facilitators
Bill Weaver is a filmmaker, media strategist, and founder of Media that Matters. He is a Peabody Award-winning journalist whose career spans nearly four decades of broadcast and commercial production in the United States and Canada. As a reporter, anchor, cinematographer, radio news director, Dialing for Dollars host, and Live Studio Wrestling ring announcer, Bill has run the gamut in the broadcast world: covering the Wallace administration in Alabama, hanging out of helicopters at the eruption of Mount St. Helens, and taking his camera into the paradoxical world of Rashneeshpurham.

Since moving to British Columbia in 1990, he has produced and directed 10 award-winning documentaries and numerous shorts for Canadian television. These days, he produces web-based film shorts that promote the missions of values-based businesses and social profits.

Bill sits on the advisory board of the Reel Youth Film Festival and is a Canadian trustee of the Power of Hope, an organization dedicated to making teens creators of culture rather than consumers of culture. He is also on the steering committees of Gaining Ground and Planning Down, conferences focused on breaking down the barriers that restrict innovative and sustainable urban planning.

Bill is a fervent producer and supporter of possibility journalism, and explores technologies that reconnect us to ourselves, one another, and the wonder of nature.

Sue Biely has run the gamut in the media world: broadcasting, producing, funding, teaching, curating, business affairs, advocacy and strategic development.  As one of Canada's leading buyers of short films, Sue ran the acquisitions department of the late night alternative arts CBC TV series ZeD.  There, she screened over seven thousand shorts, developed cutting-edge licensing strategies for digital and traditional platforms, and created an acclaimed inventory of over 700 short films from around the globe.

She has attended more than 30 film festivals, as a buyer, international juror, panelist and facilitator in various countries, including the U.K., the U.S., Spain, France, Ireland, Denmark, Australia and Canada.

Sue guest teaches regularly at the Vancouver Film School and has consulted for the Danish Film Institute and the Aboriginal People’s Television Network. She has also made presentations on short form content to BC Film, Nova Scotia Film, The Newfoundland and Labrador Film Development Corporation, On Screen Manitoba, New Media Manitoba, Atlantic Filmmakers Coop, Cineworks, and The National Screen Institute.

Further, Sue has taught a Master Class at the Real Screen conference is currently working with Crazy8s (short filmmaking initiative) and The Canadian Film Centre’s Worldwide Short Film Symposium. She continues to spread the short form bug wherever she can!
Stephen Silha is a freelance writer, communications consultant, facilitator and futurist. A co-facilitator of Media That Matters and co-founder of Journalism That Matters, Stephen was a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor and The Minneapolis Star before becoming communications director for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

He convened the first symposium on The Media and Philanthropy at the Chicago Tribune, and worked on the research project on community communications called Good News/Good Deeds: Citizen Effectiveness in the Age of Electronic Democracy. Silha has worked with youth to get their voices in the media, and to facilitate youth-adult dialogues on Vashon Island, near Seattle, where he lives. He is immediate past president of the Washington News Council.

http://www.goodnewsgooddeeds.org

http://www.journalismthatmatters.org
Tracey Friesen joined the National Film Board as producer in spring 2001 and became executive producer at the Pacific & Yukon Centre in September 2007.   In this capacity, she works with the independent film community to create innovative, relevant documentaries, animation and new media.  Tracey has credits so far on 18 projects, including the multiple award winning titles ScaredSacred (Genie 2005), Being Caribou (Gemini 2006) and Shameless: The ART of Disability.  Recent releases are Carts of Darkness, Dirt and the co-production Confessions of an Innocent Man.

Through her work at the NFB, Tracey has demonstrated a passion for the potential of art to affect social change.  Out of the Pacific & Yukon Studio she has overseen initiatives like open i (media training for youth with disabilities with Pacific Cinematheque), Art of the Doc (immersive development seminars for mid-career filmmakers with Praxis), and Our World (digital story-telling workshops in remote aboriginal communities).  As the multi-platform media landscape evolves, Tracey is striving to diversify her development slate to include alternative forms of narrative expression and new creators.  

Before the NFB, Tracey was with Rainmaker for five years, first as a visual effects producer and then as director of sales & industry relations.  Prior to this, she worked for six years as an off-line editor and post coordinator/ supervisor.  Actively involved in the Vancouver film community, Tracey spent three years on the board of Women in Film & Video Vancouver - serving one term as president - and was honoured with their Lifetime Membership Award.  She is a member of the Academy, DOC, sits as an affiliate guest with MPPIA and recently completed an MBA at Simon Fraser University. 
 

 
mission sessions facilitators register thanks