Matt Toner

Matt Toner is a digital media expert, entrepreneur, professor, and playwright. Toner currently runs the social media studio Zeros 2 Heroes Media and teaches at Simon Fraser University, The Vancouver Film School, and the Centre for Digital Media. On November 17, 2012 Toner won the BC NDP nomination for Vancouver-False Creek.
Background
Prior to moving his career into digital media, Toner served as an economist at the Bank of Canada in Ottawa and as a diplomat at the Canadian Consulate General in Manhattan, New York. He holds a graduate degree in economics and earned the Queen’s Commission as an officer in the Royal Canadian Navy. When working in the Canadian Consul in New York, Matt was integral in promoting "cross-border alliances" and generating, "new business between Canadian and US new media firms". Matt also wrote numerous plays, and held various roles in his productions such as Fight Director, Research Assistant as well as acted in different adaptations of Shakespeare at the Toronto Fringe Festival.
Digital media career
Toner began his career in new media during the dot-com boom in New York and Toronto, helping to launch a number of start-ups. Matt's first Digital Media project was during his tenure at WeMedia, where he worked on accessibility issues to "provide a full outreach service to the visually impaired", by, "creating an accessible Internet so people with disabilities will be full participants in the development and progression of our society". Following the dot-com crash, he joined Vancouver’s videogame industry, working as a designer and writer on a series of titles for Electronic Arts and Nokia. In 2006, he returned to new media and led the development of an award-winning television portal before launching Zeros 2 Heroes Media.
In 2010, along with Ryan Holmes of HootSuite, Toner was cited as one of the innovation industry’s “Top Ten Movers and Shakers” by the Vancouver Sun. Toner is regularly featured in local media advocating for Vancouver's tech and new media sectors, and gives talks regularly on the state of the entertainment and digital media industries in British Columbia, Canada and worldwide, including SXSW Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. Matt also served on the board for the CMPA BC Branch Council in 2012.
Entry into politics
2013 BC Provincial Election
Toner announced he was seeking the BC NDP MLA nomination for Vancouver-False Creek in the 2013 provincial election, arguing that the current government was failing to support creative and innovative economy. Toner launched the campaign to advocate for the interests of the innovation industries in British Columbia. The Vancouver-False Creek NDP nomination was also contested by Vision Vancouver Park Board Commissioner Constance Barnes. In the nomination race, Toner won on the first ballot by 6 votes.
Campaign style
Toner has been acknowledged for his approach to campaigning in a riding where few people have landlines and many people live in apartment and condominium towers that discourage visits from campaigning politicians. In one unconventional tactic, Toner gave away custom NDP-orange dog jackets with his name emblazened on them, turning the dogs into walking lawn signs. Toner took a similar approach to fundraising with an online auction for a video game package, which was sold on a pay-what-you-want model. In the first day, the bundle raised $25,000 and Toner donated some of the proceeds to The Launch Academy, a Vancouver-based organization that trains unemployed technology employees with business skills to start their own companies.
Toner also organized a flashmob in which workers in the creative industries—technology, games, animation, film and television—descended on an advance voting location to vote and call for a change in government policies to encourage growth of the sector.
Toner also used social media to reach constituents and potential supporters and volunteers. In a interview with the Globe & Mail newspaper, Toner said he aims to create "a campaign that doesn't feel too much like a campaign yet has a message embedded. The result is people who talk about the campaign who would not ordinarily have done so."
Toner and his main rival Sam Sullivan have both been referred to as a "star candidate".
References
External links
* Matt Toner Biography

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