One hour to go to demoing first look at mobile app!

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The students are working very fluidly on developing the first pass at their first mobile app to be presented at 4:00. This morning they presented their concept for the "Onboarding" app before the assembled 1300 Masie attendees. The audience responded to their youthful enthusiasm and their identification of the central framing concept. The students identified "story" as key both from the new hire sharing their skills, progress and future dream "position" and the corporation sharing the mission, structure, history, architecture, and culture.

The coders are working in concert, the designers are mapping out the detailed plans, and the artist is designing the icons and screen layout.

As I write two other outreaches are occurring. Pres. Finney is doing an excellent job on a panel about "Reskilling". He is being very candid about the strengths and weaknesses universities and colleges have at working with corporations. As he does so he is defining what the role of colleges are in a rapidly changing corporate environment - and how colleges can lead in developing both the individual and the opportunities for this changing landscape. "There is no cookbook for leadership."

The other outreach is also a conversation - one I cannot yet report on. Elliott Masie ask if one of the designers could particpate in a small private conversation with author Malcolm Gladwell! Student designer Alison Seffels was selected over Heather Conover - through winning in a gamer-inspired diplomatic style -rock-paper-scissor format.

Till later!

Elliott Masie Learning 2009

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Ah its November and the Champlain College Emergent Media Center team is in Orlando again. This means that we are very fortunate to have been invited once again for an amazing live experiment at the Masie Learning 2009!

We are part of an incredible conference that includes Malcolm Gladwell (Tipping Point), Betsy Myers (COO of Pres. Obama's team), Julie Clow (Google), Laura Fitton (Twitter for Dummies), and our mentor John Abele (founder of Boston Scientific).

Our team this year consists of five: two game design students Heather Conover and Alison Seffels, two programmers Jeremy Burau and Bryan Hare, and one artist Mike Ackerman. Mike is working under extreme pressure as I write to get a graphic to the Masie team before the morning general session.

Also here with me are Ray McCarthy-Bergeron, Sarah Jerger and President Dave Finney. Sarah, Ray and my job is as the pit crew! We are not allowed to touch their keyboards or feed ideas. We can help frame ideas, field questions, interact with attendees, act as liaison to Elliott's team, and deliver food and beverages.

Last night the team was given their challenge. Here's the video from that:


Wish us good luck and you can follow us on Twitter @CClearns http://twitter.com/CClearns and EMC's Facebook http://www.facebook.com/ChamplainEMC as we move ahead. Less than 72 hours to complete.

Shhh! We're Working Here!

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Shhhh! Its been busily quiet here at the EMC this afternoon. Ray and Ken are out, Lauren's not here today either, leaving just Sarah and myself behind the "glass".
There have been about 15 students silently, thoughtfully working away. It's a funny thing —I'm so fond of each one of them. I can recognize their hopes, their anxieties, their passions, and most importantly their spirits and bright shining intelligence.
I am remembering those likewise who worked so diligently and played so hard here. I was first prompted by a college meeting about our grads and their employment out of EMC.

To note is that to date we’ve worked with roughly 130 students since start-up (2 years). This summer we had a full house with approximately 30 students working on 6 projects all summer long. This Fall many of those projects will end but we have a number of others that will continue.
So here's our grads:

• Kate Baxter, ’09 Software Engineering, is a Junior Programmer at 2K Boston and recently returned from doing a “sea-mester” abroad sailing the Caribbean for 40 days in a program focused on leadership, communication and experiential education. Kate began with the original IBM project, joined the second IBM project, and then our UN team. She was also a Governor's Institue of Vermont in Information Technology (GIV IT)resident advisor.
• Emily Benton, '09 Game Art & Animation is working freelance on art for Disney. Emily was the artist on the original Masie Learning 2007 conference and then the MPI: Meet Different conference. She was also a GIV IT resident advisor.
• Dan Bergeron, ’09 Marketing, is working as an Account Manager at 800response. Dan was on our UN project as a market researcher and first identified soccer as the unifying cultural theme!
• Corey Cunha, ’09 Software Engineering, is working as a Developer at EF Educational Tours in Boston. Corey programmed on our CIMIT and Cystic Fibrosis projects.
• Casey Hopkins, ’09 E-Business, is a SEO Analyst at Dealer.com . Casey was on our UN project as a researcher traveling with us to South Africa.
• Wes Knee, ’09 Game Art & Animation, is interning as a 3D Infographiste at Mistic Software in Montreal working on art for Nintendo DS games. Wes was on almost everything to include America's Army, Info Lit, CIMIT, the various Masie, CIMIT and MPI conferences, and the UN project to include presenting at MIGS last year on the UN project - that's where his current employer saw him first. He was also a GIV IT resident advisor.
• Lauren Nishikawa, '09 Game Design, both ourselves and Amanda Crispel (Hoozinga) scooped her up. She's the Junior Creative Director for our Empowering Play (UN) Project. Lauren just was on EVERYTHING and was the first recipient of our EMC Interstellar Award. She was also a GIV IT resident advisor.
• Iain Bissett, ’08 Game Design, is working at 3DVIA in Boston and has a great blog documenting his professional life: http://www.iainbissett.com/. Iain was our writer/designer on the first IBM interactive project.
• Renee Gillett, ’08 Game Design is an interactive designer at the Museum of Science in Boston – creating games for the museum’s exhibits. Renee participated in many demonstrations - to include the original Game Change Summit in Kingbridge where she first met her future employers.
• Tim Hamel, ’08 Game Design and 3D Art & Animation, is working as a Level Designer at Vicarious Visions and has worked on the Transformers games among others. Tim worked on various projects to include the original IBM interactive and was first leader of our student chapter of the IGDA.
• Nick Malatuma, '08 Game Art & Animation, is working as an artist at the EMC on our UN project to End Violence Against Women. That's him below with some of his incredible artwork!

