Chicago Needs an Accordion-Playing Boba Fett

As long as we're "bringing the neighborhood" to Chicago with Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, I hope there's room on the moving van for this guy:

De Niro's Tribeca is Coming to Flashpoint Academy!

Listen to this amazing news: Robert De Niro's company, Tribeca Enterprises, just partnered with Flashpoint Academy, Chicago's digital media arts college. In honor of this partnership, Flashpoint Academy will be renamed Tribeca Flashpoint Digital Media Academy, and will continue to offer cutting edge collegiate programs in Film & Broadcast, Recording Arts, Game & Interactive Media Development, and Animation & Visual Effects -- with considerable new opportunities loaded in.

As a Flashpoint employee, this announcement positively thrills me. Not only will this amazing organization grow in ways we've only imagined; our students are going to find all sorts of new ways to build upon our relationship with Tribeca, and Tribeca's relationships with, well, everyone, to advance their careers and do some really amazing stuff.

Plus, when De Niro comes around, intra-office encounters could get a whole lot more interesting. "You talkin' to me?"

READ THE TRIBUNE ARTICLE HERE

Educating Our Way Through Social Media Despair

Earlier today I clicked on this link to Amber Naslund's post on Altitude. (Thanks to @TimJahn for tweeting it.) Her question: Why do social media marketers continue to seek hard and fast answers for social media success?

Anyone who's ever launched (or tried to launch) a social media initiative has undoubtedly sought firm answers, only to be frustrated by the recurring and entirely unhelpful non-answer of "it depends."

So why do we keep looking? Is it because we need people to do our thinking/adventuring for us? Or that we don't want to be accountable for mistakes or lack of measurable results? Or is it something different?

For a variety of responses I invite you to read the comments on Amber's post, "The Quest for Firm Answers." But since you're reading my blog for the moment, here are my thoughts:

I like to think of social media as akin to a fitness routine. Just as some people use exercise primarily to lose weight, bulk up, or improve their overall physical well-being, different companies are going to use social media for a variety of different objectives, such as brand building, improved customer service, and overall conversion.

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to exercise, and there also isn’t one for social media. But, for a novice in either area, a set of initial guidelines can help people get more comfortable with a routine and the equipment they need to use. In time, each person who is serious about getting the results they want will figure out how to customize their experience to reach their goals, but without a basic idea of where to start, a good portion of people will get too frustrated at the onset to ever start at all.

The point of having “rules” or a “recipe” becomes less about guaranteeing results and more about getting people active in the first place.

Therefore, I don’t think the rules people crave come as a result of cowardice or not wanting to be accountable. It’s about relieving some confusion at the onset of a major undertaking. As long as people understand this both when giving and receiving advice about social media, our community of social media marketers will grow, and grow stronger, in time.

The Social Media Cycle: A Religious Experience?

When having a conversation about social media, it's almost impossible to do so without touching upon the concept of community. It's no secret that the internet has forced us to re-evaluate and even, in some ways, redefine how we view community, adjust for the extent to which digital gatherings are becoming the norm.

This topic came up yesterday in a conversation with some Methodist ministers who were looking for ways to use social media for the growth and enrichment of their communities. The overwhelming concern I was hearing from them was that social media would cause people to forgo having, as one minister called it, "skin in the game." In other words, many of them were reluctant to use social media because they felt it would actually break down their communities and lead to isolation.

Aside from the fact that it is my personal belief humans have a natural, innate need for physical contact, and that social media will relieve us of that need no more than the telegraph or telephone have over the last couple of centuries (did AT&T connect or disconnect us when they told us to "Reach Out and Touch Someone?"), there are some uses of social media that are more conducive to this than others.

If your community likes to chat online, the first thing you have to do is recognize that as a good thing, not a bad thing. When they're on your Facebook page, message boards, twitter feed, etc., it means they're engaged with your message and they want to share their thoughts, feelings, and questions with others.

To bring those conversations from the message board to the meeting place, a savvy community leader can listen to what their community is saying and build physical events, such as focused study groups, classes, and outings, around those topics of interest. So if your online communities are buzzing this week about, say, Paul's Letters, how do you turn that topic into an opportunity for a face-to-face conversation? If you're a minister, plan a sermon to address your community's questions. Looking for a less formal option? Suggest a meet-up or Bible study (perhaps at a restaurant, coffee shop, or other inviting location) specifically to talk about this topic. Perhaps after studying Paul's letters, your community expresses an interest in finding ways to serve. If so, organize a volunteer day where they can combine their strengths for the greater good.

Then, once you've found the topics that engage your community using social media, you can promote these events using social media. Get on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, message boards, Eventbrite, Meetup.com -- the list continues. The more channels you use, the broader your reach will be.

You can even take things one step further and document your meetings to share online. Whether you choose to share your content via video (YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion, Metacafe), audio (podcasts, MySpace), or blog post (Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad), you can start to build a conversation archive for the future. Then, next time someone has an interest in one of your past topics and does a web search, they'll find your community and, it follows, a place to talk about it. And from here, the social cycle continues.

