Halifax-based producer JD MacCulloch says The Baddeck International New Media Festival is on track to run Oct. 11-13, despite the recent troubles in the world and the financial strains felt by many of the companies the festival is marketed to.

The working title of this year’s event reflects the current state of the interactive and new media marketplace: Winners, Losers & Survivors. MacCulloch says the festival has been hurt only marginally by the ill fate of some dot-coms and interactive content producers in the last year.

But it has had an impact on sponsorship, he says. ‘Some companies are genuinely cutting back and trimming, but the industry is not dead by any means. Companies are doing very exciting things and moving forward.’

The festival’s location, overlooking the Bras d’Or Lakes in Baddeck, NS, lends itself to the relaxed setting where delegates and attendees can talk business.

‘It’s a very spirited atmosphere,’ says MacCulloch. ‘When you lower the barriers and have people talking as people, they eventually come around to talking about business and making deals. As we get more structured and more organized, it’s harder to keep that spirit, but we are determined.’

This year, MacCulloch and his staff have lined up speakers that are well-versed in the world of interactivity. Among those confirmed are Stephan Balzer of Berlin’s Red Onion, Mark Bishop of Toronto’s MarbleMedia, Steven Comeau of Halifax’s Collideascope Digital Pictures and Jose Diaz of Brazil’s TV Globo, who will lead a workshop on virtual advertising through software and hardware applications.

MacCulloch also foretells of a seminar on financing new media with the Independent Production Fund/Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund’s financial director Charles Zamaria.

The keynote presentation on creativity, called ‘Present at Creation,’ will come from Bob Goodale, CEO of UltraStar Entertainment of New York, while the technology keynote will be presented by Jim Griffin, founder of Cherry Lane Digital/Evolab in L.A. Griffin will discuss ‘the last inch,’ updating the 1990s metaphor ‘the last mile,’ which was a reference to the long road ahead of telecom and cable companies looking to the future for VOD, digital cable and other interactive pipe dreams. Now, in 2001, these same companies are developing the actual device or interface between the consumer and the network and are only ‘inches’ away from achieving the results they had envisioned. MacCulloch says ‘the last inch’ will be a running theme and topic for much discussion at this year’s festival.

The CyberPitch, the SuperPanel, the gala awards show (this year hosted by Jana Lynn White from MuchMore Music and CBC Radio’s Jowie Taylor) and most other popular features from last year’s well-attended event will return.

-www.baddeckfest.com