Canadian New Media Awards - Highlights

Last night I attended the 7th Annual CNMA event, which is basically Oscar Night for Canada's new media sector. It was my first time there, and on the whole it was quite well done. No VoIP here - that's for sure, but if you're into interactive media, social networking, gaming, distance learning, etc., this is where you want to be for the latest and greatest coming from Canada.

First things, first - I need to wave the flag for Canada to say how much is going on up here, especially in the gaming space. A quick review of the CNMA website and some of the media coverage tells that story pretty well.

I'll also steer you to a short backgrounder on the Canadian new media sector, put together by Deloitte, one of the major sponsors of the CNMA. I've done a number of posts about Deloitte, and their initiatives to support Canada's tech sector, and I hope to do another podcast with them soon to talk more about CNMA, and how finalists are selected.

In terms of last night's winners, the most notable was the Company of the Year, which went to Toronto-based MyThum Interactive, which has done a number of industry firsts in wireless apps such as SMS, mobile commerce and event ticketing using bar codes scanned from a mobile phone. You can review the full list of winners and finalists here.

It's a busy week for the Toronto tech community, and CNMA is part of a broader set of events under the Toronto Technology Week umbrella that kicked off yesterday. Also taking place this week is Mesh, which had a very successful debut last year, and looks to be just as good this time around.

To close out, I'll leave you with some photos from last night, courtesy of my Nokia N93....






Adam Fromon, CNMA Executive Producer and President of Delvinia Interactive - delivering the Special Recognition Award




Gary Gluckman, Deloitte's Canadian Media and Entertainment Leader - delivering the Company of the Year Award




CNMA was held at the Carlu, a vintage Art Deco venue




Technorati tags: CNMA, Jon Arnold, Delvinia, Deloitte, Toronto Tech Week