AUGBE at FITC: interview with Shawn Pucknell
- Door dimitrivh op 23 Feb 10
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Q: Hi Shawn, For the people who don't know FITC, can you tell us what it is exactly?
FITC, formally Flash In The Can started out in Toronto. After a big success we organized the event annualy in Toronto and later on in Tokyo, Chicago, Hollywood, Amsterdam... and just confirmed officially for the first time: FITC San Fransisco in august!
Q: All right, What a premiere! Can you dive a little deeper in to the conference baseline: Inspire, Educate, Challenge?
Since we are not in Canada anymore and broadened our horizon, we decided to use the acronym FITC to cover a more broad range of topics. It can mean wathever you want...
At that time we started thinking about the organization, the events and came up with inspire, educate and challenge and i think we try to push those terms and push everything in those categories.
Q: FITC is represented in America, Europe but also in Tokyo, what are the main differences between those markets.
North-America and European events are similar in the setup of the event, multiple tracks, multiple days and also a good percentage of local speakers.
in Asia, we focus more on international speakers. It's not that they don't have talent but they have less access to the international community, partly because of language barriers. Its hard to get the organiziation done in terms of live translations, that's why we only have one track at the moment. Still, we feel their excitement and enthousiasm and are working on upcoming Seoul and Tokyo events!
Q: How many events are there in a year?
2010 will be our largest year, I believe we have 12 on the calendar at the moment. Amsterdam, Toronto, Seoul, Tokyo .. and a whole bunch of others, including our new San Fran event. West-coast, here we come!
Q: FITC Mobile was the first in it genre. Are you satisfied with the first edition?
Yes! In september 2009, we did FITC Mobile, which was technology neutral. We tried to cover all platforms and was focussed on developers, enable them to compare.
The mobile community appreciates those efforts.
We will do another FITC Mobile in sept 2010 and I think we'll see it grow and expand. We'll see more topcis because the rapid evolution of that market. That is wat makes it fun, staying ahead of the curve and make it as complete as possible.
Q: A last piece of advice for our digital creatives at the Benelux: what trends/topics should we keep an eye on?
As an ex-developer, for me the best thing is the ability to solve problems. You'll need this as we get more technologies and platforms.
Thanks Shawn!
