Digital Media @ CoLab » Visits

UTEN sweep of digital media companies

riddle — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:22:43 +0000

In cooperation between CoLab’s academic and commercialization programs, a team from UT Austin will go to Portugal during the week of March 1-7 to meet with digital media entrepreneurs and startups. The team will offer expert feedback on products and business models and share information on the entrepreneur training opportunities of the University Technology Enterprise Network (UTEN).

The team will include Bryan Sebok of the UT Film Institute and Don Turnbull of the School of Information. They will meet with, among others, representatives of web startups including the social wine discovery site Adegga, the mobile photo and text sharing service Handivi, and the social media workflow tool Tarpipe; with companies in the technology transfer portfolios of IST, U.Coimbra, U.Porto and InovCapital; with interactive media researchers at FCT/UNL; and with organizers of the emerging creative industries pole in Porto.

For more information, see: UTEN Digital Media Sweep.

Great visit!

carlosguedes — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:32:09 +0000

I recently visited UT and was amazed not only by the facilities of the schools I visited but also by the hospitality and sympathy of everyone I met in Austin. I visited the Radio, Television and Film and Music schools, and had the great pleasure of doing a couple of lectures on both schools and contact with both students and faculty. Simply fabulous! After this visit, it became clear to me that the exchanges between UT and Portugal should be intensified beyond the programs that were created in Digital Media, and that students from both sides will benefit immensely from this opportunity – be it through short-term stays, entire semesters or academic years, taking classes, doing artistic residencies or even internships. Austin is a very friendly and hospitable city, and I keep telling that to my students to encourage them to benefit from the opportunities given by the program! I also want to thank (again) Sharon Strover and Bruce Pennycook for being the perfect hosts on this occasion. All the best! Carlos

Wrap up on the Lisbon workshops

sharon — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:27:07 +0000

Our four weeks of workshops are now over: UT faculty are back in Austin, faculty colleagues in Portugal are breathing a well-earned sigh of relief, and all agree that the Summer Institute was a success. Four public lectures, one week-long cinema series at the Cinemateca, and six intensive workshops (most of them two weeks in duration) comprised the program. Every workshop was filled, and the film series on “Technology and Innovation in Film” curated by Professor Tom Schatz reached a large and varied audience. There were many more applicants for the workshops than we could accommodate – a good sign of interest in digital media throughout the region. The program included:

Richard Lewis teaching collaborative screenwriting
Karen Kocher teaching digital documentary
Bryan Sebok teaching Convergent Hollywood
Bruce Pennycook teaching Sound Design for Video Games and Film
Rosental Alves teaching Online Journalism
Arie Stavchansky teaching Photorealistic 3D Graphics Rendering

(As well, Arie had just finished up a semester-long Rich Web Design class in Porto, where Stuart Kelban was also teaching Screenwriting. The U of Porto summer courses end with Gary Chapman’s seminar next week on the Internet and Organizations.)

The Institute condensed a number of related media fields into a series of very intensive experiences and projects, stimulating new ideas for teaching both in Portugal and in Austin. We hope to air the great work growing out of the workshops at the Digital Media Festival in October, and also will arrange a screening/installation in Lisbon soon.

Gary Chapman visit to Lisbon

carly — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:45:30 +0000

Above is a video from Gary Chapman’s visit to Lisbon, where he spoke about public policy and internet applications. In the interview, he notes that he doesn’t believe we’ll be voting via internet, but this doesn’t mean that there aren’t a number of possibilities for E-Government, which has been a major push in both the United States and Portugal — and, of course, in other national governments.

For more information, see the slides from Gary’s lecture.

Rosental Alves on Online Journalism

dmcolab — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:02:12 +0000

Rosental Alves, professor at the School of Journalism at the College of Communication and lead faculty in the area of online journalism – not only at UT but arguably in the world – was in Portugal in February to speak for journalists and scholars in Lisbon and Porto in the context of the UT-Portugal partnership.

Rosental Alves is the founder of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at UT and the man behind the International Symposium on Online Journalism , a key event in the field.

Expresso Multimedia (the multimedia section of Expresso, a Portuguese newspaper), which regularly posts in YouTube has this segment on Alves’ recent visit (in Portuguese, of course:)):

Next my free translation of some of Alves’ ideas though there is no way to represent the passion he puts in his words. For that you’ll need to watch the video (and understanding Portuguese will help!)

If online journalism means cannibalization, which is something many journalists fear, then it’s better to have a self-cannibalization than a cannibalization that comes from outside (referring to the increasing presence of online journalism as the ‘cannibal’ that is incorporating others forms of journalism).

It is not that online journalism will replace paper journalism. It is not an issue of one thing *or* the other but rather of one thing *and* the other.