Finally online here this afternoon and in the Creativity Panel with a fashion designer, a theme park designers, a comic and a giant spider maker riffing on taking ideas into reality so, ... here since KK is rocking the camera today, i'll compile a few highlights of the day with his snaps as well as other Vidfest-tagged pics on Flickr.

Chris Anderson's Presentation about the Economics of Free

Chris is an economist and busts out the fundamental maxims of the macro-science and applies these universal laws to practical daily micro-economics. He's a fine story teller and quick on his feet and you can tell the well runs deep.

RCS comrade Roland joined the packed house to hear Chris explain how all things (products, services, utilities, factors) which can become digital, will AND all things that a re digital will eventually be free. The trick - dear entrepreneurs - is to find the scarcities created in the realm of abundance and create a biz plan around that. Laden with examples - read the article in Wired and look for the forthcoming book, called Free, which will be sold for $0. I recorded the speech so look for a forthcoming podcast.

In the meantime, see also:

• The Future is Free
• NowPublic @ Vidfest2008: Chris Anderson, Keynote
• Notes From Chris Anderson’s “The Future of Free” Talk
• Robert Shaer's Last Dispatch from VIDFest 2008

Here's the crib notes of the first 1.5 days of VIDfest. {Links coming at some point ...}

Wednesday night

Kick off party at the Vancouver art Gallery with the Krazy exhibit. This will take another look to digest the walls of graphic art and manga mania but the free drink ticket and VIP pass helped kick start the conversations on the busy night of Vancouver techie-related events (Launch Party 4 sounds like another noteworthy fest of interconnectivity). Krug and I represented at the party and chilled with presenters Darren Barefoot and Rebecca Bollwitt among other social media super-heros.

Thursday morning

Every year during the Vancouver International Digital Festival (VIDFEST) the POPVOX awards are handed out to the winners selected by the Voice of the People! The POPVOX awards celebrate and recognize all the fields of digital media in a variety of categories. The winners are annunced at the Gala event scheduled May 23rd (pretty soon) so buy your tickets.

Nominees submit their projects and the masses then vote for their favorites online (that's why they are the people's voice awards right).

The Vancouver International Digital Festival is an event for the top creative minds working in digital media. Attracting visionaries from games and digital entertainment, Web 2.0, interactive design, animation and mobile applications, it is an annual ‘must-attend’ in Vancouver, Canada.

VIDFest is Vancouver's International Fest for all things around the new and interactive media space and is produced by New Media BC and Telefilm.

KK is on duty as a poster boy for the event - his hoodie sweatshirt and scruffy face adorning magazine ads throughout Cascadia and the event kicking off next week, so here's a quick guide to get you up to speed.

First, be sure you are subscribed to the VIDFest RSS feed and friend up the VIDFest Flickr photostream.

There are several parts to the May 21-24th event - well really, 11 parts when combined with the two-day Vancouver International Game Summit 2008. Here's the official blurb:

VIDFEST is eleven events over four days, including conferences, an awards gala, an international partnering forum, a pitch fest, and a recruiting fair.

Got a favourite Web 2.0 application, mobile game, digital short, game, digital effects, music score, something that qualifies as the 'best of BC' new media or some other cool new media? Then nominate it today for the PopVox Awards (fine print: must have been released between September 2006 and August 2007; check out the full rules). Nominations are free and the winners are determined by online voting, i.e. vote for your favs from September 8th-17th after nominations close on September 7th.

The winners will be announced at the opening of the Vancouver International Digital Festival aka Vidfest on September 22nd. The PopVox Awards are organized by New Media BC, the organization behind Vidfest, and the website was a collaboration between Bryght and our friends at Raincity Studios (check out RCS's PopVox announcement) with Bryght providing some custom Drupal coding and some Drupal design as well as hosting on a Bryght Virtual Private Server.