Podcasts about Entertainment Technology Center

If you're struggling to keep people engaged and loyal in your product or business, check out my FREE gamification course to learn how to do just that: bit.ly/freegamificationcourse-web A unique perspective on how combining diverse fields can lead to innovative and socially impactful projects, shedding light on the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in developing interactive media. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in enhancing user engagement through creative and collaborative approaches, whether in educational settings or business applications. Drew Davidson is a professor, producer and player of interactive media. His background spans the academic, industry and professional worlds and he is interested in stories and transformational experiences across texts, comics, games and other media. He explores the art, design, and science of making media that matters, working to expand our notions of what media are capable of doing, and what we are capable of doing with media. He is an expert in leading creative collaborations with interdisciplinary groups, orchestrating change, and building initiatives focused on making a positive social impact. He is a Teaching Professor at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University and is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Play Story Press, an open community publishing consortium, and the Well Played series and journal. Rob is a host and consultant at Professor Game as well as an expert, international speaker and advocate for the use of gamification and games-based solutions, especially in education and learning. He's also a professor and workshop facilitator for the topics of the podcast and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY (LSP) for top higher education institutions that include EFMD, IE Business School and EBS among others in Europe, America and Asia.   Guest Links and Info Websites: waxebb.com playstorypress.org LinkedIn Drew Davidson   Links to episode mentions: Proposed guests: Brenda Bakker Harger Jesse Schell Recommended book: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Favorite game: Sokoban   Lets's do stuff together! Get started in Gamification for FREE! LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Instagram TikTok YouTube Ask a question  

Today's podcast is titled, “The Synthetic Interview: Tool for Advanced Learning.” Professor Don Marinelli, Co-Director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, and Dr. Scott Stevens, Senior Systems Scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, discuss a software tool in 1998 which allows authors to take written dialogue and transform it into interactive character conversation. Listen now, and don't forget to subscribe to get updates each week for the Free To Choose Media Podcast.

Few Jews live in Dorcol today but this quiet corner of Belgrade still evokes its past, when Jewish shops stood cheek by jowl and families scurried off on Friday evenings to synagogue. Ida Labudovic interviewed Vera Amar and Avram Mosic for us in 2002, and both describe what Dorcol was like in its last years. Jilly Bond, who reads Vera Amar, is a regular performer on BBC's The Archers and has read more than 40 audio books.David Horovitch. With 100 screen credits to his name, David Horovitch has performed Shakespeare on stage and in film, was recently seen in Mike Leigh's Mr Turner and is currently starring in the HBO Max series House of the Dragons. Additional reading of Ernst Pavel's memoir by Mikael Gemeda-Breka of Carnegie Mellon University. Special thanks to Jaehee Cho of the Entertainment Technology Center of CMU and Tijana Zherajikj of Centropa. narrated by David Horovitch Jilly Bond

Erik Weaver is a specialist focused on the intersection of cloud computing and the media and entertainment industry. He's currently the director of the Entertainment Technology Center's Adaptive Production project and special projects in Los Angeles. That means he gets to test out new technologies and report to the major movie studios on his findings.

Erik Weaver is a specialist focused on the intersection of cloud and the M&E industry and is currently running Virtual & Adaptive production for the Entertainment Technology Center@the University of Southern California (ETC). Projects include Executive Producer on Ripple Effect and FatHead production focused on Virtual Production and ICVFX. Mr. Weaver graduated from the 3rd Unreal Fellowship.Highlights of the Episode:0:00 - Introduction0:36 - Introduction of Guest1:29 - What lead Erik to his career4:00 - How did Erik get into Cloud Infrastructure7:25 - Information about the new project10:42 - Advice for people getting into filmmaking14:07 - Advice for people getting into different fields of filmmaking18:15 - Information Before Vs Information Today20:14 - Color Science23:39 - Best methods for shooting28:41 - Pitching your story30:01 - Meta Humans31:13 - Project with Unreal32:57 - Smaller stages34:00 - New Technologies in virtual production38:49 - LED Walls42:48 - Role of Post-production44:15 - Cloud Infrastructure workflow49:56 - ARRND Scene51:35 - Unreal 552:42 - Book for terminologies54:14 - Machine Learning56:19 - Extended Reality58:37 - OutroQuotes:“Let's just go end-to-end, document the process, show what's going on, figure out what works, what doesn't actually work in practice.”“This is like moving up in the evolutionary curve. We've absolutely opened Pandora's box and we're not going back from any of this. This isn't a fad, we're absolutely marching forward.” — Erik Weaver, on using LED screens in the film industry Connecting with the Guest:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/weavererik/Website: https://fatheadshortfilm.com/team-1Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/projectcloudetc Connecting with CG Pro: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/becomecgproInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/becomecgpro/Website: https://www.becomecgpro.com/Twitter: https://twitter.com/edgevisualCG #Future#Creative#Virtual

