Guide Note

Reporter, podcaster and speaker Amber MacArthur hosts the weekly podcast net@nite with Leo Laporte and the weekly video podcast commandN. She is also the vice president and co-founder of MGImedia Communications Inc., a web strategy company, and a columnist for CBC Radio's Spark.

Fast Facts

1. Born: June 27, 1976
2. Birthplace: Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island
3. Company: MGI Media
4. Residence: Toronto, Canada
5. Brother: commandN producer and co-host Jeff MacArthur
6. AKA: Amber Mac
7. Bachelor's in English: Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia
8. Bachelor's in Journalism: University of King's College in Nova Scotia
9. Working with motivational speaker Tony Robbins on a social networking website
10. NOW Magazine named her Toronto's "best geek personality" in 2006¹

MacArthur spent several years in San Francisco during the dot-com boom, working for Razorfish and Higher Markets Inc. in web strategist positions.

After returning to Toronto in 2003 and taking a web strategy management position with Microsoft, she launched her tech personality career as co-host of G4techTV's Call for Help with Leo LaPorte, a show devoted to helping users learn more about technology. From there she expanded into hosting two more G4techTV shows, Gadgets & Gizmos and Torrent.

MacArthur left G4TechTV in 2006 to work as a new media reporter for CityTV News, eventually hosting her own biweekly show, Webnation, on the television station. When funding for Webnation was cut, she left her traditional media position at CityTV to focus on Internet media.²

On CityTV: "I love to come in and innovate, and I love to set goals and do all those types of things, and I don't think that was inherent in the environment that I was in."²

On traditional news media: "I don't believe in the format. I don't believe that the audience is engaged in that type of format. For me, personally, I find that the 1:15 format of the daily news story really isn't very valuable to an audience, and I think that it could be a lot more rich and a lot more interesting. I just felt as though it was so formulaic."²