It’s was officially day one of the Kidscreen Summit 2011 in NYC and the conference was in full swing. Producers and broadcasters from all around the globe are here in record attendance with unconfirmed reports of over 1600 people registered -- probably a couple hundred more not! The Delegates Lounge, where many of the meetings take place, was packed full and buzzing around, leaving all of us veterans reminiscing about the old days when conference took place in LA and only about 100 people total attended. The energy is positive and people are upbeat and lots of business seems to be getting done. Kidscreen has morphed from a chilled out meet and greet, development, co-production, “take a step back and have a bird’s eye-view of the business” to a mini MIPCOM market. Meetings are booked back to back every half hour with breakfast, lunches, cocktails, and dinners locked in weeks ahead of time. And with Toy Fair overlapping, many people arrived at the conference as early as Saturday in order to walk the Javits Center floor to see what is happening at retail.
For an additional fee, the folks at Kidscreen dedicated today to their Master Classes segments, covering topics such as Transmedia, Format Doctoring, Audience Awareness and the “Mentoring” sessions with key industry professionals. As my main purpose here is to make connections and relationships for my projects in development, I did not attend these classes and hardly left the delegates lounge where I in meetings all day long. Word on the street was that these master classes were designed for new attendees who want to quickly immerse themselves in the business.
Tomorrow there are a number of interesting sessions and I will be filling you in along the way!