On Season 2's premiere episode we surf the waves of change with Mauro Fiore,  Studio Design Director at EA Firemonkeys in Melbourne, Australia.   Mauro has spent 20+ years navigating the ever evolving gaming landscape - from console to casual to mobile and beyond.    Join us as we discuss his journey from Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center to Angel Studios, Rockstar Games, Zynga, Forgame, Linekong, and EA, working on titles such as Midnight Club 2 & 3, Red Dead Redemption, CityVille, FarmVille 2, BattleCore, Independence Day Extinction, Real Racing 3, Need for Speed No Limits, the Sims Free Play, and the Sims Mobile.  Chapters: (00:00) Who is Mauro Fiore? (14:37) Leaving Artifacts (25:56) Higher Education (37:50) Angel Studios (52:49) Part of the Angel Family (01:11:03) Designing the Wild West (01:25:12) Strive to Stay Relevant (01:39:17) Head North to Zynga (01:55:03) Developing for Mobile Startups (02:07:09) Life Down Under in Australia (02:25:10) The Metaverse & NFTs (02:41:59) Better Hiring Practices (02:56:01) John's Final Thoughts   Show Resources: Midnight Club Take 2 Buys Zynga LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maurovfiore/ Portfolio: https://www.maurovfiore.com/

 From Hollywood to Madison Avenue, tech innovators are harnessing data to combat harmful stereotypes. In the first episode of Season 7, we speak with Yves Bergquist from USC's Entertainment Technology Center on his team's use of AI to identify and combat the unconscious bias that exists in the films, tv shows, and advertising that so heavily influence our culture.

After graduating from the Information Networking Institute at CMU in 1994 with a Masters of Science in Computer Networking and Virtual Reality, Jesse Schell went on to work for Bell Labs. In 1995 he joined Walt Disney Imagineering, where he worked for seven years in capacity of programmer, manager, designer and Creative Director on several projects. These included rides for theme parks, DisneyQuest, and Toontown Online, a massively multiplayer online game. During his time at Disney, he met Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, who was taking a sabbatical in the lab where Jesse worked. When Randy founded the Entertainment Technology Center at CMU, he invited Jesse to become a faculty member. Jesse joined the faculty in 2002. In 2002, Jesse founded Schell Games, a full-service game design and development company with a focus on creating both educational and entertainment games on all platforms for players of all ages. The company is based in Pittsburgh, PA and employs more than 100 people. Currently Jesse serves as CEO. At Tech 50 in 2016, Jesse was awarded CEO of the year, and the year prior, Jesse was named one of Pittsburgh's 50 most powerful people.

We continue our conversation with Carnegie Mellon University alums Dustin Stephan (Master of Entertainment Technology, Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University) and Benton Shortridge (BSME Carnegie Mellon, Zamperla) as we discuss their time attending "the grandfather of Themed Experience Education," Carnegie Mellon University. ----------------------------------------------------- Show Notes: Mk Haley's Themed Entertainment Resource Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tPaYqW5EwEnaMFBwVINe4YV5N7_HQYf9ZwDLRk_YI4w/edit#gid=1865924328 Themantics (from Kevin Kalbfeld): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuJ6FVVcfx95H25uvhgbLqA/featured ITPS Leisure News: http://www.interthemepark.com/itps-leisure-news.html CMU ETC Page: https://www.etc.cmu.edu/ ASTM F24 Page: https://www.astm.org/COMMITTEE/F24.htm Amusement Industry Manufacturers and Suppliers International (AIMS): https://aimsintl.org/ ----------------------------------------------------- Check TPS out on: Instagram: @themeparkschoolpodcast Anchor Site: anchor.fm/tpspodcast Email: themeparkschoolpodcast@gmail.com

Join Carnegie Mellon University alums Dustin Stephan (Master of Entertainment Technology, Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University) and Benton Shortridge (BSME Carnegie Mellon, Zamperla) as we discuss their time attending "the grandfather of Themed Experience Education," Carnegie Mellon University. ----------------------------------------------------- Show Notes: Mk Haley's Themed Entertainment Resource Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tPaYqW5EwEnaMFBwVINe4YV5N7_HQYf9ZwDLRk_YI4w/edit#gid=1865924328 Themantics (from Kevin Kalbfeld): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuJ6FVVcfx95H25uvhgbLqA/featured ITPS Leisure News: http://www.interthemepark.com/itps-leisure-news.html CMU ETC Page: https://www.etc.cmu.edu/ ASTM F24 Page: https://www.astm.org/COMMITTEE/F24.htm Amusement Industry Manufacturers and Suppliers International (AIMS): https://aimsintl.org/ ----------------------------------------------------- Check TPS out on: Instagram: @themeparkschoolpodcast Anchor Site: anchor.fm/tpspodcast Email: themeparkschoolpodcast@gmail.com

