Like so many things in life, making documentaries and other nonfiction product is about relationships. And that, the way Jim Shenkman sees it, is what brings people to the Realscreen Summit.

‘There’s some deal-making,’ at the three-day docuconference, he notes, ‘but this business is based on relationships. This is where people come for specific meetings, or to make luck happen.’

Roughly 1,100 people in this case, including some 150 execs from Canuck companies including CanWest MediaWorks, Alliance Atlantis and CBC/SRC, plus attendees from across the U.S., the U.K., China, Australia and Brazil, to name a few. The summit is put on by Brunico Communications, which publishes Playback Daily and Realscreen magazine, and of which Shenkman is president and executive publisher.

‘It’s become a real calendar event for coproducers and broadcasters,’ he says, sandwiched as it is between other meet ‘n’ greets such as IDFA, in late fall, and MIPTV in April.

The summit runs Jan. 29-31 in Washington, DC ‘s Renaissance Hotel, opening with workshops on pitching and fundraising, before moving on to a busy schedule of 30-minute talks with execs including Michael Cascio of National Geographic Channel, Fox Reality’s David Lyle and Michael Rubin of MSNBC. Reps from France 5, Sundance Channel and PBS are also due to appear.

Shenkman – who spends a lot of time at the summit playing matchmaker to TV-makers and commissioning editors – notes that Canadians often use the summit to build relationships with U.S. heavies including PBS and Nat Geo.

The summit has also scheduled a series of one-on-one interviews. Rob Sharenow, the nonfiction SVP at A&E, will talk about the recent turnaround at that channel, followed by sit-downs with Jane Root of Discovery Channel, Lisa Heller of HBO and Alex Graham, boss of the much-acclaimed production house Wall to Wall Television (Naked Planet, Spymaster).

A keynote discussion about new media featuring execs and thinkers includes Miguel Monteverde, exec director for video programming at AOL, and noted scholar Andrew Lippman of the MIT Media Laboratory.

Also on the agenda, the newly formed Association of Commercial Stock Footage Licensors is scheduled to unveil a new system for licensing rights to stock footage, the presentation of which will kick off a new series of forums on legal and other issues surrounding nonfiction footage.