessitated Webb’s hiring. Its series of iLunches have been enormously popular, and the group plays a critical role in running the Ontario Media Development Corp. (OMDC)’s Pl@tform program in partnership with Sympatico. The NMBA also organized a trade mission from Essex, U.K. to Canada, and Webb has been playing a key role in shaping the association’s strategic business plan. She was also an important player in shaping this year’s expanded roster of Canadian New Media Awards categories. Now, Kelso tells Canadian NEW MEDIA that the association hopes to expand well beyond its current membership of around 50 to other interactive digital media groups, including e-learning, which stand to benefit from the group’s activities. In addition, NMBA is spearheading new research initiatives in partnership with the national coalition of regional new media associations to help define and understand the national sector, and it is contemplating holding a conference dedicated to interactive media sometime in January or February of 2006. Further details of some of these intiatives will likely emerge at the upcoming VIDFEST event in Vancouver, including a re-branding of the coalition. Kelso says the multiple national initiatives being driven by NMBA alone or with its regional partners eat up valuable time, and praises Webb’s ability to keep things running smoothly in Upper Canada. "Her project management skills are amazing. She’s been heavily involved in…the business side of NMBA, helping to connect companies together, both within the province as well as across Canada (and) around the world. Her concentration’s really been designing programs that’ll enhance the business development of companies. Whereas, I’ve kind of taken on more of the policy front agenda." The roughly split responsibilities seem to have paid off. Kelso and his coalition partners including Dan Fill and Steven Comeau of the Canadian Film and Television Production Association’s new media committee and Linda Brown of New Media BC were recently successful in pushing a major boost to one of the industry’s main funding vehicles, the Telefilm Canada Canada New Media Fund. Kelso says that at last count it was estimated the NMBA has helped approximately 150 companies through its activities, and he says the association can take some credit for recent positive developments. "There seems to be momentum in progress, and I hope that’s because of some of the things that we’re doing. We’ve gotten great feedback on our programs, and certainly things like iLunch which we’re looking to relaunch again this fall – opportunities that don’t otherwise exist for companies to get together and network and find partnerships, both creatively, financially and technologicially…By what people are saying, yes, I think we do make a difference. And on the national front, too, with the recent Telefilm increase – I’d like to think that that’s due to the work that we’ve been doing. Certainly, a lot of people have been working very hard at trying to make a positive change." In its flurry of activity, however, Kelso concedes that communications and outreach has sometimes suffered. To redress this, NMBA is already seeking to hire immediately a new staffer. "We’re looking at, policy-wise, keeping a tight grasp on our focus, whereas, in terms of the programs and services that we can offer, and that we have been offering, we’ve realized that we do reach out and we do touch a number of other stakeholder areas in the new media industry. We have three different tiers of membership in NMBA. We have our full membership, our associate membership, and our supporting membership. And, we really haven’t concentrated on the latter two as well as we could have, and part of that is a communications problem. We haven’t really communicated to the different stakeholder groups that, hey, there is a place for you in the organization, and to that end, one of the things that we’re looking at doing almost immediately is hiring a communications and research coordinator." He adds: "Communications is always one of the most difficult tasks when you’re trying to run what basically feels like a start-up organization. We’ve been growing in leaps and bounds in terms of the activity we’ve been doing, and the level of programs and services we’ve been offering. Things like Pl@tform, or the national coalition activities – they eat up huge amounts of time, and you sometimes find that you’re not getting out there and getting out those communications as effectively as you could at the end of the day. There’s so much to do, so we really need somebody to come in and make sure that we get our newsletter out on a regular basis, and are communicating to our membership, and we’re just letting people know what we’re up to in terms of the roster of programs and services and do a proper marketing to make sure that people are aware of what’s going on." The group counts about 50 members today, including recently signed IBM Canada and CBC.ca, which is sponsoring its online calendar. To grow, Kelso says it will begin recruiting very soon. "We’re going to engage in a membership drive probably starting in about two weeks time. We’ve sort of been holding off because we’re going through this business planning process, and we’re looking at all the different ways we can expand our programs and services and try to bring in more of the community, but still keep our core focus on content and business." At the same time, NMBA will be project managing two important initiatives for the new media industry: the Canadian Interactive Industry Profile (IIP), and a new DVD project highlighting Canadian interactive companies intended to help firms here export their wares. Both are being supported by the coalition of associations. "We’re going to hook that into trying to pull together a national directory so people can look up different companies all across the country by region, by sector, and we’re looking at bringing a lot of the stuff over to the web, as well, and putting it onto streaming video and building a web-based sort of presentation from the DVD – going multi-platform." Finally, NMBA is also spearheading a potential new industry event to be held early next year, likely in Toronto. Kelso says both the OMDC and Telefilm have given early positive feedback to the plan, which is being worked on by Webb and fellow NMBA organizer Stewart Hall. Kelso says the planners are optimistic that it will come off, which would fill a gap in the industry schedule that would otherwise appear to stretch from the end of June to the beginning of next June. Though it would be mounted in Toronto, where conferences are sometimes marred by busy executives scooting between the venue and their office, Kelso says efforts will be made to retain the retreat mentality and attitude of successful events such as the Banff Television Festival and nextMedia. "We want to really position it well. We want to bring a lot of value. We want to bring the right international partners in. We really want to make it a really useful exercise. It’s hard to take two to three days away from work. Ultimately, that costs you probably for the next two or three weeks afterwards. So, you really have to build a great value proposition. We’ve talked to some international partners and they’re very excited about it. We’ve already got a lot of them saying they’ll help us bring speakers. So, we’re well on our way right now."

NMBA promotes staffer as association to grow membership, activities

News | 06/10/2005 4:00 am EDT

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