EKOS Communications, Inc.

So you're probably wondering what's been happening since my last blog. Quite a lot, actually. As some of you know, we're producing a CD-ROM for Oxford University Press Canada which is due to be handed over to them on Jan. 16th - only a week away. The CD-ROM will be included with a first year geography textbook to be marketed to students and faculty across Canada. On it, we're installing seven videos along with articles and PDF documents. Pulling together the videos, some of which were in production at the time of the deal with OUP being struck, along with writing new articles to go along with them, has consumed a considerable chunk of our time and energy. As if that weren't enough, we're also still refining our website, trying to get the look just right. So watch for a few more changes over the next week. Returning to the videos that we've just finished producing, we were exceptionally excited to have one of them have its world premiere with the President of Brazil on Dec. 23rd. Entitled "Cooperpires: Recycling Citizenship", the video reveals the struggles of a small recycling cooperative operating in a municipality of Sao Paulo to remain viable despite frequent changes in governmment and the subsequent loss of its support. The video also serves to profile the research of Dr. Jutta Gutberlet, a professor within the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. As I write this, we are currently exploring ways of enabling her to provide regular updates from Brazil where she will be until April. May not sound like it should be too difficult until it is made understood that the updates will be in video. We think we're very close to having the technological challenges worked out and are very anxious to begin testing it. If this approach proves successful, a universe of unlimited possibilities opens up in which we could receive short videos shot on location anywhere in the world and with a bit more capacity at our end, be posting them in near real time. Quite mind blowing. Okay, I know what you're thinking. This is all very exciting, but when do you get to see these new videos? Right? Isn't this what you're thinking? Well, very, very soon. In fact, over the next few days you should start to see them going up. Some as one-offs; others, we may package as a show. Additionally, we have those documentaries I told you about in earlier blogs. I had thought I would have had them up by now, but responding to the demands of producing the CD-ROM stretched our limited capacity. In any event, the first documentary about the struggle of people in Ecuador resisting the efforts of a Canadian mining company to open a mine in their territory is sitting on our server, waiting to be posted. All that is needed is to finish a short article to go with it. I'll be doing my best to get to it in the next day or so. Right now, I've got to sign off and turn my attention to preparing for tommorrow's forest resource management class; I teach within the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria. Until the next entry...