Fall Tour Interactive: Face to Face with the Digital Media Industry
When I asked myself "Why IDM?" in the first post on this blog, I answered honestly that I wasn't quite sure. It's one thing to be a user of interactive tech and consumer of digital media, but what was it like on the other side? Fall Tour Interactive, an annual event founded by Tim Willison, the Director of media solutions provider Oddly Studios, gave attendees a glimpse at what it would be like to work in the local industry, and introduced me to a number of talented people working in Toronto. FTI provided tours of local businesses, held panel discussions and keynote presentations with industry talent, and set up workshops that gave attendees a chance to network with said talent, as well as students from other schools.
Some highlights from the two day event: Bensimon Byrne, an advertising agency responsible for many national campaigns (including Svedka Vodka and Scotiabank). The building where the agency was located was completely nondescript on the outside, but inside revealed a sleek and ultramodern office. My group was given a tour of the agency's many departments and their duties.
A presentation by Jay Bregman, CEO of Hailo, an ingenious smartphone app that puts people in touch with taxi drivers using GPS. The story of this company's humble beginnings on a boat and its expansion to cities around the globe was insightful and really quite inspiring.
Rachel Kennedy and Shauna Roe, "Canada's Ballsiest Interns": These two bright and talented women - who both currently work at ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi - showed us the creative ways they were able to distinguish themselves from hundreds of other interns: by challenging agencies to complete outlandish tasks in exchange for an interview. An interesting look at what it takes to get noticed in the industry.
Shopify, an e-commerce platform that acquired local UX design agency Jet Cooper earlier this year. This stop on the tour was a pleasant surprise for me personally, as I happen to know the company's Director of Design and former Co-Founder of Jet Cooper. Representatives Arati and Trevor described the services the company provides, and detailed the many perks you receive when working there. The most intriguing thing we learned was how the company breeds creativity by holding "hack days," a 48-hour period that allows employees to work together on creative, non-work related projects. Shopify is definitely one of my top choices for prospective field placement next year.
Get Set Games is a local game developer known for popular mobile games Mega Jump and Mega Run. What I think was supposed to be a presentation by Producer Andy Smith quickly turned into an excellent Q&A session that provided a lot of insight into the mobile gaming industry.
A keynote presentation by one of the Animation Directors from Ubisoft Toronto, developer of "Splinter Cell: Blacklist." Using gameplay videos, the keynote showed how character animation and dialogue interactions further immerses players in the game world. I have no interest in game animation but this inside look at what goes into the making of a single feature of a AAA blockbuster game was a tour highlight.
For future students taking the tour next year, some words of advice: be prepared for long walks and cold weather. Be sure to grab a business card from keynote speakers, panelists, and studio tour guides. If you have your own cards exchange them with other people taking the tour. And most important: ask questions. The people you're there to see are fountains of valuable information; you just need to ask the right questions to get it out of them.
Lastly, and this might not gel with the way the event is organized, but if you can, try to find out about the other presentations being held at the FTI venue. If you hear about one that your group won't be seeing that you're more interested in, go see that one instead. I didn't do this myself, but looking back it would've been a good idea to "customize" your tour, since no single group will be able to see every presentation.
