Operanation + Rufus Wainwright = An Unforgettable Night with the Canadian Opera Company

When I worked as a journalist, I spent three years as the editor of BizBash magazine, a publication geared towards corporate meeting and event professionals in Toronto. The position required me to attend and report on a range of events across the city, including countless fundraisers and galas. (It wasn’t a bad gig!)

The best events were always the ones that delivered a unique experience to guests by going above and beyond in an effort to engage the audience with the brand or organization hosting the function.

It might sound like a simple concept, but only a few events did this extremely well.

And although I always tried to be objective in my reporting, I definitely had some personal favourites on the annual event calendar, one of which was Operanation.

In recent years, Operanation has grown from a small cocktail party to a major fundraiser for the Canadian Opera Company, becoming one of the hottest event tickets of the year in the process.

In 2010, the event paid tribute to Cinderella and Rossini’s La Cenerentola with Cinderella: Rock the Ball, an evening featuring performances by the likes of Broken Social Scene (in a mash up with COC Ensemble stars Ambur Braid and Wallis Giunta) and drag queens dressed as Cinderella’s wicked stepsisters—in other words, not exactly what you’d expect from an opera event.

Putting a new spin on opera in the effort to attract and expose a younger demographic to the art form is one of the event’s primary aims. And this year’s fundraiser, Operanation 8: A Muse Ball, promises to do just that (and I’m not just saying that because I’m on the event committee for the upcoming benefit!)

Since joining Delvinia as the firm’s Public Relations Manager earlier this year, I’ve had the opportunity to become more familiar with the COC (Delvinia is the COC’s digital marketing sponsor) and the organization’s commitment to creating experiences that connect with its audience, both at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts and in the digital realm.

On Friday, October 21, Operanation 8: A Muse Ball will mix rock, opera and dance for a celebration of artistic inspiration in all its forms. Rufus Wainwright is headlining and the dance-pop band Austra will perform in collaboration with soprano Ambur Braid and baritone Adrian Kramer of the COC’s Ensemble Studio (Canada’s premier training program for young opera professionals) .

Additional highlights include a fashion installation featuring designers Calla, Joeffer Caoc, Greta Constantine, Arthur Mendonça and Ashley Rowe and a visual art installation by Nadia Belerique and Jennifer Rose Sciarrino.

Visit operanation.ca. Buy a ticket. And, prepare for what will surely be an unforgettable night with the Canadian Opera Company.

Top Chef Canada Cooks Up Contest with Mobio QR Codes

Viewers of Top Chef Canada can now win a $15,000 GE Monogram Kitchen by scanning a QR Code that will appear on air during the show over the next four weeks. People who want to enter the contest but miss capturing the code during the broadcast or during a commercial through the week can visit the Top Chef Canada website and capture the QR Code directly from their computer screen. The only other way to enter the contest is by mail. (This fact should be enough to motivate viewers to download and register their Mobio app.)

Mobio Identity Systems is a Vancouver-based company whose app is available for iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices. Mobio users are prompted to register their personal information and have the option to attach their credit card details to their Mobio account, turning their mobile phone into (in Mobio’s words) a payphone.

The Mobio app scans QR codes as they appear in email, on the web, in print or on television. In this example with Top Chef Canada, users are taken to a contest entry form within the Mobio app. The difference with Mobio is that there is no need to type in your personal information, the user simply checks the box for name and email.

Back on April 27, Shaw Media (owner of the Food Network Canada) announced they will be the official broadcast reseller of Mobio’s payment and marketing applications to ad agencies, media buyers and other clients across Canada.

I’ve only seen the code appear as part of the promos broadcast through the week. It appears for less than 10 seconds, but does direct the viewer to the website where they can scan the code. The experience of scanning the code from the website is very efficient, the scan and contest entry literally takes seconds.

Top Chef Canada airs on the Food Network Canada at 9 p.m. ET/10 p.m. PT.

Microsoft Kinects with Hackers

When Microsoft’s Kinect for the XBox 360 came out last November its relatively low cost and ability to both record video and sense the position of objects in 3D space made it an extremely tempting piece of hardware for hackers.

A $3,000 bounty was offered by Adafruit Industries to the first person who could create open-source drivers for the hardware. The prize was quickly claimed and hackers began using the drivers to create some amazing applications for the Kinect.

Here’s one of my favourites:

Microsoft recently announced they will be releasing a free SDK for the Kinect this spring, reversing the company’s initial “hands off” position. No doubt the flood of good publicity the hackers created around Kinect influenced the decision to officially open it up for developers. It will be interesting to see how the official SDK compares with the open-source drivers.

In a spy versus spy twist it has been revealed that the bounty for the open-source drivers was started by a former Microsoft employee who worked on developing the Kinect. Wow. I hope he has good lawyers.

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