Village Gamer

Victoria – ParetoLogic took home two VIATeC plaques at the 2009 VIATeC awards gala, claiming finalist positions in the Team of the Year and Innovative Excellence categories. VIATeC, the Vancouver Island Advanced Technology Council, is dedicated expanding and improving Vancouver Island’s technical industry.

Elton Pereira, CEO and co-founder of ParetoLogic, said of the placing: “We are honored to be recognized by VIATeC as award finalists, and we see the strength of our competition as a great sign of the growth of Vancouver Island’s tech industry.”

ParetoLogic’s finalist trophies celebrate widely different achievements. The Team of the Year category recognizes ParetoLogic’s Spyware Analysis Team. With their continuing efforts to identify and destroy malware, and their commitment to sharing their knowledge with industry insiders and general users, SWAT fit the award description as ‘demonstrating outstanding initiative and service delivery.’ In a video interview played at the gala, Jerome Segura, SWAT’s Team Lead, said one of the group’s motivations was to “educate every customer and non-customer.”
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Toronto – RBC today announced a call for nominations for the 2009 RBC Canadian Entrepreneur Awards program (CWEA). The RBC CWEA program will recognize the many talented Canadian women entrepreneurs who thrive despite today’s challenging economic environment.

“Women entrepreneurs are one of the fastest growing segments of the Canadian economy, and RBC is proud to help celebrate their passion and success at this annual awards ceremony,” said Shauneen Bruder, executive vice-president, Business and Commercial Banking.

The RBC Canadian Woman Entrepreneur Awards are the pre-eminent national business awards recognizing the country’s leading female entrepreneurs. For the first time since the creation of the awards program, applications received will be considered for two consecutive years.

“Whether starting a new business, sustaining the one they already have, or exploring new opportunities, Canadian women entrepreneurs continue to play a leading role in the Canadian marketplace,” explains Mike Michell, national director, Small Business and Women’s Market, RBC. “These women have incredible success stories that we believe other business owners can learn from.”
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Montreal – Vantrix, the leading provider of content adaptation and optimization solutions for converged wireless, broadband and cable networks, today announced Vantrix Media Profiler has been recognized by Network Products Guide — the industry’s leading publication on information technologies and solutions — as a winner of the 2009 Best Products and Services Award. The highly competitive annual award honors products and services that address the rapidly changing needs of technology end-users. Media Profiler rose to the top among nominations from all over the world to take top spot for software in the “Best in Convergence” category.

Vantrix Media Profiler helps drive consumer adoption of premium multimedia services such as mobile and web TV, user generated content and video on demand, while helping operators overcome the challenge of managing multimedia services across multiple screens. Media Profiler is a complete solution for the introduction, provisioning and management of multimedia content/services. It enables operators to manage subscriber services through an intuitive single point of operation, administration, maintenance and provisioning. Media Profiler facilitates a common user experience on any device and any network, promoting the agnostic delivery of content to converged services. This increases service stickiness and adoption while reducing churn, and delivering considerable OPEX and CAPEX savings as more multimedia content is delivered by network operators.
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Banff – “Beginning with the comedy troupe ‘Kids in the Hall’ Mark McKinney’s original characters and unconventional sketches have become a part of pop culture,” comments Peter Vamos, Executive Director of BANFF. “Whether as

Mark McKinney

creator, producer or actor in many memorable comedic productions, Mark has made an impressive contribution to the international film and television comedy landscape.”

Mark McKinney was first known for his work on the long-running sketch comedy troupe “The Kids in the Hall”, which ran from 1989 to 1995. Following that series’ success, Mark went on to star in “Saturday Night Live” from 1995 to 1997, and in 1998 wrote for Aaron Sorkin’s “Sports Night.” He later co-created the acclaimed mini-series “Slings and Arrows”, which he wrote and starred in for all three seasons. Mark then went on to both write and act on NBC’s “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.” As well, he directed and appeared on the CBC Radio post-apocalyptic comedy “Steve, The First” and its sequel, “Steve, The Second.”

Mark has also appeared in several films including the Kids in the Hall movie “Brain Candy” and the SNL spin-offs “Superstar,” “The Ladies Man” and “A Night at The Roxbury.” Mark had a leading role in the Spice Girls’ movie, “Spice World,” and also starred opposite Isabella Rossellini in Guy Maddin’s acclaimed tragic comedy “The Saddest Music in the World.”
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Calgary – Mob4Hire today announced that it has been selected as a winner of the Red Herring 100 North America Award. The Red Herring editorial team deploys a detailed process to whittle down a pool of 1,000 eligible, promising companies to the 200 Finalists and in a last round decided for the top 100 winners of this important North American award. Evaluations are made on both quantitative and qualitative criteria, such as financial performance, innovation, management, global strategy, and ecosystem integration. The Winners, elite executives and venture capital leaders from North America celebrated the Top 100 Privately Held Companies in San Diego, May 11-14, 2009.

