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Tribeca Flashpoint Intros Continuing Digital Education Courses
Tribeca Flashpoint Intros Continuing Digital Education Courses
Even with an increasingly digital-literate work population, employers are struggling to keep their teams up with frequent technological advances. Tribeca Flashpoint Academy (TFA), the Chicago-based digital media college, today announced Digital Update, a suite of continued education courses aimed at those who are already in the workforce.
Image via Facebook.
CEO Howard Tullman expects courses to begin within 60 days. Currently, he says, TFA is in private talks with several large employers who are interested in offering these courses. Sixteen hours of hands-on instruction will cost about $1,200 per employee, an expenditure likely to be taken on by employers, though Tullman says individuals may enroll themselves if they choose.
“It is an essential investment [for companies] in making sure that they are preparing their personnel to create, develop and deliver the new kinds of digital media assets and tools that are changing the face of marketing and business communications,” Tullman says.
TFA’s full-time and adjunct professors will teach the courses, which focus on training employees in film production and editing, app and game development, motion graphics, and more. Groups in Chicago and New York City will be able to attend classes at TFA’s facilities there, while those elsewhere will be reached by webcast or even an in-person visit from a TFA instructor.
With industries the world over converting to digital, Tullman is betting employers need digitally-savvy workers. To him, TFA’s Digital Update courses are the way for companies to achieve just that.
Visit TFA’s website, check out their BIC profile, and follow them on Twitter at @TribecaChicago.
New Digital Re-Training
Program Answers Escalating Need
Responding to an escalating
corporate training need, Tribeca Flashpoint Academy launches program to keep
digital and creative professionals up-to-date in rapidly-evolving technologies.
CHICAGO – As technology evolves at a mind-numbing rate, it
becomes increasingly challenging for digital professionals to keep their core
skills current. Even recent college graduates—who may boast up-to-the-minute
skills on graduation day—quickly fall behind without an ongoing, conscious and
aggressive effort to keep pace. Lifelong learning is no longer optional—it’s essential.
“Everyone’s accustomed to getting those little alerts when
it’s time to update their software or apps—we accept recurring obsolescence as
part of living in the digital age,” explains Tribeca Flashpoint Academy CEO and
well-known tech entrepreneur, Howard Tullman. “But business leaders are just beginning
to realize that their people—particularly
their digital employees—also need
updating in a consistent and rigorous way. It’s the only way their companies will
remain competitive.”
Known for its practical, hands-on approach to digital media
education and for its close ties to the media, entertainment, and technology
industries (boasting partnerships with the likes of Microsoft, AT&T, Sony
Entertainment, and more), Tribeca Flashpoint Academy recently announced a new corporate
continuing education program—dubbed “Digital Update”—that provides digital
workers with an ongoing, sustainable way to keep current that is also
cost-effective and sensitive to the need to keep these workers working and
productive while their skills are being enhanced.
A typical Digital Update course includes 16-hours of
practical, hands-on instruction in various aspects of film production and
editing; application and game development; motion graphics; special effects;
sound design; graphic design; or digital marketing. Whenever possible,
instruction is delivered on-site at the employer’s workplace, minimizing staff
downtime and enabling employees to learn on the same equipment and software
they will be using once the training concludes.
“At around $1,200 per employee, Digital Update is far more
cost-effective than sending employees
to one-off trainings or conferences that tend to be more theoretical
than practical, more lecture-based than hands-on, and far less tailored to a team’s
specific skill level and knowledge gaps,” Tullman explains. “This is the future
of corporate training in the digital media arena.”
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Monday, March 25, 2013
Sunday, March 24, 2013
INC. MAGAZINE SELECTS JIVE HEALTH AS ONE OF COLLEGE COOLEST START-UPS
JiveHealth: Games that Teach Kids to Eat Healthy
By Nicole Marie Richardson
Former video game (and junk food) addict Dennis
Ai of Northwestern created a game that teaches kids
about nutrition. Michele
Obama is a big fan.
JiveHealth's founder Dennis
Ai (right) at Tribeca Flashpoint Academy with co-founders Hailey Schmidt and Nathan Wangler (left).
Growing up in Edison, New Jersey, Dennis Ai
scarfed down potato skins and beef jerky by the bagful. The junk diet packed on
the pounds, and with the weight came all the social anxiety, ridicule, and
isolation of growing up heavy. “The kids at my school made fun of me,” recalls
Ai. “And once when I asked a girl out, she said she didn’t want a fat
boyfriend.”
