Jason Roks
Jason Roks is recognized across North America for his networking and digital media distribution acumen, and for his ingenuity in predicting and leveraging new directions on the Internet and other communications technologies. Jason has been featured in various media, including Wired, Time, Maclean’s, Saturday Night, Yahoo! Internet Life, Shift, Macworld and Silicon Alley Reporter for his insights on new media economies, digital media distribution, file-sharing, online communities and social networks, piracy, copyright, and intellectual property. He has also presented at numerous conferences, including the International New Media Festival, Digital Coast Reporter, MB5 New Media Visionaries, KMDI, nextMEDIA, MacWorld, iWorld, and XmediaLab. Jason focuses on providing expertise to software producers, broadcasters, advertisers and entertainment companies in the areas of digital media distribution, content management systems, adaptive business modeling, rights management, online guerrilla marketing, emerging technologies, and the prototyping of innovative technology platforms, services and products. Jason’s recent projects have included a p2p content distribution model; media casting models; terminal and network computing solutions; online communities and social networks; community and organizational knowledge management systems; and broadband and wireless infrastructures. Jason is also a multiple award-winning software and new media developer. Recently, as CTO for Independent World Television, Jason was instrumental in determining the company’s digital direction. Prior to that appointment, he produced the New Media Business Alliance’s 2006 iSummit in Toronto, where he introduced emerging trends in digital media. As Emerging Technology and Digital Distribution Analyst to the CBC in 2005, Jason played a key role in identifying and developing a cost-effective national bandwidth infrastructure; establishing the CBC’s VoD services; and prototyping ZED’s Ambient Television initiatives. Jason is a founding volunteer of wirelesstoronto.ca; an active participant of the Barcamp movement; and a longstanding member of the Canadian Film Centre Lab’s technical advisory council. In his spare time, he researches and develops online communities and social networks, xmlTV and metaphors for visualization of metadata. While the digital “fringe” community celebrates Jason as a founder of the now decade-old file-sharing software pioneer, Hotline Communications, Jason’s career has roots in design and creative direction. He studied philosophy and business at the University of Western Ontario.