These "How to get a job" strategies are geared toward college students but the lessons can apply to anyone. Students manage classes, schedules, life, but at a certain point, will need to start thinking about next steps: How to land that dream job. Here’s a little secret: your university wants to help you get that dream job. So how can you effectively use your university to help you? Watch Ethan Evans, VP of Twitch Prime at Amazon, talk with Susan Timko, Director of Career Services at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center. Learn the ins and outs of what employers are looking for and how to present your skills to land that dream job. ___________________________________________________________________________________ Questions Discussed - What should college students do to build up their resume and gain relevant experience? - Are prestigious schools of greater benefit compared to a school that is more aligned with your interests overall? - How do I show personal projects on resume effectively, if I haven't done any internship this summer? - What is more valuable in Computer Science: a Masters Degree or more experience in a high-growth setting? - What should a new grad be careful of when entering the work force? - What are some common networking mistakes new grads make? - Going into the fall, many universities are going online. Are there new standards/etiquette to implement for navigating networking & job fair events? - I just graduated from a Software boot camp and had a job lined up but when COVID-19 hit, the offer went away. What do you suggest would be the best way to find a job since there aren’t many companies hiring junior developers?

The Entertainment Technology Center (ETC-Global) at Carnegie Mellon University offers a two-year Masters of Entertainment Technology degree, jointly conferred by Carnegie Mellon University's College of Fine Arts and School of Computer Science. This is a lecture and project based course that teaches the mechanics and processes of good game design. Classes are held on the Electronic Arts Silicon Valley campus. APPLE PODCAST: VIDEO: https://www.morganrees.com/videos#carnegie-mellon-entertainment-technology-center https://www.morganrees.com

“I think we are standing on the cusp of an explosion in creativity around media.” —Yves Bergquist As the Director of AI & Neuroscience in Media at the Entertainment Technology Center of the University of Southern California, Yves Bergquist is leading the charge to connect the fields of neuroscience and entertainment. At ETC, Yves and his team are pioneering a new way to test an entertainment project’s narratives, what audiences they will resonate with and why.  Yves is thinking more broadly than traditional Hollywood studios and asking deeper questions.  “How do you we understand stories and narrative from a purely cognitive standpoint?” he asks. “And how do we understand what kind of stories resonate in what way with what kind of people to generate what kind of behavior?”  Yves was exposed to the entertainment industry at an early age thanks to his single mom, who worked in wardrobe on film sets in France. As a boy, he naturally gravitated towards psychology, and has successfully married that passion with his love of entertainment in his work at ETC and his start-up, Corto. Corto is an AI startup which Yves hopes he can utilize to continue his work leveraging A.I. research to understand what attributes of media content resonate with specific audience segments.  In this episode, Chad and Yves discuss the two types of knowledge — narrative and procedural knowledge — how AI will learn to outpace humans on procedural knowledge, and how we can begin to understand the oldest and most human form of knowledge — storytelling.  “Building something and selling something are going to be the two skills that are the most valuable in an A.I. or AGI future. Those are the two things that we can be confident are going to be the monopoly of the human mind for a while.” — Don’t forget, we have a new partnership with b8ta! B8ta.com gives you access to some of the most innovative and cutting edge consumer tech products. This week, we will be giving away one Neo Smartpen 1. Enter the giveaway for a chance to win! — Mission Daily and all of our podcasts are created with love by our team at Mission.org. We own and operate a network of podcasts, and brand story studio designed to accelerate learning. Our clients include companies like Salesforce, Twilio, and Katerra who work with us because we produce results. To learn more and get our case studies, check out Mission.org/Studios. If you’re tired of media and news that promotes fear, uncertainty, and doubt and want an antidote, you’ll want to subscribe to our daily newsletter at Mission.org. When you do, you’ll receive a mission-driven newsletter every morning that will help you start your day off right!

Mk Haley has been with The Walt Disney Company since 1994 serving primarily with Walt Disney Imagineering in both technical and creative roles with the Virtual Reality teams, R&D, Special FX, Show Quality Services and now the Disney Research. These teams allowed support of projects with a 10 year lead time, to critical in-park issues that needed immediate solutions. Mk has also served Disney Corporate initiatives related to New Technology programs and collaboration tools, as well as Disney Digital Media initiatives with our Television Groups. She has been an educator for 20 years teaching at both the high school and University level, including the Imagineering – UCLA partnership in Themed Entertainment Design, and recently served as both the Associate Executive Producer and Faculty at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. With more than 25 years of service to ACM SIGGRAPH, Mk more recently served as the SIGGRAPH 2013 Conference Chair. Mk was in New Zealand for a nationwide series of talks with support from the U.S. Embassy and Te Papa's innovation hub Mahuki. The series was called  “The Innovation of the Experience Economy” - a series of four talks and workshops exploring the future of “the experience” within the culture and heritage sector and beyond. Mike from the U.S. Embassy had a few minutes to chat with Mk Haley while in a cab in New Zealand's capital city, Wellington... Transcript.

