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no longer valid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…
 1st 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!