PROMAX & BDA, the world’s largest association for promotion and broadcast designers in the electronic media, has a broad-based agenda on tap for its annual conference slated for June 21-23 at the Marriott Marquis in New York. In addition to its award proceedings (PROMAX & BDA Awards are slated for Thursday evening, 6/23), the three-day confab will be highlighted by numerous sessions addressing various aspects of the industry, ranging from creative to business to the impact of new platforms and technologies.
On the latter front, Nihal Mehta, founder/president of ipsh!, San Francisco, will discuss how the entertainment industry is looking to capitalize on the personal mobile phone platform. Content ranging from entertainment to marketing/advertising is starting to gain prominence on mobile phone screens.
Meanwhile, another PROMAX & BDA session is scheduled to tackle marketing in a post-TiVO world, with panelists to be announced. Also on tap are discussions on the HD marketplace with Andrew Struse, creative director, iNDEMAND, and the burgeoning video game industry.
The video game arena is the key focus of a panel discussion billed as featuring “change agents.” Slated to participate are William H. “Bing” Gordon, chief creative officer/executive VP/founder of Electronic Arts, a leading designer, marketer and promoter of video games; Charles Hirschhorn, founder/CEO of G4 Media, the 24/7 TV network dedicated to video games; and J. Allard, corporate VP/chief XNA architect of Microsoft, and a founding member of the Xbox Platform Project.
Offering assorted perspectives on the electronic media design industry will be a roundtable discussion moderated by Jeanne Kopeck, president/creative director of Citizen Pictures. Panelists will include: Jakob Trollback, president/creative director of Trollback & Co.; Patrick McDonough, founder/creative director of PMcD Design; Dan Pappalardo, executive creative director/co-founder of Troika Design Group; Citizen Pictures’ creative director Mitch Monson; Juan Delcan, creative director, Spontaneous; Micha Riss, founder/creative director of Flying Machine; Adam Toht, founder/director, The Saline Project; and Jeff Doud, executive creative director, R!OT Atlanta.
A separate session on the state of design will feature Elaine Cantwell, creative director of Spark, who will present to attendees some of the best broadcast, commercial, music video and other work completed from around the world over the past year.
Complementing this will be a look at young emerging talent in the field, via “Voices of Youth,” a competition being conducted jointly by UNICEF and PROMAX & BDA. Aspiring producers/designers under the age of 25 from around the world will enter one-minute videos to showcase their design/filmmaking prowess.
There will also be ample opportunity for confab attendees to network, facilitated in part by exhibit pods–including info kiosks, Internet stations, networking cafes and demos–that will be laid out as a marketplace on the fifth floor of the Marriott Marquis.
PROMAX & BDA is a global, nonprofit association dedicated to advancing the role and effectiveness of promotion, marketing and broadcast design professionals in the electronic media. For further info, log onto www.promax.tv.