So here's to our students - past and present. They have built the EMC right along with us. They are our bright future!

Summer—a Time for Knowledge Sharing

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There can be long stretches when life is too frantic there is no time to write. There are other times like today, when so much is happening that one has to record at least the main points. Today is such a day. It was fully a "meeting day" today and tomorrow promises to be much the same. Meetings can be soooo frustrating as there seems to be stacks of work that NEEDS to be done and meetings threaten to upend. The important piece about a good meeting, as I've learned from experience, is that is it can raise the bar. Voices of many can cut the work load by slicing through to the "best" solution. Properly delegated much can then be accomplished OR many can be reached. Today was such a day at the EMC. 

At the very end of the day, Brian and Jeremy presented to Ken and myself on their plan for the Masie iPhone application. Their challenge is to become proficient at developing the code behind the application so that at the October conference they can create an app in 3 days with  a community of advisors and two other Champlain students: a designer and an artist. This summer they are working to learn but they also are working creating on an innovate app to profile pre-conference.

Today Sarah, Ken, Ray and myself were involved in two interviews one for newspaper, the other for community radio. One interview focused on the Cystic Fibrosis project now in completion of the concept and testing of the games by patients. They are quite wonderful to play. It was good to share where they started, what they are, and likewise how we've come to appreciate that community.

The other was an interview was on the Violence Against Women game project. Let's hope it can raise awareness and bring new support to the project. The good news is that in the last few weeks, thank in part to the a generous donation by Population Media Center, we've raised $30,000 to bring the project out from under hiatus!!!!We will need much more to complete the project so we've begun a campaign - we're calling it the "It's a little thing" campaign in reference to the email that began it. To each donor, no matter the size of the gift they can give, we will bring them in on the creation process, presenting to them art assets, scripts, test results, etc. so they can follow and become part of our team.  

But back to today and this week the team presents work to date to the UNFPA tomorrow. We will share the video presentation with you through our web site Empowering Play  For over a year now, I've been writing about how incredible our students our, their creativity and their talent. In this video, it shines through clearly!

Last but not least, Thursday the team working on our Virtual Museum web presence project with VT. State Archeologist Giovanna Peebles share their concepts to the board of advisors for the project. Wish them luck—their idea(s) move way beyond the boxes of artifacts stored, way beyond museum exhibits, and into global knowledge sharing. And isn't that waht this is ALL about—global knowledge sharing?

Ok big breath, smile - as my friend Pat says -it's all good.

More Learning in 2008

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I knew that being involved in the Emergent Media Center was going to be an excellent opportunity to get involved in a creative and technical field with greater, social purpose that feeds my soul.  I’m not the only one as 60+ students who work at the center feel the same way during the time I interview them for positions prior to hiring them. Being part of a young generation who can have the opportunity to work in areas rarely explored is incredible and, knowing all of them, they would agree with me.

As an example, Saturday morning, October 25, Ann DeMarle, 6 Students and I, flew out to Orlando, Florida for the Learning 2008 conference.

Once again, the Emergent Media Center was offered another amazing opportunity by Elliott Masie to have a group of students create a game within a 3-day period on the topic of “Teleworking”.  This year’s stellar team consisted of Chris Rolfs, Kate Baxter, Max Nichols, Auston Montville, Dan Peavey, and Vanessa Blockland.

I must say, the audience, and even I, was impressed with what they pulled off in the short amount of time they had to research, design and program the game.

I view my job at the center as to not only act as the Project Director and to manage projects, but to also help students manage their lives in many cases.  At the conference, the students were working non-stop.

Almost ironically, some of the topics brought up in the game this past week revolved around the idea of balancing out work and life.  Their time awake over the short period was about 60 hours and all of it was worth the effort from their point of view.  They barely slept, needed to cut loose to release their stress and take a breather, but it was not easy.

It took me a little finessing with the help of some attendees and literally closing a laptop of a student to pry them away the last night so they could have some fun by dancing on the dance floor.

