About
My name is Mike Allan but you can call me “new media Mike”.
My background is video production. I started out as a volunteer at Rogers Cable 10 in Toronto in the early 70’s. I finished high school working full time as a Master Control Technician and editor for Maclean Hunter Cable TV in 1976 and studied Electronic News Gathering using 3/4″ portapaks at Canadore College in North Bay. I worked for what we called “industrial” video production companies in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver in the 80’s. I have written scripts for PSA’s commercials and corporate videos. I have produced and pitched Local TV series, directed numerous corporate videos, edited commercials and transferred as many hours of home video as America’s Funniest Home Videos has aired since it was launched. We’re talking thousands of hours of old home movies to DVD.
I have been in and around the new media industry since 1994 when I joined Multimedia Trade Shows Inc. as a sales consultant. It was while I was with the show that my new media geekiness was born. From 1994 to 1999 I was at the birth of many of today’s new media technologies and I have witnessed first hand the phenomenal growth of the Internet.
In ‘99 I returned to the corporate video field and worked in the trenches at post production facilities in the GTA. I also began my writing career with Visual Convergence, Canada’s magazine for the video and multimedia production industry eventually becoming the Editor part time and later Associate Publisher. During this time DVD rose to be a powerhouse of a delivery medium and defeat VHS, then in turn face elimination from BluRay. I’ve been watching the growth of video online since the first RealPlayer was introduced in ‘95.
When Visual Convergence folded in 2006 I began blogging about new media as digitalmedia Toronto. As time went on my blogging voice changed and my blog posts began to take on a more personal tone. It was around this time I found my online brand – newmediaMike. I continued to cover new media in my own unique and somewhat off beat style. This latest version of my blog (newmediaMike 2.0 as it were) is even more personal as I blog about my life as the partner in a new online marketing agency, digitamediaToronto. I kept the domain name because it sounded so great and when I was looking for name for my newest venture it was perfect.
I live in the Beach area of Toronto with my spouse of 20 plus years, our two teenage daughters and our fluffy Pembroke Welsh Corgi and Rescued Retired Racing Greyhound.
