#fti2013

The Fall Tour Interactive 2013 was a two days incredible experience where students and freelancers had the chance to visit the leading companies from interactive digital media industry in the downtown Toronto core. As well as attend workshops, presentations and panel discussions with experienced industry professionals and have the opportunity to ask questions to presenters and panelists in an intimate environment and learn from them a little more about the interactive digital industry.

  The highlights of this particularly year was enjoy on Day 1 all about interactive design, marketing and advertising and on Day 2 have the opportunity to select your passion, whether if it's Gaming, Interactive Advertising or Post/VFX and attend to a specific industry workshops, presentations and panel discussions about those theme, meet people from other programs and schools and make new friends with the same interests as you. The participants were divided in small groups that allowed the interaction with the tour guides, presenters and panelists were in a relaxed, informal and intimate atmosphere to speak freely and ask any kind of questions.

  On Day 1, I had the opportunity to visit four companies related with interactive design, advertising, public relation and social media, very different from each other. Derooted an agency specializing in innovation, creative exhibitions and projections; Bensimon Byrne a big company with huge clients like Google, Scotiabank and Aldo; Lotus Leaf Communications a fashion and public relations agency; and S-Trip a company that brings fun trips to Canadian high schools and universities around the world. On Day 2, I decided to make the most out of the day and spend the morning with a Gaming group and the afternoon with an Interactive Advertising group. I went to Social Game Universe a small group of passionate and talented game makers with a great working environment; and Secret Location a great interactive entertainment agency with huge clients and awesome projects, I can tell it was one of my favorites.

  On these two days event I had the opportunity to interact and meet students from others colleges like Seneca and Sheridan College and talk with the tour guides and ask question about their experience, internships, tips and suggestions about the industry. The workshops, presentations and panel discussions gave me the opportunity to meet creative and talented people who knows very well about the digital media industry and learn from them where and how to start. It’s very gratifying to know that this industry is growing and we may have a safe future and good chances of being successful. 

The Fall Interactive Tour is an event that provides emerging professionals the opportunity to get involved with media companies around Toronto, visit them and learn about the jobs they might be offering.

The FTI 2013 wasn’t the exception, the tour was full with energy students from different college across Toronto, media professionals, collaborators and amazing experiences. We visited 5 different companies throughout the tour (Shopify, S-Trip, Taxi, Derooted and Social Game Universe). We also watched presentations and workshops by media professionals from other companies such as EA, Ubisoft, Get Set, Oddly, Asteroid Base, etc to help us gain a greater understanding of  the media industry in Toronto.

One of the more amazing and inspiring presentations that we saw was from Asteroid Base. They are a small group of guys ( Matt Hammill, Jamie Tucker and Adam Winkels) that are creating a very unique indie game calls “Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime”. The entire group started in a complete different path from the game industry but with a similar passion between each other: “games”. The story began at Toronto Global Game Jam 2012 where LIADS starts. The team has been developing the game since then and also showing it to the community, that gives them excellent comments about it. The game is 2 player co-op platformer inside a spaceship and is very active and colorful. Players work together running back and forth between ship control rooms trying to kill the enemies outsite of the spaceship.

During FTI 2013 we had the opportunity to speak with many media professionals from different companies, developers, designers, illustrators, animators, etc but Tim Willison founder of Oddly and sponsor of FIT was one of the most impressive guys at the event. He was always involved in almost every presentation during the tour, participating and giving us his experience about the topic. He’s very social and incredibly friendly to everyone. In my particular case having the opportunity to share with such a successful person is an incredibly valuable experience and gave me the feeling that I’m able to be part of this industry.

This Tuesday and Wednesday, I participated in Fall Tour Interactive - a conference and tour dedicated to building community in the Toronto digital media field. Over the two days, I visited seven studios across the downtown core and attended five panels. The variety of the studios was very diverse - everything from travel companies to ad agencies to game studios. It's clear from the range of the companies we visited that digital media is becoming a more omnipresent and integrated across a diverse arrange of industries. The size and scale of the companies ranged from hundreds of employees in several offices located worldwide to staff of two or three. What was interesting to me was that the size of the company seemed to have little relation to their capacity for incredible work or huge clients. The last studio we visited on the first day, DeRooted, was made up of a core team of 2 principals and an intern. Yet they had been contracted to create all of the creative and marketing material for Toronto MasterCard Fashion Week - quite an accomplishment for such only three people! What really impressed me about DeRooted was their interactive installation projects. Since it is a field that I am very passionate about, I was thrilled to discover that there was a studio in my hometown working on the kinds of things that I had, until recently, only seen done in Montreal, New York and various European cities. I had an exciting chat with the director, Simon, after his presentation and I will definitely be pursuing further communication. 

The other studio that interested me was Secret Location (and gathering from the response of my peers, it seemed I wasn't the only one!) I was thoroughly impressed by their projects that acted as companion pieces to traditional TV shows. These pieces were exceptional examples of the ability to use so-called "second-screen" projects to enhance the viewers experience of the primary work. With their apps and websites, the creatives at Secret Location had managed to enhance the stories being told by the TV show - therefore creating a symbiotic relationship between the two pieces. I think this is a factor that is often overlooked by studios creating pieces to accompany traditional media works such as films or TV shows. So often you seen apps or websites that simply repeat the content presented in the primary work.

  Every year, a giant group of interactive digital media students from various schools descend on Loft 404 to take part what is known as Fall Tour Interactive (or FTI). These students spend a good part of two days running around downtown listening to talks, panel discussions and touring various studios. I was fortunate enough to take part in the event this year.  A few days removed from the experience, I feel like I can really sit back and process all the things that happened over the course of those two days. Tim Willison, the head of Oddly Studios and the brains behind the event, said many times over the course of the event that “it was never supposed to be a yearly thing”. Based on the success that I witnessed this year, however, I think Tim is going to have to plan for a few more students next year when he is forced to start it all over again.

  Based on the fact that I am relatively new to the industry, just listening to a few producers and directors talk about the studio culture at their various companies would have probably been enough. But what separates this event is that participants are actually granted access to a wide variety of studios located throughout the downtown Toronto core. Walking into a series of beautiful loft spaces and being greeted by dogs and beer fridges was pretty eye opening. The agencies/studios that I got to personally see included Secret Location, John St., Usability Matters, Derooted, and a host of others. From a professional point of view, the highlight for me would have to have been Usability Matters. This small agency is putting UX and information architecture in the spotlight like no other company I have seen. Considering that these are the areas I am most interested in, I could not help but be excited to meet some of the people who worked there and gain some insight on how I might be able to get into the area myself. From a more personal point of view, I would say my favorite studio was Secret Location. When you consider the types of individuals they are looking for, I really have nothing to offer this studio professionally. That being said, I would kill to grab some beers with the founders of this studio. They told us a lot of great stories and seem to have this certain “coolness” factor to what they do that simply cannot be found anywhere else.

  While the studio tours were great,  another hugely important element to FTI is the people you meet. I had the opportunity to meet people hailing from Seneca’s Digital Media Arts programs and from Sheridan College’s Interactive Media program. It was great talking to these people about their programs and their goals as a way of informing what I might be looking to do. I am really hoping to organize some kind of a gathering in the future with some of those people, as there were definitely a few who I could see working with down the line.