TIFF Nexus – Conferences With a Twist
July 9, 2012
This past spring, TIFF Nexus hosted a series of conferences and creative jams to explore new ways of creating media in Toronto, in which our own Carly Shuler participated. We invited Jam Leader Mark Rabo to tell us more about what sets TIFF Nexus apart from other conferences about youth and media.
TIFF is known primarily by its unabbreviated namesake, the Toronto International Film Festival, which attracts a worldwide audience and fills the city with stars and star-gazers for two weeks each September. But what many don’t know is that TIFF has been undergoing a transformation over the last several years to become an upstanding citizen of all mediums, not just film. Since opening up the state-of-the-art TIFF Bell Lightbox building in Toronto, TIFF has been involved with organizations from across all mediums to collaborate on new initiatives that push outside its traditionally film-centric vision. One such initiative that did some interesting things was TIFF Nexus.
TIFF Nexus was a series of four conferences and creative jams with the goal of bringing together people from different creative communities—ones that often don’t cross paths—to explore their visions of the future. Each conference+jam combo focused on a different theme:
It was adding this creative jam twist to a standard conference structure that made things interesting. If you’re not familiar with a creative jam, it’s a group of people getting together and generating both ideas and prototypes—the understanding being that through exploration come more insights and through doing comes momentum. It’s also very helpful for deciding whether something is worth pursuing further. Think of it as “rapid prototyping for ideas.” Jams can take place in as little as an afternoon, a weekend or, as was the case with Nexus, over several months.
So the rag-tag band of adventurers (the jam participants) set off to lands unknown where they explored, learned, and experimented before returning to the village (the conference) with tales (their prototypes) of their experiences. Then together with the elders (the speakers) and villagers (the conference attendees) they discussed the future of their community.
Also worth noting is the freedom Nexus provided to the jam participants. Unburdened by commercial constraints like ROI goals or sponsor agendas they were able to move freely with their ideas and venture into new territory. Much credit to TIFF, OMDC (the Ontario Media Development Corporation), and other sponsors for recognizing the importance of traveling light.
Through the jam process, the TIFF Nexus series went from being just a gathering of people to a collaboration between people. It was a catalyst for new and lasting connections between industries and new projects (many of the participants continue to work on their ideas independently long after Nexus.) And with creative jams being at the core people gathering and making, the idea scales to any size and any group of people. In an upcoming post, I’ll record some of the lessons I learned leading a creative jam, which you may find helpful in organizing your own.
Mark Rabo is co-founder of the largest indie games festival in Canada, Gamercamp, and its spin-off for kids Gamercamp Jr. He’s on the board of The Hand Eye Society and is advisor to several game-related initiatives including GameChangersTO. He is currently collaborating with Mozilla and others on the Toronto version of The Hive Learning Network. His personal site is markrabo.com and personal Twitter is @markrabo.
Photo from TIFF Nexus Creative Jam courtesy of Endless Films.
