IMD Forum for 11/28/07: Joan Wood
Speaker: Joan Wood
Time: Wednesday, November 28, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)
Title: "Hands-On: Three Decades in the Pixel Business - The only thing you can count on with a career in new media is that you will never stop learning."
A few topics up for discussion:
. Unfinished Business
Spending years working on a game that does not get
finished/published/distributed/played is heartbreakingly common. Some very
talented folks have a string of these experiences, which can be damaging to
creative inspiration as well as a career. Are there warning signs early on
for which projects will make it to completion and which will be abandoned
along the way? Is there a way to evaluate the concept, the development team,
and the business environment to maximize the chances of being involved in a
project that goes all the way to completion?
. Bleeding Edge Development
Partnering with technology companies to help get needed features built into
next gen products and in turn providing demonstration elements for their
marketing machines means that what you create can influence hardware, API,
and software tool design. The thrill of pioneering new landscapes is matched
by the risk of being first to a market that does not yet exist. Is leading
edge development right for you? Where is the "sweet spot" for integrating
new technology with your content?
. Unique Voices
Traditional gaming culture can be quite narrow-focused. The game development
environment - insular, isolated, and prone to sleep-deprivation-induced
paranoia - can be even more so. Because of this vulnerability (and the
natural tendency to believe one's own press releases), it is vitally
important to have non-traditional, "outsider" voices in the mix. How can you
make your voice heard when you are THE minority on a development team?
Joan's bio after the jump -->
JOAN WOOD – Professional Bio
TV: Starting in 1980 as gopher for the Emmy-winning team that pioneered live in-car TV cameras for the Indy 500 (when field recording was on 55 lb. open reel VTRs and cameras all had tubes), Joan became an independent video/sound engineer, technical director, and producer. Taking advantage of innovations in portable production gear, she founded and ran three successful video facilities companies that used small, highly portable multi-camera production trucks and air packs for live location and studio production and borrowed technologies and techniques from film which made big changes in the look, feel, and sound of single camera “film style” video production as well. Many of these techniques are still standard today.
As an early adopter and champion of new camera, sound, and engineering technology, Joan was often allocated first units from manufacturers for testing and early feedback. In 1991, Sony requested she field test their new line of cameras prior to debut at NAB. While Joan has hundreds of broadcast, commercial, and industrial credits for multi-camera and film-style projects, she is most proud of her documentary work in the South Pacific.
GAMES & REAL TIME 3D: Sidelined from production by some broken ribs in 1990, Joan returned to an earlier interest (computer graphics) and created 2D creature animations for a never-released Sega console game. This somehow led to playing with Silicon Graphics Reality Engines, 6DOF motion platforms, and military simulation software, which led to co-founding Xatrix Entertainment, where she produced the hit PC-CDROM game, “Cyberia” (Interplay, six languages, 1994) and pioneered full body motion capture (among other bleeding edge technologies) for games while producing/directing the sequel “Cyberia II: Resurrection” (Virgin Interactive, five languages, 1996). As founder and president of indy game developer Mango Grits, she talked 3Dfx out of pre-release Voodoo graphics acceleration hardware to develop real time 3D flying/shooter game “Barrage” (Activision, six languages, 1998).
An active advocate (big mouth) for good technology and independent software development, Joan has long voiced the disparate needs of game creatives, technologists, and business interests at conferences and tradeshows, finding common ground and pushing best practices. Cyberia won several awards for technical innovation and visual and sound excellence and shipped over one million units. Mango Grits received the Anubis Award for Barrage and demos were used by Intel to launch the Pentium II processor, by 3Dfx to get mezzanine venture funding and to convince developers to target high end hardware platforms, and by real time 3D military simulation technology company Quantum3D as a benchmark for testing simulator performance. NVIDIA used a ported version to demonstrate their mobile graphics chip technology at E3 2004. Mango Grits maintains an interest in multiplayer location-aware handheld gaming with development based in France.
From 2004 to 2006, Joan played with small, wearable PCs and big, rack-mount visual simulation image generators at Quantum3D. She was heavily involved in technology investigation and evaluation for hardware and software product development and supervised the port of current game engine technology to Q3D simulation hardware.
JOURNALISM: While Barrage was going through QA at Activision, Joan co-founded computer/gaming technology review website SharkyExtreme.com and came on full time as managing editor in early 1999. Still an active software developer (after Barrage, Mango Grits developers built what eventually became Yahoo!’s Launch music portal), she often had two discreet non-disclosure agreements for each hardware company, one as a journalist, one as a developer. During the internet buying frenzy, Sharky Extreme was acquired by a large network and after her management contract was fulfilled, she retired.
When approached to write for not-yet-launched Computer Power User (CPU) magazine, she created the monthly column “Forward Slash”, tackling topics as diverse as embedded war bloggers and the challenges of virtual breasts. The column continued for four years, during which she also contributed occasional articles including eleven cover stories. She has championed innovative work by game developers and small companies as well as interviewed CTOs, CEOs, lab scientists, and marketing weasels from the most powerful computer technology companies on the planet (Intel, AMD, NVIDIA, ATI), writing about upcoming innovations and dissecting technology to see how it may impact users and developers. She was a guest on TechTV’s “The Screen Savers” show before it was bought by game gadget network G4.
FILM AND FAST CARS: After a decade-long hiatus from video production, Joan recently acquired a Sony HD camera and an Avid Media Composer editing system, which comes in handy for documenting on and off track project car performance for Shark Werks, the Porsche tuning company she co-founded in 2005. She is currently completing post production on her first short film (a comedy) as writer/director and having a pretty great time.