Ai eventually conquered his weight problem with
exercise and healthy eating, but the painful memories of those years never left
him. Out of them grew the idea for a business that could help other kids avoid
what he had suffered. Why not, he wondered, create a video game that encouraged
healthy eating habits?
The idea was still rattling around when he left
for Northwestern University in September 2009 and met fellow student and
software engineer Chris Yenko, 19, and Tribeca Flashpoint Academy students
Hailey Schmidt, 20, a game artist, Nathan Wangler, 21, a game designer, and
serial entrepreneur Tom Denison, 49.
The company’s first mobile game, Jungo takes 6
to 11 year olds through a series of levels and challenges to retrieve a sacred
tome of culinary secrets from the evil Mertle the Turtle. Along the way, they
need to gather healthy foods and create recipes to earn upgrades for their
characters, which include an apple-loving bear named Hugo and Aki, a monkey who
is addicted to almonds. Some of the ingredients exist in the game world, while others
only exist in the real world. Consequently, in order to complete the recipe,
players need to collect an apple (or some other healthy treat) in their own
home or at the supermarket, photograph it, and upload the photo into the game
as a virtual apple. Players can download the game for free; Ai's business model
assumes that they'll eventually want to unlock additional characters and other
props for a fee.
“It’s really difficult to preach to kids about
eating a nutritious diet, but through this role-playing game, finding and
eating healthy food becomes fun,” says Ai. “Plus, the game will encourage
parents to have these foods around where their children can find it.”
Even though it is still in prototpe, the game is
already getting noticed. Just recently JiveHealth took first place in a
competition hosted by First Lady Michelle Obama and the Partnership for a
Healthier America End Childhood Obesity Innovation Challenge. The win
garnered Ai a $10,000 cash prize, along with expert mentoring from senior
executives at Edelman, McKinsey & Company, and Startup Health. The company
is also a Top 15 team in Microsoft's Imagine Cup Accelerator.
Matthew Corrin, founder and CEO of healthy food
chain Freshii, sits on the JiveHealth board and thinks the company has the
right strategy at the right time for the fight against childhood obesity.
“I think it’s timely--especially with Michelle
Obama promoting her Let’s Move! campaign--because the government is behind the
initiative,” says Corrin. “I think it will come down to how engaging the games
are. If they aren’t fun then it won’t work. But if they are, JiveHealth has a
great shot at reaching its goals to educate kids about nutrition and combat
this epidemic.“
The next phase: Ai has been testing the
prototype on children in a neighborhood church. “The first step is to make sure
we have a game that kids love playing,” says Ai. The next testing phase will
aim to determine whether the game can actually trigger better behavior. “That
will be more difficult,” admits Ai.
JiveHealth plans to put the game on the market
this summer, starting on the iPhone, with Android and Windows versions to
follow. Ai, whose initial capital totalled a less than lofty $1,000, also hopes
to attract some investors by then. He has temporarily dropped out of school to
get the business up and running, but believes he will have enough credits to
graduate in June 2013.
“I love the challenge of going after this
epidemic,” says Ai. “I wake up at 7 a.m. and go to sleep at midnight, and I
don’t do anything else in between but this.”
Nicole Marie Richardson is the executive editor for special projects at Inc.com. She
manages the website's largest projects, including the Inc. 5000, an annual list
of the fastest-growing, privately-held companies in America. @nicole_marie79
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Good Pitch Chicago forum will connect documentary filmmakers with supporters
MELISSA
HARRIS' CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL
Good
Pitch Chicago forum will connect documentary filmmakers with supporters
Chicago civic and
business leaders come together to highlight the city's best unfinished
documentaries
|
Justine Nagan, executive director of Kartemquin Films, and
lawyer Steve Cohen are involved in starting Good Pitch Chicago, a forum to
connect filmmakers and financial backers. (Abel Uribe, Chicago Tribune / March 20,
2013
|
Melissa Harris'
Chicago Confidential
March 21, 2013
Chicago's
documentary film industry is getting its own high-profile Demo Day.
Running
concurrently with the Chicago International Film Festival, a group of corporate
and nonprofit executives will showcase up to eight unfinished documentary films
at a new event called Good Pitch Chicago.
Each
director will have seven minutes to pitch their film to eight to 10 influencers
who organizers know are already interested in the film's premise — and may want
to help finance or otherwise support it. Watching the daylong event will be an
invite-only audience of 300 to 400 guests.
