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True North Media House

Media Announcement

{Can be re-jigged into press release format}

 

A consortium of citizens announced plans to create the "True North Media House" - a media creation facility with production resources, collaboration space plus arts and educational activities during February and March 2010.

Run by volunteers and co-operating with other non-profit and business groups, the space will host a media centre where citizens can enrich the worldwide understanding of the civic issues and arts and culture news during the international sporting events in Vancouver/Whistler 2010.

The informal group has opened a public dialogue with VANOC via online Open Letters with an offer to assist in creating a social media component to up-coming Winter Olympic Games and continued the public dialouge at the Northern Voice conference with a panel called "Social Media and the Olympics: Then and Now" however VANOC declined to attend.

The plans call for a physical space with high-speed Internet, audio and video production facilities, green screen and interview space, press conference setup, and workstations. The centre will also point participants to resources about covering events within IOC IP guidelines as administered by VANOC and Federal legislation as well as protecting civil liberties.

The crowd-sourced effort will provide coverage of civic issues as well as cover arts, culture, and the media itself. Working from the True North Media House, storytellers can collaboratively capture and sharing content, organize photo walks to explore Vancouver area sights, and cover protests and other security situations.

This space will provide a forum for organizations from activist groups to sporting teams to meet media covering the events for their hometown newspaper, a blog or webzine, or to a major news outlets citizen reporter programs. The organizers will determine a registration process but aims to be available to as many media makers as facilities allow with the possibility of multiple facilities to service both additional Olympic-related areas.

True North Media House will serve as an entirely unassociated and informal complement to the official media centres: BC International Media Centre at UBC Robson Square run by BC Provincial Secretariat and hosting select online media as well as non-rights holding mainstream media, and the official IOC/VANOC Media Centre at Vancouver Convention Centre which is exclusively for rights holders (CTV in Canada's case, NBC for the USA, etc.).

 

Vancouver is a hub in the new web technologies and companies at the forefront of changing media. This new media community was rallied together by experienced un-accredited Olympic reporters who have covered Olympics Games and published many dispatches to major outlets and Olympic research papers. The organizers encourage communication between VANOC, IOC, VPD, RCMP and any other organizations who have interest, advice, concerns, or ideas on this project.