The Last CAN event of the year

Another great night last night - the final gathering of the Creatives in Animation Network (CAN) for 2012. I thought numbers would be tiny - so many cancellations and all of them with good cause on the day - but then several arrived that I wasn't expecting so it was another interesting mix of 15 people from all areas of our two spheres.

So five meetings in, we have about 60 on the mailing list and nearly 70 on the LinkedIn group from all over the globe; there have been collaborations and other exciting ones are brewing away. Every one of the gatherings has been stimulating and no two were the same because the mix was always different; the only standard was that everyone had lots of experience in their field and a genuine interesting in collaboration at some stage.

There was mention last night of putting together a list for members of the group of all the websites/ blogs/ facebook pages/ LinkedIn groups that might have news about upcoming shows/ features/ animation projects in which there might be work either for writers or animators...

I thought if everyone could make suggestions I can put it together. All I could think of was Pegbar, the Irish Film Board's announcements of grants to animation, possibly Media's though all of these might be too late for writers. I haven't had time yet to dig around so any suggestions you can make would be fantastic.

Also, if any of you can think of ways to make this network more effective, I'd love to hear your ideas. The Writers Guild (ie the Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters' Guild) have offered us their space any evening if we we want to meet in smaller groups - possibly aimed at bringing people together with specific interests in terms of collaborations etc - for example.

Anyway, let me know...