Jesse Schell wrote, The Art of Game Design, the number one book on the subject in the industry. He was a founding member of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University and a former Disney Imagineer. He's also the founder of Schell Games, which has launched countless games including, I Expect You to Die and Domino World. Jesse is an amazing game designer and a fantastic teacher.

Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center joins us on the show today. Schell Games is a full-service game design and development company headquartered in Pittsburg. Schell Games is one of the largest independent game studios in the US, with clients that include Disney, The Fred Rogers Company, Oculus, Seaworld Entertainment, PBS Kids, and more. Jesse talks about their latest VR game called “I Expect you to Die” that recently hit over $1M in revenue. He also talks about the future of multiplayer VR, and gives us a glimpse into what we can expect to experience in 5 years. Have a listen and let us know what you think about this episode by sending us an email to podcast@thevrara.com. Full shownotes can be found at http://thevrara.com/podcast-posts/jesseschell

Visit GameDevLoadout.com for the show notes of every Podcast episode. Stone is the lead designer for Riot Games, has worked in the game industry for over 15 years on games such as SimCity, Spore, and Diablo 3. He also teaches game design courses at Carnegie Mellon University’s ETC program which stands for Entertainment Technology Center. And he runs design seminars around the world. Stone brought up a great point which is that a great game designer doesn't need a computer to create game designs. You could use your imagination and use your surroundings. Use your pen to draw or use the objects around you as references. The point is to always be creating. Don't let the tools be your excuse to not think of designs. Sponsored Giveaway: I am doing a giveaway sponsored by Game Dev Underground, a marketing and connection platform for indie developers that helps you build, finish and launch better games. The winner gets a 1-hour long indie game marketing consultation with the founder, Tim Ruswick. This is over $1,000 in value, and it can be yours! All you have to do is send proof that you rated and reviewed the podcast. Click here to enter the giveaway.

Dylan is accompanied by Wardcast stalwarts Dan Cotting and Mason Brown for a very special episode. Shawn Patton, Senior Designer at Schell Games, stops by to talk about their currently in-development VR game I Expect You to Die. Shawn comes from more than 13 years of experience in game development at Schell Games, so he talks to us about a myriad of topics: working at Schell, the new frontier of VR development, being a graduate from the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon, interning at Walt Disney Imagineering, prototyping games via “brownboxing,” helping Dylan with the chance to close a chapter on a childhood MMO he never got the chance to play, and more. If you’re curious about learning more about the development of I Expect You to Die, we also highly recommend Shawn and Jesse Schell’s VRDC talk on the game from the 2016 Game Developers Conference. Games include I Expect You to Die, Superhot VR, EVE: Valkyrie, and Eagle Flight. Got a question for the show? Join us on Discord or email us at contact@ward-games.com!

From the Interactive Media & Games Seminar Series; Drew Davidson, Director of the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University and the Founding Editor of ETC Press and its Well Played series and journal, looks at how sequences in games are analyzed in order to illustrate and interpret how various components of the game come together to create a fulfilling playing experience that leads to a literacy and mastery of gameplay mechanics.

Hit The Bullseye - Marriott Servicescape: Marriott is the world's largest hotel company and they have a brand for just about every price point, every occasion and every type of customer. And they've built these brands within the brand by focusing on the Servicescape created by the physical appearance of each hotel brand. Marriott clearly positions its many brands, distinguishing them from each other and attracting well defined market segments for each. Marriott built these distinctive hotel brands based on a complex strategy that focuses on hotel design, employee training and selection to match the brand strategy, hit the bullseye target marketing and specific operational standards for each brand within the brand.What does it mean to customers? We quickly know what we are getting. Ritz-Carlton means luxury while Marriott Courtyard means comfort and style for a business traveler or family stay.The exterior design, signage, parking lot appearance and landscape are all part of your Servicescape. So is the interior design, equipment, air quality and temperature, sounds and scents. Your prospective and current customers think of you and they segment you as much as you segment them, based on your Servicescape.The look and feel of your Servicescape tells your story to customers and prospects. Make sure it's the story you want to tell so you can hit the bullseye.Interview with Don Marinelli (Part 2)On today's episode we are back with Don Marinelli, currently the Director of Innovation at 535media/Inven Global, as we dive deeper into how he took the daring leap from a successful career in theatre into computer science and innovations in technology. We also discuss the impact several mentors had on his life and career journey, and how future generations can shape what it means to interact and entertain with technology in our world.Don always knew he wanted to be involved in theatre. However, his intuition and insight on the impact of video games and technology on today's generation steered him to the opposite end of the Carnegie Mellon campus, towards the School of Computer Sciences. What seemed like an unlikely pairing transformed into a revolutionary new department: The Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Don talks about the several key mentors he has had throughout his life that helped shape him into the bold, authentic leader he is today. Don also discusses the differences between being a good leader vs. a good manager, and how he learned a valuable insight about himself as a manager. Don shares about the pleasure he gains from being in an environment where he is continuously learning, and encourages others to follow a path that leads them into a similar environment.Don encourages me as well as others in the industry to pay close attention to the impact of video games on current and future generations. Video games allow anyone to transform into an entirely new character, and through such technology those “actors” can rehearse until they get it just right. This is where Don has found the common thread between theatre and technology. Join us for this great discussion on the intersectionality between the two industries, and Don's prediction for the future of gaming.About Don MarinelliDon Marinelli is Director of Innovation for 535media/Inven Global. Don is also the Academic Director of the Entertainment Technology Management M.S. Degree Program of Columbia University School of Professional Studies. For you Pittsburgh Pirates fans, he's also the guy you see dressed up in an impressive Pirate costume during games.Key Takeaways[3:11] Don's Mentors and Their Impact High School teacher Sandy Ryley Drama teacher Toughest teacher he ever had, strove for authenticity High School Teacher Mr. Obrins literature teacher Would assign 2 books to every individual student 2 Professors in college Provide guidance today on what it means to be an...

