This week I received word that I made the short-list for a Canadian New Media Award. Wow.

I wear a lot of hats as founder of this network and ‘producer’ of all things dailypixel is probably the biggest. What does being a producer really mean? For me, it means riding on the coattails of an incredible team of people who each play a role and together make up the evolving and growing dailypixel story. I’m merely a conduit and that feels far less like a job, and far more of a privilege to work with so many talented and above all else, passionate people, bloggers, developers, creatives, users, readers, viewers, submitters, coders, advisors and more.

I am blown away by what other people are doing in this country. To be one small part of the growing fabric of the richly talented and creative Canadian new media landscape is super-cool. If my team and I are judged in the future by the company we keep, we’re in great shape hanging with this crowd of CNMA finalists.

Of course, the CNMA is only a sampling of the diverse and emerging new media industry in Canada. From coast to coast, from Vancouver’s NowPublic, to Ottawa’s Shopify there are so many exciting and evolving success stories that dot this entire country’s landscape, on the web, in film, in gaming, on mobile etc. Canadian marketing diva Tara Hunt (now embedded in Silicon Valley) recently highlighted a bunch of Canadian start-ups in a blog post and in an email exchange with me she said “I can’t swing a cat without hitting a Canadian down here”.

Canada’s new media muscle is an undeniable force domestic, abroad, we’re everywhere. Exciting times indeed.

Congrats to Matthew Hornburg of marblemedia, and Patrick Crowe of Xenophile Media my fellow finalists whom I greatly look foward to meeting in person and many more uber-talented people during the May 27-28 CNMA event.

Official Release: James Cogan is one of three finalists to be named “Producer of the Year”