Vancouver named mag of the year at Western Magazine Awards

Writer Chris Koentges has had quite a couple of weeks. He won a gold and a silver award at the National Magazine awards for a memoir of his mother Helen (those were two of the four medals he won that night); now, for the same article, he has won two awards at the Western Magazine Awards, which was published in Calgary's Swerve magazine (a supplement to the Calgary Herald).

"What a gift for Calgarians to have such an original homegrown talent publishing his best work here," said Shelley Youngblut, the magazine's editor-in-chief.

Youngblut herself won the lifetime achievement award at the Western magazine awards gala in Vancouver on Friday night. She praised the Calgary Herald in her acceptance speech for the existence of Swerve:

"Thank you to the Calgary Herald, which has enabled the Swerve team to present an original, heartfelt, smart, funny, unpredictable, relentlessly local magazine every week for the past five years. It's weird and wonderful to be its editor."

Youngblut, a native Calgarian, became the founding editor at Swerve in 2004 after a career in Canadian and U.S. magazines, including ESPN: The Magazine, Western Living, Cosmopolitan, West and All About Men

Magazine of the year for western Canada and for BC/Yukon was Vancouver magazine (shown is November 08 cover). Other provincial/regional magazines of the year were:

• Alberta/NWT: Unlimited
• BC/Yukon: Vancouver
• Saskatchewan: Blackflash
• Manitoba: Border Crossings
  

Best new magazine was Techlife (published by the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology)

Trade magazine of the year was Enterprise (the "voice of Canadian credit unions" is published in B.C. and has been trade mag of the year four out of the past five years)

Gold awards for best article by province/region were:

• Alberta/NWT: Chris Koentges -- Helen Koentges (Swerve)
• BC/Yukon: Chris Koentges -- Tourists, Stay Away (up! magazine)
• Saskatchewan: Allan Casey -- The Little Boat that Could (Westworld)
• Manitoba: Chris Webb, Nelle Oosterom, Phil Koch -- 10 Photos that Changed Canada (The Beaver)

Full details of winners and runners-up in all categories

Still time to take advantage of Magazines West

There's still time for those of you on or near the left coast to register for the seminars being offered at the 7th annual Magazines West in Vancouver June 18 and 19. (See earlier post for details).

The seminars are a collaborative offering of the BC Association of Magazine Publishers (BCAMP) and the Western Magazine Awards Foundation (WMAF), which also presents its gala awards dinner starting at 6 p.m on the 19th.

All events take place at the Vancouver Renaissance Harbourside hotel.

Magazines West unveils a day chockful of professional development

Magazines West in Vancouver is a collaborative event, combining a day of professional development seminars on June 18 sponsored by the British Columbia Association of Magazine Publishers and the Western Magazine Awards on June 19. Both events at the Renaissance Hotel Vancouver Harbourside.

Details of the seminars have just been released:

• Keynote luncheon speaker is Bruce Grierson, a multiple National Magazine Award-winning freelancer, who has written about human-powered travel and private rocketeers for Popular Science, genomics and recovered memories for The New York Times Magazine, anthrax and the insurance industry for Scientific American, religious deconversions and human failure for Psychology Today, and particle physics and conservation biology for Vancouver magazine. In none of these areas is he is an expert.

• Just Your Type -- a workshop on typography by typographer, designer and educator Dr. Shelley Gruendler, the founding director of Type Camp and head of the advanced typography program and the communication and ideation design program at Langara College Continuing Studies in Vancouver.
• Upselling in the Downturn -- a panel discussion of sales professionals, moderated by Rebecca Legge, the director of online sales for Canada Wide Media Limited. Panel members are: Allison Bauman, the advertising director for The Tyee; Jessica Malach, director of business development for Teldon Media Group, publishers of alive magazine; Janet Macdonald, director of sales for Western Living, Vancouver and GuestLife Vancouver.
• Spinning the Web -- a workshop by Martin White, talking about monetizing the web. come from a print background (TIME and Toronto Life) but in 2003, established Online Magazine Marketing, a company that provides senior management with strategic and tactical consultation focusing on print and online business issues.
• Mark My Words: Copy Editing Best Practices Catheryn Keegan, who works both for Institutional Investor and Vogue, talks about what a well-run copyediting process looks like in a workshop focussed on best practices.

More information will be available next week on the Magazines West website.

June is magazine conference month

This is shaping up to be a heckuva three weeks in Canadian magazines with a whole lotta learning, networking and schmoozing goin' on.

Starting today (June 4) and through Wednesday, June 6, Masthead magazine and the Canadian Business Press are partnering for Magazines University at the Old Mill in the west end of Toronto (with other partners being the audit organizations CCAB/BPA Worldwide and the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors and the Independent Publishers Association of Ontario). This event has been held for many years at this location. Masthead reports that 1,200 registrations are in hand for a variety of seminars, dinners, trade show and awards programs, including the Canadian Newsstand Awards and the Kenneth R. Wilson Awards gala for the Canadian Business Press.

Starting next Wednesday 13th at 89 Chestnut Street in downtown Toronto, MagNet kicks off, partnered by Magazines Canada and the Circulation Management Association of Canada (CMC), along with the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors, the Professional Writers Association of Canada and the National Magazine Awards Foundation. This is the first such event since MagsCanada and CMC left Magazines University (see postings passim) and it includes a program of seminars, dinners, events and awards, culminating on Friday 15th with the 30th annual National Magazine Awards. Word is that more than 2,000 registrations been received for that event.

Then the following Thursday 21 and Friday 22, Magazines West is co-produced by the British Association of Magazine Publishers (BCAMP) and the Western Magazine Awards Foundation. There are two days of seminars, culminating in the Western Magazine Awards are held at the Renaissance Vancouver Hotel Harbourside hotel. No word on the registrations there but it can be expected to be more than 500.