Hit the Bullseye: In 2007, Cheryl Bachelder became Popeye's Restaurants fourth CEO in 7 years. Before she officially started as CEO, Bachelder attended a franchisee meeting and quickly saw a lack of trust among franchisees towards management. She knew nothing would change until corporate leadership could demonstrate value to franchisees because the company needed to leverage their capital and expertise to turn Popeye's around. Read more...Guest: Jesse Schell is an American video game designer, author, CEO of Schell Games and a Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center. Big Idea: Jesse simply states his big idea - "the customer wants great games". Listen to hear more.Tool or Tip: Jesse claims sleep tracking has changed his life, tune in to hear why!The No BS Show is brought to you by audible.com. Get a FREE audiobook download and 30 day free trial at www.audibletrial.com/NoBS. Try a book like The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer. You can download it for free today. Go to Audibletrial.com/NoBS. Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player.

Cut the BS: I enjoy the Citi Double Cash Card--Double Means Double commercials that ask the question: “Wouldn't it be great if everyone said what they meant?” One commercial pokes fun at something most home owners have experienced: The stress of working with contractors on home improvements. The scene in the kitchen has the contractor explaining the situation: It opens with the contractor saying: “I'll over explain the process and give you an unrealistic timeframe…” The husband says: “I'll nod in agreement so my wife thinks I understand what you're saying…” His wife responds with “I look forward to questioning your every move.” The contractor ends with “OK. I'll leave your house in shambles and disappear for six months…” The commercial works because we can relate to it and it's funny. But it's also a learning opportunity. Read more...Guest: Jesse Schell is an American video game designer, author, CEO of Schell Games and a Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center. Mentors: Tune in to hear about Jesse's lesson in showmanship from a fellow magician and how a professor helped him choose a surprising minor.Biggest Learning Experience: Listen to hear how Jesse learned the importance of mentoring employees, structure, and organization.The No BS Show is brought to you by audible.com. Get a FREE audiobook download and 30 day free trial at www.audibletrial.com/NoBS. Try a book like The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo by Amy Schumer. You can download it for free today. Go to Audibletrial.com/NoBS. Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player.

This Designers for Learning webcast was part of our Education Impact Day, a 12-hour webcast-athon held on Saturday, November 12, 2016 featuring 12 featured speakers. This is a recording of our conversation with Drew Davidson, Director and Teaching Professor with Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center.

