Jennifer Harkness has been promoted to executive director of the Banff World Television Festival, a new position that will see her take over day-to-day activities and the "overall vision" of the mountain meet-up that, just last year, hired her away from Global Television.

Harkness - formerly the fest's director of content and, before that, a production exec at Global - tells Playback she wants to build on the festival's recent successes and bring it "ahead of trends in the industry" by working more closely with its sister event, NextMedia.

"As we all know, digital content and cross-platform is coming into traditional space. We want to focus in this area," she says, noting that a number of NextMedia speakers - from Joost, Heavy.com and others ­- will also appear at the noted TV festival, which gets underway on June 10.

She will be based in Toronto and report to Patricia Douey, COO of Achilles Media, the firm that runs both events. She notes that the festival saw an upswing in deal-making last year, adding up to $720 million, according to organizers. "We're looking to increase that this year," she says.