Cold Weather, Hot Topics: Fall Tour Interactive 2013
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.
The conference was also made up of panels and keynote speeches on topics such as industry trends, the ethics of unpaid internships and networking. The dominant theme running through these conversations was that of persistence and self-reliance. In order to be successful in this industry, you have to be determined and motivated to go after what you want, whether its a position or a project. Another key piece of advice was that you can't wait for permission to do the things you want to do. Employers are impressed with people who take initiative on things and can predict the needs of the company. If you observe a part of the company that isn't working or that could be improved - make it better. The same thinking should be applied to your career and personal development. The best way to move forward is to stop ruminating and start doing!