As a consultant, Phil helps companies working in the media and entertainment space; - identify, quantify, and develop products and service opportunities, - mitigate technical, legal, social, and business obstacles to market development, and - craft products and services that are attractive to consumers and have significant potential ROI.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Shanna Tellerman Product Line Manager, Autodesk Date: October 3, 2011 [intro music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders. I'm the CEO of NCWIT, National Center for Women & Information Technology. We're working hard to encourage more girls and women to pursue computing, education and career paths. This interview series with women who have started great technology companies is very inspirational. and to be having great advice for all entrepreneurs in terms of starting companies. With me Larry Nelson, w3w3. Hi Larry. Larry Nelson: Oh boy! It's a pleasure to be here. This is a great, great series. I know your listeners want to pass this interview along to others and you know would be interested and they can listen to it at couple of different places that we'll give you at the end of the show 24/7. Lucy: Today, we have another great person to interview. The talent just keeps coming. Today, we're talking to Shanna Tellerman who is currently at Autodesk, Cloud Services and Applications, but before that she was Founder and CEO of Wild Pockets. Shanna is in a post- acquisition mode. That's a very exciting thing to have a company that you are the founder of, be acquired. Wild Pockets is an end-to -end open source solution that supports creators through the life cycle of 3D game development. I can't wait to hear more about it. It was Shanna's first technology company out of graduate school, but she attended Carnegie Mellon University, which is just a great, great school. She attended the Entertainment Technology Center. Doesn't that sound like great deal of fun? Shanna welcome. We're really happy to talk to you today. Shanna Tellerman: Thank you, glad to be here. Lucy: Tell us a little bit about Wild Pockets/Autodesk and what's happening. Shanna: My company was Wild Pockets. We were building out a 3D game engine that you could access in a web browser. What we were trying to do is make the ability to build games, 3D games specifically, easier and more broadly accessible to anybody. When my company first met with Autodesk, Autodesk is the creator of 3D tools and all kinds of products for the media world, the entertainment world, architecture, manufacturing, engineering. They saw what we were doing and saw that we had an idea that could be applicable to a lot of their different tools and products here at Autodesk. There was a lot of synergy between our teams and the company. Ultimately they decided that we should join them. Now I work at Autodesk. I'm the Product Line Manager for our new Autodesk cloud product line, something that's coming out this fall. It has been started through the summer last year. It's a really exciting new space for Autodesk. We're doing some awesome new things. Lucy: Well, that's pretty exciting. We don't often talk to people who are in that post-acquisition mode, so maybe a sentence or two about what that was all like. Shanna: This Autodesk acquisition of our company was a pretty quick experience. We had been talking to them and working with them a bit over the course of two years. Then, when I met with one of their directors of engineering, he was really an exciting person to talk to and visionary here at Autodesk. Then I would think up on what we were doing and what he was doing on a fairly regular basis. We did that a couple of times over the course of two years. Finally, they said, "We really want to move forward. We want to make their team part of our company." Once they said that, the process went really quickly. It was really about working together, figuring out the right terms, making sure investors were happy, et cetera, but we all had the end goal in mind. Within a couple of months, the whole deal was closed. Our team in Pittsburgh can move into an Autodesk office in Pittsburgh. I was in San Francisco. I had moved into their San Francisco Office. Before I knew it, I was completely part of the Autodesk Company. Lucy: Surprised. That's very good. Congratulations. Shanna: Thank you. Lucy: Shanna, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit about how you first got into technology? Everybody is always curious to know what was it that first sparked your interest. Shanna: I first got into technology during college actually. I had gone into college for fine arts, of all things. I was painting and drawing and doing very traditional art, but Carnegie Mellon is an extremely practical and tech-heavy school. It's one of the number one computer science schools across the country and a great engineering program. They have a lot of interdisciplinary programs. Even though I was in the art school, it didn't take very long before I was introduced to all of the amazing things going on in the computer science program. Specifically, I had seen this one presentation from this course called "Building Virtual Worlds." They did a big presentation for the whole school at the end of their semester. It was really like a show they put on. People were standing on stage, wearing these 3D virtual reality glasses, and taking you through like video games that were being projected live. They were playing through it in real time. I looked at that. I was like, "This is the coolest thing I have ever seen. I have to go to that class. I have to take that class, because they combine artists with computer scientists, so I would get to build these worlds, but I didn't have to know how to program them." That was really what drew me in to technology. I had played around with some of the different editing programs, Photoshop, and other kinds of programs, Director, and a little bit of the 3D tools, but it was the end result. It was looking at the incredible things that could be produced. They were both visual, but also interactive that drew me in. Lucy: Well, Carnegie Mellon does that so well. They are so well known for interdisciplinary curriculum and computing, a great place to be drawn in, I must say. One more technology question for you. When you look out, your purview of the technology landscape, what technologies do you think are particularly interesting or up-and- comer? Shanna: Well, I'm going to have to say it's really all about the cloud right now. That's what I'm excited about working on it at this very moment. It's about not having to be tied to one particular device or your laptop or your computer or your phone, but it's about being able to take the thing you're doing anywhere that you want to be. You're working on a document. You can access it from or your phone or your iPad even, you're playing a game and you log in here and then log out and then you log back in from your TV. It's in the same place and remember who you are. The cloud is providing incredible opportunities for us to be super- connected and also things that people don't really usually think about, which is it can process in compute intense data at a rate that a single