I had the opportunity to give a presentation this past Thursday at the Opera America Electronic Media Forum in New York City. This conference was established to stimulate dialogue and ideas among Opera Companies across North America.

The Canadian Opera Company (COC) asked me to join them to the conference and deliver a presentation on the work we have been doing with the COC. I was joined by Jeremy Elbourne the COC’s head of Marketing, as well as, Claudine Domingue their head of PR.

The conference began and there were attendees from right across the US. We were the only Canadians attending.

The original intent of our presentation was to discuss the 7 Radio Broadcasts being aired on the CBC’s Saturday Afternoon at the Opera. However, we decided that not only would we discuss the Radio Broadcasts, but we would discuss the live event we created on coc.ca where we integrated a live chat around the streaming of the CBC broadcast for Madama Butterfly and the Nightingale. I even decided to take it one step further by describing the digital strategy we have helped to develop at the COC.

We knew things were going well when Jeremy Elbourne informed the audience that the COC was the 3rd largest Opera in North America in numbers of performances. This surprised some of the attendees, not expecting Canada to have such a successful Opera Company. By the time I finished taking the audience through the strategy we have developed for the COC, their new website and the results we have achieved, the audience was beyond impressed.

It is always great to see what we do in Canada as innovative and forward thinking, but I couldn’t have asked for more when I observed the pride that Jeremy and Claudine felt when they really saw that recognition and respect the COC received amongst their peers from the US.

Other attendees were definitely sharing some innovative approaches to the use of digital technologies, which resulted in some great discussion.

Here is my presentation from the Conference