Paul Hoffert
Technology Visionary
As a child prodigy, Paul Hoffert mastered classical and jazz piano, and recorded his first solo record at the age of sixteen. In 1969 he founded Lighthouse, a rock group that earned nine gold and platinum recordings. Not your typical rock musician, Paul was trained as a mathematician and physicist, and is now a scientist, researcher, university professor, writer, composer and musician.
Paul Hoffert has the soul of an artist and the mind of a scientist.
Hoffert is CEO of Noank Media Inc., Fine Arts Professor at York University, Chair of the Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, and Chair of the Guild of Canadian Film Composers. He is former Faculty Fellow at Harvard University Law School, President of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, Chair of the Ontario Arts Council, and a founder of the Canadian Independent Record Producers Association (CIRPA).
By the time he was twenty-six, Hoffert was an established jazz recording artist, television performer, off-Broadway musical author, film composer, and had studied mathematics and physics at the University of Toronto. In 1969, he co-founded Lighthouse, a rock band with horns and strings that sold millions of records, toured the world and earned three Juno Awards as Canada's # 1 pop band (1971-1973). He was inducted into the Canadian Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. Universal Records released Lighthouse's latest CD/DVD in 2009.
Hoffert has parallel achievements in science and technology. He was a researcher at the National Research Council of Canada in the early 1970s and in 1992, he founded CulTech Research Centre at York University, where he developed advanced new media such as video telephones and networked distribution of CD-ROMs. From 1994 to 1999, Hoffert directed Intercom Ontario, a $100 million trial of the world's first broadband-connected community that landed him on the cover of The Financial Post and in the Wall Street Journal.
He presents his recipes for thriving in the Information Age in his best-selling books: Music for New Media, The New Client, All Together Now, and The Bagel Effect. In 2001, he received the Pixel award as the new media industry's "Visionary of the Year". The Financial Post described him as one of the New Mandarins along with Bill Gates, and The Toronto Star claimed, "Paul Hoffert is the ideal visionary for the Digital Age".
In 2005, Hoffert received the Order of Canada, Canada's highest honour. Hoffert is known for expecting the unexpected. His incisive thinking brings clarity to complex issues and his lively presentations make him a favourite with audiences everywhere.
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8. Long Tails and Hit-Driven Business Models
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7. People Cause Change, Not Technology
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6. Building a Business Team Like an Orchestra
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5. All Together Now: Creating Community In A Digital Age
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4. The New Client: How Customers Shape Business in the Information Age
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3. The Bagel Effect: How to Avoid Being Disintermediated
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2. Case Study: Starting a Business in China
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1. Digital Media: Making Money in a Free File Sharing Environment
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Thank you for your fascinating presentations...you were entertaining and insightful, no easy task at 7:30AM!
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Your "All Together Now" presentation was the most lucid I have seen in relation to technology and how to build community in the Information Age. It also showed us how toget there.
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For 4 days I have heard nothing but good comments re: your presentation. Great job!
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Your powerful closing presentation pulled together the Industry Canada Portfolio group and left us all with valuable insights on collaboration. I can understand why you have been characterized as a visionary.
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You brought clarity and understanding to the complex and confusing legislation and issues.
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We have had wonderful feedback from your New Client presentation and are grateful to you for doing the job we needed to have done.
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March 2007Music For New Media
Videogames, web sites, and other new media are creating more opportunities for contemporary music writers than have ever existed before. In this book, you will learn to write effectively for these new forms, mastering the devices, sounds, and techniques for supporting stories and responding to user actions. It details the technical and dramatic requirements necessary for each type of new media. In engaging language, illustrated by countless real-world examples and practical workshops, writers at all levels will find ways to create music for new markets, and find new opportunities for creative expression.
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September 2002The New Client: How Customers Shape Business in the Information Age
Paul Hoffert coined the expression "The New Client" to describe today's customers - the people who are shaping the new business rules. Not only does he explain these new rules, he also provides examples of what organizations must do to succeed in the coming decades - how they can set themselves apart and add value to their products. These new added values include EMOs, or emotive factors: feeling good, feeling secure, doing good and being in control.
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May 2000All Together Now: Creating Community in a Digital Age
Increasingly, our highly technological world allows us to seek employment, get an education and meet friends without ever leaving our cozy homes. It's happening all around us and will continue until we witness the passing of the industrial age, according to author Paul Hoffert in All Together Now. In this book, Hoffert explores the increasing existence of mini, self-sustaining cyber-communities threatening to supplant industrial age legacies such as mass production and centralized power. Hoffert is a professor at York University in Toronto and author of The Bagel Effect: A Compass to Navigate the Wired World.
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November -0001
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