machine can't. Some of the really cool things we're doing here at Autodesk includes rendering in the cloud. Rendering when you take like a 3D model and you create a photorealistic version of that 3D model with all of the perfect lighting and the materials that were just like they do in the real world. Usually you'd be an artist and you'd be sitting at your computer and maybe building a model of a house. If you want to do a rendering a bit to show the client what that house is looked like, then you had clicked the render button and then you would probably log out for the evening and let it run for hours while it creates that photorealistic rendering. When you send that to the cloud, you can scale up. You can do renderings in minutes or they can take a few hours, but you keep working on your machine, because it's not processing locally anymore. That to me is just the tip of the iceberg of the incredible things that the cloud can do. Lucy: Speaking of rendering, too, I remember about eight or nine years ago watching something I thought was pretty simple get rendered, and it did, it took forever. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: Speeding this stuff up is good. Larry: I'm more empathetic than I want. Lucy: Yes. Larry: Shanna, can you hear me? You came out of Carnegie Mellon and you formed a company. Why did you become that entrepreneur and what is that about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Shanna: I became an entrepreneur totally accidentally. I came out of Carnegie Mellon. Actually well I was still within Carnegie Mellon. I was working on a project in graduate school that to me felt like a really had legs. It was something that we had prototyped and we had shown to our end users. They were excited about it and they wanted to start using it in the real world. I said, "Oh! How can we make that happen?" The university was not planning to continue to develop it into a commercial product. They build prototypes, they build samples, but they don't commercially distribute software. I started looking at can we get grants to the university to commercialize this or is there another path? Before I knew it, I started talking to local business people and investors. They said, "I think there is a commercial opportunity here." At which point, I said, "OK. Well, let's see if we can make this happen." Really it was my eagerness to try to get something from prototype to reality that drove me into entrepreneurship. Larry: Wow! Lucy: Well, I suppose that the accidental entrepreneur is may be more common than we think. Larry: Yes. Lucy: You know for sure. Who influenced or supported you to take that path? It sounds like people, perhaps at CMU or in the local community who you had talked to, were encouraging you to take that technology outside the university. Who else influenced you? Shanna: I had a bunch of great mentors along the way. The very first one was somebody named Randy Pausch, which perhaps you've heard. He is famous for the book he wrote and the talk he gave called "The Last Lecture." He was actually the person who ran that class that I talked about Building Virtual Worlds. He was the reason I got into technology. He was influential through my whole course into starting a company and supporter all along the way for everything I was doing. He was one of my first mentors and I recommend seeing "The Last Lecture" if you've not seen that, because he unfortunately passed away from cancer a few years ago. But before he got sick, he was an incredible teacher. Another mentor for me was someone named Jesse Schell, very well- known in the game industry. He's done a bunch of talks on something called "Gamification" and he worked at Disney Imagineering and he's now a professor at the Entertainment Technology Center, he has a game studio. He was one of my early advisers, an adviser/co-founder when we started this company. He was somebody who really was there in the early days supporting me and encouraging me and helping me figure out how to get this company up and running. Very quickly after that, I met somebody name Jake Witherell. He had been a former entrepreneur who was a local person. He was just an informal adviser and guided me through all kinds of the bumps and chaos of starting a company in the early days. Then in the later days of the company, I moved from Pittsburgh where I started the company in the area of Carnegie Mellon. I moved out to San Francisco where I started working with venture capitalists and investors in Silicon Valley. There was one woman that I met out here who was actually a Carnegie Mellon grad as well. She was an accomplished entrepreneur as well as an accomplished venture capitalist. Her name is Cindy Padnos. She was an amazing mentor for me. She helped me establish myself out here. She connected me to people to invest in the company. She also connected me with lots of partners and lots of opportunities. A really incredible woman. Lucy: She is incredible. She has a venture fund that she's forming called Illuminate Ventures. She's just a fabulous person. Larry: All of these different things that you've done, graduating and starting your own business and getting acquired. What is the toughest thing that you've had to do? Shanna Tellerman: There's a lot of tough things when you're an entrepreneur. Stacking them up and saying the toughest one is a hard thing to pick, but I would say that actually it had to be letting people go. One of the toughest things that you have to do is manage a team. A team of people works best together when the culture and the environment is right. Oftentimes you'll hire somebody and they may be really talented or really smart or really good in some way, but they just aren't fitting. They aren't fitting the team or they aren't doing the work they need to do. To have to make the call that that person doesn't belong in the company anymore is the hardest call that I've ever had to make in my life. We've had that happen a few times. I really liked and respected the people, but the fit wasn't right. I just knew that that kind of a bad seed on your team can disrupt your progress. Lucy: I think too that generally the people themselves know that they're not a fit. They're going to be happier someplace else. That's what I always used to tell myself. "I'm doing them a favor." Shanna: You do think that. You think after the fact, I hope that their next opportunity really makes them look back at this and say, I'm glad that things ended and I'm glad I was able to move on, but in the moment it is such a difficult thing when the person is unhappy. I'm one of those people who really thrives on energizing people and getting them excited and making them motivated and happy. To deliver a message that's the total opposite is really difficult. Lucy: It is difficult. I think almost everybody that I had to let go ended up being the better for it and came back and told me so. Larry: There you go. Lucy: I can tell so far in listening to you that you have a great deal of passion about the technology and about energizing people and having a great team. What other kind of advice would you give a young person about entrepreneurship? What other kinds of things do you think are really important? Shanna: