Fridays Evenings at MIC

We’re lining up speakers for our Friday evening IMPD series. The MIC team has also lined up thematic films that we will be screening Friday evenings after the talks. We will also have a “brown-bag” dinner from 5:00-7:00 in the MIC studio that will informally bring together faculty and students. These events are open to students and alumni as well as professionals in the digital entertainment industry at large.

Our first few talks include one this week (September 9th) by Maxi Goldschwartz who founded Morphologica (http://morphologica.net/w/), and Brian Jobling who founded the game studio Eutechnyx (http://press.eutechnyx.com/) next week (September 16th). Both companies are doing innovative work with video game technologies. Morphologica creates medical training applications using video game technologies, while Eutechnyx has created a new online driving game, Auto Club Revolution, with the support of major car manufacturers.

I’m really looking forward to the Fridays! Looking back at my time as a student at Berkeley, what I learned from activities outside the classroom during that period did more to shape my thinking that what was learned within. There were the trips to present at conferences, especially the “round the world” tour in 1989, the student groups and protests at Sproul plaza, the afternoons spent playing speed chess at Café Roma and Café Milano, and then there were the dinners I had on Tuesdays with my advisor, Alvin Despain (Al).

Tuesday evenings, Al (as we called him), myself, and his other graduate students, Rick McGeer, Bill Bush, and Mike Carleton would walk from Evans Hall to Guererros on Shattuck Avenue (looks like it’s still there - http://local.yahoo.com/info-21519891-guerreros-mexican-food-restaurant-berkeley) and talk about whatever came to mind that the time. Topics ranged from politics and the economy, to philosophy, to how to get projects funded, to the latest happenings in the media. Al would often share with us stories from his own past experiences when he was a student, as a junior faculty, and working in industry and with the JASON advisory group.

I’m hoping to continue the “tradition” with the brown-bag dinners on Fridays. I hope I can interest and inspire our students the way that my advisor inspired me. Its also a great opportunity to learn about how our students think and what topics are important to them.