“This is a great validation for Mob4hire and our business plan” states Stephen King, CEO Mob4Hire. “As the mobile application market matures, we hope to be to be able to make mobile software better through our unique crowd-sourced platform. There is no effective way to test on a foreign network unless you are on that network. It is a location specific problem which plays perfectly to the strengths of our crowd-sourced methodology. We have an elegant solution to a large problem in a massive industry, and we are thrilled to be recognized for it by Red Herring, especially as we enter our first round of financing”
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Banff – “The Banff World Television Awards have long been recognized as one of the most prestigious awards in the industry celebrating outstanding television programs by international TV creators,” comments Peter Vamos, BANFF Executive Director. “The 2009 nominees for the Entertainment and Documentary ‘Rockies’ are once again outstanding.”

Canwest presents the Banff World Television Awards. ‘E! News Weekend’s’ Arisa Cox will host the Categories’ Awards on Sunday, June 7. ‘ET Canada’s’ Rick Campanelli will host the Grand Prize Awards honouring ‘Best of the Best in Banff’ on Monday June 8.

The Interactive Awards will be handed out during BANFF’s sister conference, nextMEDIA, on Saturday, June 6, 2009. All ceremonies will be held at the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta, Canada

New additions to this year’s Rockies include the now expanded Sports program categories separated into two categories – Sports Documentaries and Sport Entertainment Programs. A complete list of nominees for the Entertainment and Documentary categories for the 2009 Banff World Television Awards follows below.
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Vancouver – The New Media BC PopVox Awards were held last night at  Workspace on Water Street.  While Village Gamer did not attend the Awards due to conflicting events, we’ve heard reports that the Awards were a lot of fun and that a good time was had by all.

The winners for 2009 are:

Best Digital Animation: Pride of Frankenstein – Jibber Jabber

Best Digital VFX: Inside Out – Switch Interactive

Best Digital Learning Initiative (Technology): The Film Lab – thesubstream
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Waterloo – Open Text, a global leader in Enterprise Content Management (ECM), today announced that it has been awarded a 2009 SAP(R) Pinnacle Award as the Regional Software Solutions Partner of the Year, EMEA. SAP Pinnacle Awards were granted to leading SAP partners that have excelled in enhancing the customer experience, addressing critical issues such as accelerating co-innovation and improving return on investment. Winners were selected based on over 300 nominations, twice the amount in 2008, received from partners and SAP employees. Open Text received the award at a special awards ceremony held on the eve of SAPPHIRE® 2009, SAP’s international customer conference being held in Orlando, Fla. May 11-14

“The SAP Pinnacle Awards reflect the continued success we are seeing both in EMEA and around the world helping customers connect their enterprise content with SAP solutions,” said Patrick Barnert, Vice President, SAP Solutions at Open Text. “We are especially pleased to have won an SAP Pinnacle Award two years running and look forward to even greater success in the coming year. By working closely with SAP, we are helping our joint customers lower costs, boost productivity and increase compliance.”
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Vancouver – The Leo Awards, established in 1998 to celebrate excellence in British Columbia film and television held their annual awards celebration and gala over the past two days at the Westin Bayshore. Since 2003, they have been a project of the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Foundation of British Columbia, a non-profit society formed to celebrate and promote the achievements of the B.C. film and television industry.

The Awards Celebration on Friday evening was hosted by twin brothers Jonathan and Drew Scott, with Saturday night’s Awards Gala hosted by Gary Jones. The Leo Awards Film Festival, held prior to the awards offered public screenings of this year’s Leo Awards nominees in several leading program categories — Best Feature-Length Drama, Best Documentary, Best Short Drama, and Best Student Production. We, however, are only concerned with the VFX, CGI and Animation sectors of the Awards program.

Best Visual Effects in a Feature Length Drama was won by Artifex and Spin VFX for Impact
Best Visual Effects in a Dramatic Series was won by the Stargate Atlantis team of Mark Savela, Shannon Gurney, Kodie MacKenzie, Viv Jim and Dan Weir for the First Contact episode
Best Animation Program or Series went to Kid vs Kat from Studio B Productions
Best Direction/Storyboarding in an Animation Program or Series was won by Nerd Corps Entertainment for Storm Hawks – Stratosphere
Best Screenwriting in an Animation Program or Series also went to Nerd Corps for Stormhawks, but for the Fire & Ice episode
Best Overall Sound in an Animation Program or Series was picked up by Rainmaker Animation & Visual Effects for Max Steel: Bio Crisis
Best Musical Score in an Animation Program or Series went to Bob Buckley for Stormhawks – The Storm Hawks Seven
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Vancouver – The BC Technology Industry Association (BCTIA) have announced the finalists for the 2009 Technology Impact Awards (TIAs). Marking the awards’ 15th year, the 2009 finalists reaffirm British Columbia’s status as a global leader in innovative software solutions, mobile communications, and energy conservation technologies.

“This year’s TIA finalists are making their mark on the world with innovative solutions that are improving productivity and environmental sustainability, while saving their customers millions of dollars every year,” observed Pascal Spothelfer, President of the BCTIA. “Innovation and best business practices are essential for our industry to weather the current economic storm. The TIA finalists are representative of the class of companies that come out of a downturn strong and well positioned for the recovery.”
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