The first thing that's really important is just doing it. I think that most people stumble on the idea that they're not ready, that they're not prepared, that there's one more thing that they need to do first, the time isn't right, etc., etc. My personal feeling is if you've got an idea, you're motivated to make something happen of it, the best thing in the world you can do is go for it. You're going to definitely make mistakes. You're definitely going to fumble. It may not work out, but that's not the end of the world. It's really that journey and the learning experience that you get from it that's the most meaningful. The worst thing you can do is sit around and wait until everything feels like it's perfectly ready to go. Getting yourself out there and getting something started is the best thing that you can make happen. The other thing that I would say is surround yourself with incredible people. It's the people who have been around me that have made me who I am and have made these opportunities possible. I never could've done this on my own. I've always looked to a great team of people to work with, to a great team of people to advise me, to a great team of professionals to work with whether that be legal or whether that be HR or accounting, you look for people that you trust and that you know are going to be partners through what will hopefully be a long and very fruitful adventure, but could also be difficult and strenuous at times. Larry: Once again, you've been through a number of different things. I'm very fascinated by it, as well as your company. What are the personal characteristics that you have that makes you an entrepreneur? Shanna: I think entrepreneurs are generally curious people. They are people who get excited by the world and are excited by the possibilities of what they can do to change the world. They believe in themselves that they might have the opportunity to make that happen. I think there's a bit of confidence you have to build as an entrepreneur. There's a bit of fear of nothing. You have to believe that anything is possible and that your wildest dreams could come true. I also think you have to be extremely dedicated and extremely motivated because it's a lot of hard work. You need to focus and you need to get a lot done. You're probably the kind of person, if you're an entrepreneur, who has always over-committed or overdone everything that they've tried to do because that's just the personality that you have. But number one is really that curiosity or you're the kind of person who wants to explore and wants to try to make things happen. Lucy: I think that reminds me of the word "invention," too. You're curious. You take it one step. You see what happens. You take it another step and you just keep pushing forward with that relentlessness to really get it to move. You mentioned hard work and being dedicated. That gets us to our next question around having both a work life and a personal life. How would you integrate the two? Some people would even say balance, although I think we've come to realize that there is no such thing as balance in entrepreneurship. How do you address that in your own life? Shanna: Well I think the first thing is you have to love your work, because if you're an entrepreneur you're working a lot more than most people work. It does seep into every area of your life. If you don't like what you're doing you're not going to be very happy. That's the first thing I recommend. On top of that, I do think it's important to structure in balance. My first year or two I found that I was always on, I was always stressed, I was always anxious. I didn't really take time off for myself. It had a negative result. It made me more tired. It made me less focused at times when I needed to be focused. Eventually, by the 3rd or 4th year of my company, I started realizing on the weekends I need to take a good day or so where I'm not checking email and I'm not working, maybe even two days, which for an entrepreneur is a lot, but you need that time to rest and to get your mind off of everything going on. For me, I'm pretty active. I do that through sports. I've done triathlons. I've made a lot of friends out in the Bay area who also do triathlons. It's such a beautiful place to live in, the Bay area. There's so many places to explore that I just found being outside and being around people really rejuvenated me and put a lot of balance into my life. Larry: Wow, I could get tired just watching you, I think. Lucy: I think you might be an extrovert. Larry: Lucy, she does a lot of running too. Lucy: And I'm an extrovert: Larry: You have achieved a great deal for such a young person. I have to say that while you talked about the cloud and the things that you're doing with the company right now. What do you see is next for you? Shanna: I'd like to start something again at some point in my life. Right now I'm at Autodesk. I'm loving what I'm doing here at Autodesk. If it keeps going as it is today there's a good chance I will stay here because we're getting to start all kinds of things within the structure of a big company. I could also see an opportunity where something comes along and starting another company just makes sense and I dive into that and grow something from the ground up again. I'm pretty open. I usually let things come to me and roll in as they happen. I take the opportunity when something feels right to jump on it and try it out. Larry: Wow. I love it. Lucy: I think that's great. One thing I wanted to mention when you said that Shanna has accomplished a lot. I just have to give her a shout out for being named "Business Week's" best young entrepreneurs in 2009. That must have felt real good. Shanna: Maybe. Lucy: Yeah. One other thing too that I want to thank you for is your participation in organizations around women and computing and thank you for that. Great organizations like Astia, Women 2.0, Girl Geeks, etc. Thank you for your participation with those groups. They are most excellent. Thank you Shanna. We really enjoyed talking with you. Larry, do you want to remind listeners where they can find this interview? Larry: Absolutely. A couple of really neat places, ncwit.org, up there for sure, also at w3w3.com. You can listen to both 24/7. You'll see it in our podcast as well as our blog. Lucy: Shanna, thank you very much. Shanna: Thank you very much. This is definitely the area of passion for me. I hope that more girls do get into technology. I love opportunities like this. Thank you for having me. Lucy: Thank you. Larry: Thanks for being here. Shanna: OK. Thank you. Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Shanna TellermanInterview Summary: Shanna Tellerman describes herself as an “accidental-entrepreneur” who turned a course project from Carnegie Mellon University into reality in the form of her first tech company, Wildpockets. The company focused on democratizing access to game development by providing a cloud hosted game engine. It was later acquired by Autodesk Cloud Services and Applications, where Shanna currently works as the Product Line Manager. Release Date: October 3, 2011Interview Subject: Shanna TellermanInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 20:42