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Stand up and be counted
At this weekend’s Digital Media Camp one of the most interesting topics was proposed by Justin Kozuch of Refresh Events.
He asked what, as a community, we could do to assemble quality data on the Digital Media industry in Toronto? There is currently no good accounting of how many companies exist in Toronto or how many people work in the field or what value we are adding to the economy.
He cited A List Apart’s survey as an example of the type of information we require.
Why is this important?
So first off why would we bother trying to assemble this data?
For one, we need to understand what impact we have on this city’s and province’s economy. While we may have been a cottage industry in the past we are a legitimate industry now. We create jobs, we support local landlords, local suppliers like ISPs and computer retailers, we need to quantify this.
There is currently no good information on this. StatsCan data is terrible and trying to get the government to collect it will take forever.
If we are able to quantify this, we can begin to have a voice in shaping policy on issues like Net Neutrality, HST and other issues that affect us as an industry.
Once we know how large we are and what we are comprised of we can begin to align together. One of the mandates of Digital Media Camp was to identify “How can we work together to propel Toronto’s technology, content and design communities into the future and make Toronto a globally competitive hub of digital media entrepreneurship and innovation?” Arguably this is impossible without being able to actually identify who the community is.
What are the barriers?
The most obvious barrier to me is how we self identify in this community. For example, is someone at IBM in the same industry as someone at a 3 person open source based dev shop? We may not identify cleanly with each other. I know whenever I have to pick from a list of StatsCan industries I can never figure out where to put us. Are we marketing, are we technology are we content? This is a big issue that needs to be defined.
DigitalMediacamp defines us as…
Digital Media is most simply defined as any information that is created and shared virtually, rather than physically. It has growing applications in all industries, including:
– entertainment – film, TV, games, visual effects– healthcare – diagnostic imaging, collaborative care, health IT
– education – immersive learning environments
– finance and insurance – modeling complex data sets
– minerals and mining – seismic exploration
Uhm, not sure about this definition as it is extremely broad and our company would not fit cleanly in those examples. Some work definitely needs to be done on this issue.
Next steps
I slipped out before the end of the session on Sat but I’ve heard there is an action item which is to continue this discussion on Jan 18th in Toronto. There will be info forthcoming.
I believe this is an important issue that we need to take care of as a grass roots initiative. It is up to us to stand up and be counted.
As the person who entered that digital media definition on the digitalmediacamp.org site, please don’t take that as gospel. It is at best a motherhood and apple pie statement; a placeholder until we have a better definition.
We’ll take what we learn at DIgitalMediaCamp, and what folks like you tell us, and we’ll refine that definition. In fact, we’ll probably redefine it constantly.
We took a first shot, knowing that it wouldn’t be correct but that it would be a start. After all, we’re learning too.
this is such an awesome initiative, and one that i think is badly needed to clarify and to disambiguate a fragmented industry. count me in to help organize, find some funding and whatever else!
Jon,
Thank you for posting this piece; I’ve been thinking about our conversation quite a bit since Saturday afternoon.
I’m in the process of putting my thoughts down in digital format and will address the idea officially in a blog post on Thursday.
To your point of how we self-identify in this community, I couldn’t agree more. StatsCan hasn’t done enough research on the Digital Media sector, specifically the types of companies and skills that exist within the sector, which explains why it’s hard to self-report into StatsCan. The reporting model that StatsCan uses is also geared towards the large companies, like the IBMs’ and the Microsofts’ of the world.
Ultimately, we need to stand up and be counted for the betterment of our industry, our community and for the improved and continued health of our economy.
As promised, our official response and call to action:
http://refresh-events.ca/blog/2009/12/16/torontos-digital-media-industry-who-are-we/