Phew! Mixer comes off with no blood spilled

Okay, so I was getting a little worried when Mark Zwicker came in, joined by a large posse from Alchemy.

And then Kris Matheson came in with a larger posse from Artisan Live.

Mercifully, a rumble didn’t break out between the rival content creation crews, though Raji Kalra either threw a chair or just knocked one over by accident. I think it was the latter, but the throwing thing makes for a way better story.

So yes, he was throwing chairs.

All told, I think 25-30 industry types dropped into the latest round of the industry mixer, and people were still yakking at 11 PM when we split for the suburbs.

What I learned:

Don’t let the bar manager decide how many nibblies to serve. The bill was a wee bit higher than planned.

DAN Media — the food court network that was near death a few months ago — is about to ramp up and expand under new owners Neo Advertising. Neo’s Ian Dobson said the three-wide projection scheme will be replaced in malls across the country by LCDs positioned all around the food courts.

The Strategy Institute‘s David Laird has been putting much of his time into organizing and beefing up the digital signage conference side of his business, and has a healthy list of attendees for the Toronto show later this month that should make it a lot more than a group hug exercise for industry types.

There are still companies popping up in this space. Oakville-based Patrick McNamara has a firm called ROC Company selling tiled LCD walls and processors. And Jason Powers is running operations for TransMedia Concepts, which has screens in nearly 100 Toronto taxis and more to come.

All told, a good evening and good crowd. I’m not sure who will set up the next one, but it’s definitely an event that should be kept going. Thanks to the people from Alchemy, Artisan, DDC, POP Media, Adcentricity, NEO, ROC, TransMedia, ScreenVox, Strategy Institute and I forget who else who turned up.

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