Later at probably around 4am, they started sprinting up and down the long, empty corridors to have a little more enjoyment… There’s nothing wrong with that, right?  I’m glad they had some freedom to have fun, which should be part of the whole experience of having a job in my mind.

When they took the stage the final day, they impressed.

Their game is called “Teletrust” and focuses on how employees of a company need to gain each other’s trust while working from home to complete important individual and team tasks with distractions getting in their way.

My eyes swelled as they presented and showed off the game on stage to the 1,800+ attendees.  They spoke well with confidence.

People laughed and applauded as the game mechanics and in-game jokes worked well.  It proved how the team did their research, listened and created the content based on the Learning 2008 participants’ input, feedback and contributions.  Even Tony O'Driscoll had blogged a bit about it!  People filled the halls after the closing session, while we were packing up and getting to ready for the bus to the airport, telling the students how awesome they are and how much fun they had as participants in the game process.  I believe we even had some “groupies” who hung out during every day to talk and catch a glimpse of what was to come.

The game at this point works and is fully functional, however, the students want to spend this weekend to fix a few game play/balancing issues and minor bugs.  In addition to this, they want to continue developing a side component to the game that makes it modular and modifiable. It is not critical to the deliverable people were expecting, but they thought it would vital for the companies who want to use this tool to easily modify game components, without delving into the open source code, to fit in line better with the companies’ training goals.  Who does or thinks this way other than professionals with a large amount of time?!?!

What a great experience it was to be involved in this great process and event.  Unfortunately, Ann had to bow out as she hopped a plane to Boston on Tuesday, a day and a half before the conference ended, to attend the CIMIT Innovation Conference.  She’s definitely a busy woman… Maybe she’ll read this post to get the update on what happened when she’s back.  ;o)

Atlantis from the Air

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Seems like we've been here before. Oh yes we were! Weather turned blustery yesterday afternoon as we were attempting to travel to Houston for the Meeting Professional International conference. 

We had to rebook and were at the Burlington airport by 4:15 am. The students will be creating two games in the next three days: one on convening meetings that more effectively reach organizational goals. The other on how event planners can begin crafting "green" events.

Our looming environmental crisis has been a theme this week. The campus took part in Focus the Nation with author Bill McKibben issuing the wake-up call at Champlain. He clearly pinpointed the edge we are precipitously dancing on. He speaks out for both individual and political action but also for seeking new technological solutions to our energy needs.The following day Hope, Bob Bloch, Moneer Greenbaum and I met with Ann Jones-Weinstock from NRG. NRG is a successful Vermont engineering company that develops wind energy products. Her point was that NRG is focused on offering long lasting, realistic solutions. She wondered how NRG could help Champlain bring bright young minds to the question.

Our point exactly.

In preparation for their challenge this week, our student team interviewed Mike Dupee. Mike guides Green Mountain Coffee Roasters corporate responsibility actions. He spoke of “green washing”. Like white washing, it means putting a green spin on products or activities that make the consumer feel good but in actuality do not bring about positive environmental change. An example would be a recent catalog I received. It teased me to better the planet through purchasing organic cotton sheet sets printed in a green leaf motif. However promoting consumerism and mailing catalogs achieves the opposite result. Mike also linked the environmental question to the human equation. How should corporations work with world workers producing oil, coffee, cocoa, etc.? They receive minimal fiscal reimbursement with little consideration of sustainable practices. Why should and how can corporations work to balance that?

Tying ends together Elliott Masie and John Abele visited us yesterday. We drew together: students, faculty and staff in an open forum essentially on games, technology and learning. The conversations took a deep look at how these and the talents of our students can impact our world. Elliott has returned from Africa where he helped distribute malaria nets with Malaria No More. Malaria is spreading due to two major environmentally bound factors. First being the initial remedy against the mosquitoes, DDT, did more harm than good. The second — global warming is increasing the range of the mosquito borne illnesses. While in Africa, Elliott creatively applied technology—videoing, blogging and posting; connecting the recipients of the nets to those who donated them. This mimics the rewarded learning and communication system found in games. Those who take action can witness the impact.

But my mind is seeking answers to save us from destroying our home. How can we learn fast enough and then implement as quickly what needs to be done? Can new ways of communicating and thinking brought about by our networked, participatory culture bring about real solutions? What is the “Wikipedia” model that can leverage the “Wisdom of the Crowds” to find true solutions? Can we then “game-ify” the system to bring lasting change?

Our student team, Wes, Lauren, Ben, Emily, Vanessa and Chris, along with Hope, Ray, Peter and myself are finally airborne. The frozen, icy airfield behind us, we’ve traveled through the tumbly clouds to a sliver moon morning. As I sit here the clouds below look like a snowfield and I can imagine them embracing the continent. 

The sun rises above the horizon. Light breaks across in golds, blues and pinks. My heart catches in awe. We are at the time of Atlantis. The choices lay before us. Shall we continue with this beautiful world, or will we choose to annihilate ourselves? “This pretty planet” can continue an eternity without us. We do not have the same option.