What am I talking about?  Creative industries have fundamentally changed in the past 20 years and have become high tech industries  Budgets are exploding, expectations are exploding, risk is exploding, time and patience are completely absent  The Academy has been slow to embrace the changes forced upon industry by the technology  The old partnership between Academy and Industry is no longer valid

Why Industry needs this  30 years ago, companies had a stable of internal talent, both technical and artistic, that could handle any project  Digital revolution completely overhauled both the media and the product – new tech needed new skills and talents  New technicians knew their bits and bytes, but not how to entertain or tell a story.  Human bridges to span both technical and artistic realms are in HIGH demand

Why they don’t hire kids  Stakes are too high to take a risk on unproductive team member  Veterans know the drill, earn their money and are low risk  Big industry is actually a very small community, veterans come with recommendations as well as a reel

Why they would if they could  Fresh college grads work cheap  They strive to please  Willing to work long hours  Full of ideas  Least likely to take vacation, sick days, family leave

Why Academia hasn’t filled the bill  Historically, the academy narrowed the focus and enriched the individual, left contextualization to industry  Academy still using antiquated concept of disciplines and career paths, industry abandoned them 20 years ago  Academy prides itself on being separate from industry, but separation may lead to irrelevance.

Enough talk, we go in!

An Example…  Building Virtual Worlds  Initially conceived by Randy Pausch after a sabbatical at Disney Imagineering  Originally an UNDERGRADUATE course…  Eventually birthed a Masters Program, the ETC

How was it set up?  Semester long class, MFW 2 hrs per day  1 Professor of record, mostly guest lectures, cross listed  Students assigned to groups of 4, given a goal  14 days to achieve that goal  Mix up the teams, new goal, 14 days  A total of 5 “rounds” then a show for the public

Who can register and how…  The class must be balanced, so registration by permission only  4 groups/disciplines of students  Programmers, writers, artists, designers, technicians…  Grouped by DEMONSTRATED SKILLS ONLY  Size limited by facilities, 48 a likely limit

How it runs…  1 st week is individual with goal to establish a workflow  Instructor assigns groups, present at 7 day mark and 14  14 days later, show your work, evaluate, shuffle teams  Rounds 3 & 4 work just like 1 & 2  Round 5 teams can self form, set their own goal  Any project can be brought to jury for final show

Groups! Devilish details  Groups need to be 4 students, 1 of each type  No kidding, 4 is the magic number!  Check your ego at the door  Be open to good ideas, they will likely not come from you!  You can put up with ANYTHING for 2 weeks, so NO WHINING!

Projects!  14 days total time  4 students per group  Present status at 7 day mark  Present finished piece at 14 day mark  SCOPE is KEY!!!!!!!!  Failure is OK, as long as you fail big!

Lectures  Mondays are lecture days  Most are guest lectures  Relatively low level (aimed at the non majors)  Project goals usually linked to lecture topics…

Evaluations!  After each round, group members evaluate each other  3 evals per round, 5 rounds 15 evals total  After 2 rounds, if you have 6 negative evals, not good.

The show must go on!  Independent jury selects 12ish best projects for show  Students then have to make them “show worthy”  Plan A, plan B, Plan…G!  Invited guests up the ante!

Roll film!

Discussion!