This year I was impressed with the emphasis the tech industry is putting on “Diversity”. Not only in terms of the consumers wants, but in employees, vendors, and programmers/content developers as well. As I browsed the booths at DH, one vendor after another, was knowledgeable about their respective company’s effort to bring in, market to, and work with diverse cultures. There was a time when I attended tech events such as Comdex or CES and asked a rep what their company's minority hiring or diversity vendor policy was…and would get a blank stare. Not so at DH.

Lucas McGregor, Project Developer at AOL, explained how AOL corporate realized the advantages to marketing their unique brand to diverse cultures. How AOL has established free developer forums to attract, educate, and help small independent programmers and developers market their services and applications to AOL (see http://dev.aol.com). How AOL was creating new services, programs, and features specifically for Black Voices and AOL Latin. How in this “Rich Media” landscape of the new millennium, AOL Xdrive (see www.xdrive.com) is launching several projects aimed at opening up their technology to the world.

Michelle Kamme, Content Acquisitions Manager for Sony Connect (www.connect.com), explained how important it was in a tech community to reach out and be more inclusive. Sony is a leader not only in the technology and entertainment industries, but in employee relations and corporate philanthropy as well( see http://www.sony.com/SCA/index.shtml). Rob Uhrich, Senior Director of Business Development for Payment One (www.paymentone.com), talked about how his company serves small and minority web based business that were looking for alternative payment vendors. Ben Scroggs, Business Development Manager for BSG Clearing Solutions (www.bsgclearing.com) pointed out how his Bill2Phone network was perfect for web based services that marketed to people without major credit cards.

Victor Hardwood has always made a special effort to include faces of color as part of his list of industry experts, and panelist. This year participants included Jaymes Hines of Hines Media Group (www.hinesmediagroup.com);, Emmit McHenry (remember Network Solutions) Chairman and CEO of Archura (www.archura.com); Ken Lipscomb, Chairman and Founder of Four Spots (www.fourspots.com); Walter Delph, Director of Content and Programming for Verizon corporation (www.verizon.com); Terence Richards, QuikPlay Media (www.quickplay.comm); Eric Phillips of Akamai (www.akamai.com); and Matthew Shack, Editor of The Flow Online magazine (www.theflowonline.com). It felt great seeing so many of us not only attending, but participating in an industry recognized event such as DH.

All in all it has been and informative and productive week at DH. The main buzz of the conference seemed to be on convergence and who was going to own that last 10 ft. (cable, phone, or data). Transcoding software (converting absolutely any file format (video, audio or still) to Flash in 1/3 real time), such as VT3 Video Suite (www.vt3studio.com) seemed to be all the rage as programmers and producers try to figure out how to deal with multiple delivery platforms (TV’s, desktops, and cell). In this age of online social networking, there were many vendors such as KickApps (www.kickapps.com) with authoring and programming tools to help you build the next Black MySpace. Most of the conference participants I spoke with were happy with the traffic, vendors and informative panels.

If you make your living off of “Rich Media” (film, music, photos) or plan to…I would not miss the next Digital Hollywood in your area. They are all great.