The Centre for Digital Media
MP3May 11, 2015
As they used to say in the days of radio, this week we’re on a live remote from The Centre for Digital Media in Vancouver. We chat with the students about the unique program and school. These talented individuals share their experience in the amazing Master program, their ridiculously cool projects and future aspirations. Listening to the altruistic men & women in this Master’s program will give you hope for the future.
- We’re joined by Arushi Nagar, Gandhar Tannu and Armin Mortazavi.
- More information on this digital media graduate program is available here. The MDM at the CDM is made possible through a partnership with The University of British Columbia (UBC), Simon Fraser University (SFU), Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECUAD) and the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT).
- Gandhar briefly describes the courses & semesters.
- Gandhar also shares that the school encourages entrepreneurship so students can pitch their own projects to real world investors like on Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank.
- Arushi mentioned that one of the keys to the school’s success is the diversity of the students. They are from different cultures & different professional disciplines. They are Agile.
- Our guests really enjoy their approachable and fun professors. They love the staff as well.
- How are you greeted at the school? By “a giant Pac-Man” Armin tells us.
- There’s a lot of game development happening at the school, so naturally they have game systems from Intellivision and Atari 2600 to the current generation of XBox One and PS4.
- Even if game design is not their focus, each of our guests enjoyed the game design class taught by Dr. Kimberly Voll.
- Gandhar was part of the Out of the Box team during the semester. The client he was working with was founded by former CDM students.
- When Chris watched the demo of the Magic Box he was reminded of Sega’s Time Traveler Hologame from the 90s.
- There are past graduates at EA, Microsoft, Google, CapCom, Apple, and many others.
- 12 companies have come out of the school in 6 years!
- Project team Eagle Eye included our guest Arushi and they were working on a marketing automation campaign for the ad agency Elevator Strategy.
- Armin was on a team called The Six. Their goal was to create a brain training game. Without breaking the non-disclosure agreement, he describes the project as “similar to Lumosity.”
- Finding a common interest is a key to a successful team. For example, get off the phone it’s beer Friday!
- Gandhar was mostly acting as a project manager for the project, but he does write on his site, gandharwrites.com.
- While Arushi hopes to find work at an augmented reality agency and Gandhar wants to create his own startup, Armin would like to teach science through his art.
Special thanks to Mark, Josh, Jeannette, Director Dr. Richard Smith and the entire staff at the CDM for making this remote show possible.