WORDS BY John Hood  Transmedia might sound like something that has its own special interest group lobbying Congress for equality, but it’s reallythe future of the way we live now, up close and personal, in the mostimmersively interactive ways imaginable. Only in this case, it’s the way we employ the technology at hand to tell the stories which make us who we are, now, then and forever, whether the campfire you’re gathered around is caveside, downtown or on Mars.

By definition, Wiki says transmedia storytelling is “telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms or formats using existing digital technologies”.

Transmedia storytelling also happens to be the focus of Filmgate, the Interactive Creative Conference taking place all week throughout Miami and its Beach.

A “Creative Conference” comprised of “International Creators, Thinkers and Practitioners from Across the Fields of Film, TV, Interactive, Online, Mobile, Gaming, Publishing and Live Events”, Filmgate is in fact the only U.S. interactive transmedia festival, and it belongs entirely to us.

That’s right South Florida, you, me, and every one of our neighbors, can now boast being the only place in the States hosting a conference devoted solely to the future of storytelling right this minute.

At Filmgate’s kickoff party Saturday night, at Miami Light Project, all of our town’s most forward-thinking storytellers converged to share the latest among themselves, and to catch the latest from such notorious forwards such as Octavio Campos, Otto Von Schirach and Master Feathers (aka Miami Swamp).

Filmgate’s kickoff was also a many-layered, multi-formated harbinger of a most wowsome week of action to come. Then again, when you’ve got folks such as Knight Foundation, Miami-Dade County, Miami Beach Visitors and Convention Bureau and Videoscope backing a calendar that makes a narrative mash-up of film, performance, lectures, workshops and Fordistas’ hands-on, immersive-and-then-some, 7000 square-foot Tech Playground, what else would you expect but something unexpectedly spectacular?

Want an example? Here’s how Filmgate Executive Director Diliana Alexander teases Runaway Jane, one of the Fest’s legend-tripping highlights:

“Runaway Jane [is] our own Gianfranco Bianchi's interactive exhibit at the Betsy Hotel. It will launch an immersive experience that incorporates a live murderfolk musical performance by Amigo the Devil, a dark and interactive dance performance by Vikkerious and a short film. This is the launch of a road trip in the search of the jackalope this summer through mid America. It's another mystical animal that needs to meet the kraken.”

Sound wowsome enough for you? Of course it does!

In a phrase, you might say Filmgate is polyglot tech, which in a polyglot metropolis like Miami is more than perfectly apropos. What’s also apropos, are the two essential ingredients Alexander recommends everyone bring along to the Fest: “creative tendencies and an open mind”.

So what are you waiting for?