For those companies and organizations who still doubt social media's ability to bring people together meaningfully, just remember: the more you listen to your communities online, the more opportunities you'll find to get creative and engage their interests in constructive ways. People gravitate toward social media because they perceive the technology's ability to bring them closer together. It simply takes a leader to sort through the clutter and find the channels that will lead to deep and meaningful social engagement.

From Oak Park to Pixar - How One "Star Wars Kid" Fulfilled His Dream

In today's economy, it stands to reason that there's a scarcity of people who are truly satisfied in their work. With national job satisfaction at 20 year lows and unemployment at all-time highs, it's a rare thing indeed to encounter someone whose career continues to be fun, challenging, and rewarding -- even through some of the hardest economic times in our nation's history.

But for animator Warren Trezevant, the time and hard work he invested in his career have truly paid off. Now, after 15 years with Pixar Animation Studios, this self-described "Star Wars kid" from Oak Park reflects on a career that has allowed him to explore the various facets of his many interests, and bring characters to life both on the screen and in the physical world.

I had the pleasure of meeting Warren at last week's Break the Box lecture series at Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple, and again at Flashpoint Academy where he spoke to students the following day. An Oak Park, IL native, Warren told two very different, yet equally captivated audiences about his personal journey from Oak Park River Forest High School to Oakland, California where he helped to animate such popular and critically-acclaimed modern classics as A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille.

As a career, animation married Warren's two loves: art and computers. It was a path he arrived at sideways, following an industrial design degree from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, a short time in Europe, a Westward leap of faith, and his fortuitous enrollment in an animation course that was, as luck would have it, taught by some of the founding Pixar animators. And the rest, as they say, is history.

As he shared his story with his audiences, what shined through Warren's words -- more than hard work, smart job choices, and chance encounters -- was his palpable appetite for improvement. At Pixar, they call the incremental and collaborative betterment of their work "plussing:" and during his time there, Warren has plussed not only his own shots and the shots of his fellow animators, but has also plussed Pixar by joining Disney's Animatronics team to create such imaginative and truly awe-inspiring projects as the Pixar Zoetrope and a life sized Wall-E. (Check the end of this post for videos.) Still, 15 years into his career, Warren continues to build upon his considerable talent by drawing upon his passions and never settling for the status quo.

When I think about what I learned from Warren Trezevant, it is this: that, no matter how far they go and how many hurdles they clear, true innovators always go looking for more. It's not an assignment, nor really a choice for them to do so. Innovators innovate because that's what they're driven to do, and it's unsatisfying for them to do anything less. And that, to me, is what is truly inspirational about his story -- that some people do succeed, and that when they do, they continue to chart a path for future artists to follow in their footsteps and form into reality the stuff of their wildest imaginations.

As I look back on Warren's visit to Chicago, I can't help but hope that, at least in some small way, the dissatisfaction held by many working Americans will be a building force, growing and invigorating the next generation of imagination, invention, innovation.


Feeling inspired? For more about Flashpoint's 2-year, Associate of Applied Science degree programs in Animation & Visual Effects, Film & Broadcast, Recording Arts, or Game Development, visit flashpointacademy.com.


The Pixar Zoetrope:



Wall-E Comes to Life:

Another Personal Anecdote about Why I Love My Job.

On my way out of Burnham Center on Friday night, I had an interesting conversation with a couple of students from a competing college in town, both of whom pursuing animation degrees.

These two students initially approached me to find out if I was a student at Flashpoint Academy. I told them no, but that I work at Flashpoint, and would be happy to help them if I could. They told me they’d been to our school a few times for CG Society meetings and wanted to know where they could get a Flashpoint t-shirt to, in their own words, “piss off” their school.

I laughed, but they said they were quite serious. One of them then went on to tell me they’ve had it with their animation department’s lack of tools and resources, and they’re constantly frustrated by scarce and broken equipment. They said that when they come to Flashpoint they see what animation facilities really SHOULD be like, and that their school should be more like us.

As luck would have it, Perry Harovas, our Animation & Visual Effects chairman, walked by just as I was having this conversation with these students. I asked them if they use Mastering Maya in their animation classes, and when they said yes I pointed at Perry and informed them that he had co-authored it. They couldn’t believe it, and acted a little like there was a celebrity in their midst. “It’s the textbook guy!”

Both of these students already had a brochure in hand when I started talking to them and expressed interest in coming to Flashpoint after they finish their current BFA degrees in order to expand their education.

My conversation with these students further proved to me that we at Flashpoint Academy are doing something (in fact, a lot of things) right.

By keeping our emphasis on hands-on learning and exceptional teaching, our programs are gaining a reputation -- even among the students at competing colleges -- for providing superior education. The fact that these students see our 2-year Animation & Visual Effects program as something more akin to a graduate program than their own BFA program really says something about who we are and what we have accomplished in just 3 years. I am extremely proud.

My Wordle

I created this cool "Wordle" using the program at wordle.net. It's cool how you can take one look at this and know exactly what my blog is about. I recommend you try it!