The idea
is that after hearing the pitch those influencers — who will be seated around a
table onstage — will announce some sort of commitment to support the film.
Money to finish the film would be helpful. A distribution deal with, say, PBS
or CNN might be even better. But organizers say money isn't all they're
seeking.
There are
other ways to support a documentary. For example, someone at the table could
offer to get a film about sexual assault in the military into the hands of the
U.S. defense secretary. Or the executive director of a large social services
organization could agree to show a film about violence prevention at its clubs
nationwide.
Adding to the drama will be the fact that once
people on stage have a chance to offer help, audience members can spontaneously
step up to a microphone and make a commitment to the film as well.
"The group around the table has never been
around the same table before, and as an audience member, you witness literally
this groundswell around the film," said Paula Froehle, executive vice president of academic affairs at the
Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, which will host the Oct. 22 event.
"It's as if you're witnessing the behind-the-scenes networking that is
necessary, if the film is going to make an impact on society. Even for the sort
of non-philanthropic, non-connected audience member, and I was in that position
twice, it was thrilling to see. I could visualize the impact any one of these
projects was going to have on communities across the country."
Leading the local effort to bring Good Pitch to
Chicago is lawyer Steve Cohen,
who also finances documentaries; Justine
Nagan, executive director of Kartemquin Films, which released its first
documentary in 1966; Froehle and John Murray from
Tribeca; Daniel Alpert, a documentary-maker
and executive director of The Kindling Group; and Erin Sorenson of Third Stage Consulting, who previously was
the first executive director of the Chicago Children's Advocacy Center.
Tribeca will be the lead sponsor. The MacArthur
Foundation also has awarded a $50,000 grant toward start-up costs. And Cohen is
supplying a $20,000 matching grant for new sponsors who sign on after April 1,
which is when the event begins accepting submissions.
Good Pitch
events take place annually in New York, San Francisco and London, where the
event was founded. Washington has hosted one as well. The brand is a joint
project of the U.K.-based BRITDOC Foundation, which supports international
filmmakers, and the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program.
"Chicago
has been untapped in terms of foundation money, organizational collaboration
and advertising industry engagement," Cohen said, later adding, "We
hope and expect there will be a Good Pitch in Chicago every year like there is
in New York and San Francisco."
The
selection committee is looking for a very specific kind of film to showcase at
this event. The films must be in production and of high-quality. Of the five
documentary features nominated for an Oscar this year, two — "How to
Survive a Plague" and "The Invisible War" — had been featured at
a Good Pitch, Cohen said.
The
subject matter must be about social change, but the event isn't set up like a
reality TV competition.
"We
fully expect every film in the pitch will walk away with some kind of help, whether
it be financial or a partnership with another organization," Cohen said.
"Every film gets something by being in the pitch."
"The
Interrupters," which shows how former gang members on Chicago's South Side
are being tapped to quell violence, would be ideal for a Good Pitch. And the
film, from Chicagoan and veteran filmmaker Steve James, was
presented at a Good Pitch in Washington. James said the selection process was
"very competitive."
"Good
Pitch connected us directly to a foundation, The Fledgling Fund, and they gave
us some initial money to help develop an outreach plan for 'The Interrupters'
and then came back and gave us more money down the road to support the outreach
effort," James said. "The first money is often the most important money,
even if it's not big bucks."
Many
social-impact documentaries are shot on a budget of less than $1 million.
Pulling more funders and partners into the documentary industry is perhaps the
last piece of a growing renaissance.
An art
film house is no longer a necessary middleman. Technology, such as Netflix and
iTunes, is delivering them to people's living rooms. And crowd-funding sites,
such as Kickstarter, are making it easier for directors to finance their
projects.
"(Director) Errol
Morris, (Steve James') 'Hoop Dreams,' Michael Moore, 'An
Inconvenient Truth,' there's been this momentum building around the power of
documentaries," Nagan said. "Driving that is what's happening with
journalism. Long-term journalism and investigative reporting are getting cut.
And the audience for news is very siloed. ... The news they get is tailored to
them. Documentaries, I think people are feeling right now, really do have the
ability to bring people together and think about an issue in a broader
way."
For more
information, e-mail info.goodpitchchicago@gmail.com or go to britdoc.org/goodpitchchicago.
Melissa Harris can be
reached at mmharris@tribune.com or
312-222-4582. Twitter @chiconfidential
Copyright © 2013 Chicago Tribune Company, LLC
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