In an effort to bring together innovators and industry leaders to explore emerging trends in digital, social, and multimedia, FutureMedia at Georgia Tech hosted the first ever FutureMedia Conference on October 4^th, 2009 in Atlanta, GA. The day-long event included three keynote speakers, extensive demonstrations of technologies under development at Georgia Tech and in the Georgia startup community, and two expert panels who tackled issues involving the present and future of media.

The initial gathering brought together over 300 attendees from as far off as Canada, Ireland, South Korea and Singapore. Many of the industry’s leading technology companies attended including Microsoft, Google, Motorola, Cisco, Turner, and Pixar. Keynote speakers included Krishna Barat, creator of Google News; Ron Clark, founder of the Ron Clark Academy, and Chris Klaus, founder of Kaneva.

The principal conclusion was that Georgia has the potential to become a global pioneer and leader in the future of media. To do so, it will require focus, determination and collaboration among universities, corporations, venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and government to make it happen.

To continue this conversation, the event returned in October 2010 as FutureMedia Fest. The conference expanded to four days and included over a dozen panels, “Birds of a Feather” deep-dive discussions, musical performances, research and startup demos, nightly networking events, and keynotes from Turner, HP, Coca-Cola, Cisco, Google, and the Weather Channel. Academy Award winners Richie Baneham and Matt Madden of the movie Avatar closed out the fest’s final day.

More than 700 people attended the physical event, and thousands of others from nearly 80 different countries tuned into the watch the online stream.  Several major news outlets covered the event including CNN, IEEE-USA, and Mashable.

FutureMedia at Georgia Tech also released the first ever FutureMedia Outlook at the fest. The FutureMedia Outlook is a multimedia publication of Georgia Tech’s view of the trends that will fundamentally transform how content is created, distributed and consumed over the coming years.  For each of the six megatrends, the Outlook presents a fresh and objective look at current context and challenges, and offers insights into those technologies and business practices that will significantly impact the converging media ecosystem.

The overwhelming response and participation from the community has prompted us to bring back FutureMedia Fest for 2011. This year’s fest will take place from November 15-17^th and promises to be the best yet.

Registration for this year’s fest can be found here.For more information on FutureMedia at Georgia Tech visit http://www.futuremediaglobal.com.