Vancouver’s Centre for Digital Media program evolves

Womp had potential. A video game designed so that gamers could easily participate with nongamers, it was played by pushing a single button. The students who created it as part of the master of digital media program at Vancouver’s Centre for Digital Media called it “the second most fun thing you can do on a couch”.

But with debts accumulated during their time as students, and with no money available to jump-start a company, Womp was shelved so its creators could take jobs in the industry. It was, according to Dennis Chenard and Jeannette Kopak, who help run the centre at the Great Northern Way Campus, a missed opportunity.

When the MDM program started up in 2007, it received a lot of support because of how it would supply senior-level employees for the thriving video-game development industry. But the centre’s director, Richard Smith, now believes that it has a much bigger role to play.

“Digital media is going to be enabling, and the foundation for, just about anything—from the resource industry to the financial industry to government and health care,” Smith said via Skype from his home office.

Smith told the Georgia Straight that back in 2007 the start-up culture in the technology industry was “not really what it is now”. Nobody expected the centre to play a role in training entrepreneurs. “But that’s clearly become a big factor,” he said.

And the shifting demands of students have led to changes in the MDM program. “They invest their time and their tuition dollars, and it’s important to be mindful of their needs when we are thinking about the program,” Smith said.

Some 10 companies have come out of the MDM program in the last five years. One of them, V7 Entertainment, has offices next door and a staff of 14. Its founders have only been out of the program for two years but are already hiring other MDM graduates.

“That’s with us not really doing a lot to make that happen,” Smith admitted. “So we’ve changed what we teach, how we teach, and, most importantly, how we enable them to start up a new venture at the end of their studies.”

By the end of April, 160 students will have graduated. Forty students are currently in the program, and another 50 are starting in September. While it used to be a two-year program, the MDM is now just 16 months: a year of course work and projects, followed by a four-month internship.

Smith said compressing the program means that students who have left jobs to enroll can get back to work faster. That’s one reason the internship component, which used to occur in the middle of the program, was moved to the end. That shift also allows students to opt for a venture internship. Rather than just “turn people loose” to work for other companies, the program allows them to start their own company. The centre provides them with space and infrastructure, mentoring, and a network of business connections.

Contrasting with Womp is Gravatron, an app developed for extreme-sports enthusiasts that uses the accelerometer and GPS in mobile devices to record speed, distance, and even air time from jumps.

“You can map your ride onto the mountain,” Martin Schüller, who came up with the idea, told the Straight. He and Rachel Teo are the core of Media Objects, a company that was formed in September 2012 out of the venture internship opportunity. The small team will have support from the centre until September. “The idea,” Schüller said by phone, “is to create a company and make it profitable.”

Smith observed, “Our students, just in the last year, have started up three or four little companies, and you just never know what’s going to happen with those.”