It's not that nothing's happening... it's that too much is!

We (VJzoo) had been planning our tour long before BM!F exploded into a big international event and cheap fares aren't refundable so we decided to stick with the tour despite the baaaaaad timing. I figured I could do most of what had to be done online, and all our hotels promised wireless internet. As it turned out though, things are never that easy.

To complicate matters even further, we had a project selected for the legendary X|Media|Lab in Singapore - which was an opportunity too good to miss, so we're away now until the end of September.

Big ups to the people who have been helping out behind the scenes while we've been gone, we've managed to get some sponsorships and so I'm now able to confirm some of the international guests. Full details will be posted as they come to hand at byteme.net.au/spea.html - those now confirmed include:

• Sue Erokan from Dreamworks Animation
• Robin Hunicke from EA Games
• Paul Van Ommen from Weta Workshop
• Stan Alley from Figwit (Frodo Is Great, Who Is That?) Australian Premiere Screening and Q+A
  
• Mia Makela aka Solu, Live Cinema artist (also appearing at Graphite)
  

Thanks very much to the generous employers, governments, film distributors and also BM!F's own wonderful sponsors for making it happen. Our official sponsors so far include:

Gold: City of Perth, Department of Industry and Resources, Central TAFE

Silver: ICTICC, Curtin University Careers

Bronze: MediaWorld, Scouta, Resolume

We are still looking for more sponsors and also donations to get the remaining guest speakers to Perth, so if you'd like to talk about it, get in touch :)

If you want to hear Kate Raynes-Goldie and me talking about web 2.0, you might like to come to our seminar The Social Web is Serious Business on 13th October. There are some other great talks by the Silicon Beach people, David Fono and others - it's definitely worth checking out the ICTWA 2007 Conference. My one beef? I HATE concurrent workshops. Remind me to avoid that as much as possible at BM!F. I want to be at all six of the ICTWA workshops, but only get to attend one before rushing to get to my own. Grrr. Concurrency sucks.

I promise proper updates when I get back to Perth, but at least that's a summary of the recent progress regarding BM!F. More great reasons to come along....