This Fall, I had the privilege of serving as a peer facilitator for a course at the University of Washington’s MCDM program. I am continually impressed by the diversity of the program, and not just by diversity in its typical measure of gender or ethnicity (though that sort of diversity is certainly present).

I’m talking about intellectual diversity: the ways in which MCDM students and faculty approach and solve problems, skills and abilities applied in novel and meaningful ways, and outcomes that far exceed my admittedly high expectations. The student work from Fall 2011′s COM 546 Foundations course - Narratives & Networks in Digital Media – exemplifies both the challenges and the opportunities that true diversity can provide.

Course Background

As a foundational course to the MCDM program, Narratives & Networks in Digital Media had the unique position of orienting Cohort 11 students both to the theory and also the application of many elements they will encounter in the program. Taking a bit of their own advice, this course was newly revamped for 2011, and co-taught by MCDM Director Hanson Hosein and Dr. Malcolm Parks. The result for this first incarnation? Engaging discussions, relevant lectures and guest-speakers, and tangible takeaways for professionals and creatives, alike.

Students in this course witnessed the rise of the Occupy movement, the start of the upcoming nomination and election season, and the death of Steve Jobs. Meanwhile, they engaged with new tools and platforms, tried valiantly to “publish then filter,” and were brought together in new and sometimes challenging ways. Students were exposed to basic principles of digital media, and become comfortable with the central tenet of the MCDM: to effect trusted and persuasive communication, professionals need to develop a compelling narrative tied to strategic network engagement.

With this post, we would like to share some of their work, some of the process, and some of the core philosophies of the MCDM program.
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Last year, I stumbled into mainstream Internet recognition in Seattle. Actually, I drove into it.

My wife and I got stuck in a terrible storm from Seattle to Tacoma, where we live, and in the boredom of our 10-hour “#snomg” commute I tweeted about everything that came to mind, with little filter. As a result, I flooded the stream on Twitter and gained some very minor celebrity (I mean, levels below even Kathy Griffin) during the event and a few days after.

This year, I had no plans to produce media around the impending storm, but then MCDM colleague Madeline Moy suggested in a Facebook thread that someone parody the “Sh*t Girls Say” meme with “Sh*t Seattle People Say When It Snows.” I found inspiration in it and got started. I filmed for a couple hours after work and dropped the first video that evening on YouTube, just to entertain my Facebook friends.

That first video took off. I thought it’d get 1,000 views at the most, but by the time I woke up the next morning I was well into five-figure views. I had plenty of shots left over, so I edited Part 2 and posted that, too. The two videos received many great comments in 48 hours, so I “replied” to them with Part 3 just earlier today, featuring many of the suggestions viewers provided.

So, how in the hell did this work out so well?

In digital media circles, we often talk about content and distribution models, but we rarely talk about newsworthiness — a more common discussion amongst PR flacks. Even great content — and I think I produced amateur content — needs a reason. To go viral, and I don’t think the “Sh*t Seattle People Say When It Snows” videos have hit that hockey stick growth quite yet, content needs more than a business reason or approval of an inner circle of friends. It has to appeal with reason and context for a broader audience to “get it.”

This year’s snow was my perfect storm, pun intended. I knew that a) people like to talk about the rare snow in Seattle, b) Seattlites have plenty of free time on snow days, and c) everyone likes a good laugh. Madeline’s request reminded me that there was a familiar and popular meme format to leverage.

It has been all Seattle snow jokes since.

Twenty Twelve heralds my last two quarters as an MCDM student and in the last few years I’ve seen a few changes in my life as a result of my time spent in this program. One major change would be increased interest in all things data related. My Google Reader is full of data and infographic blogs (such as Information is Beautiful and FlowingData), I spent an afternoon learning from Edward Tufte, I’ve improved my own data visualization skills working in Adobe Illustrator and I’ve been plotting ways for how I can meet the one and only Hans Rosling.

Beyond that, my love of data has proved to be infectious as our family holiday card this year included a QR code and web address to see “Twenty Eleven Graphically Visualized.” Yes, the MCDM has turned my entire family into data visualization nerds.

Exhibit A:

As a line graph, this is a relatively simple visualization, but we still managed to squeeze in a year’s worth of data points.

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ViKi.com, Singapore based startup, is making international TV and movies more accessible to world-wide audiences via crowd-sourced sub-titling - in approximately 160 languages. Yes, even Klingon.

ViKi acquires the rights to programs, uploads them to viki.com and then leverages the power of its translator community. These willing translators provide real-time subtitling of world TV and movies–from Japanese Anime to Spanish Novelas to Korean dramas to Egyptian movies to the latest from Bollywood as well as TV series from Hong Kong, Venezuela, Russia, Korea and the UK.

According to TechCrunch.com, ViKi is attracting around 8.5 million unique visitors with approximately 36 million visits per month, representing a four-fold increase over the past year.

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What do a cheese monger with Asperger’s syndrome, a globetrotting photographer and an author experimenting with acupuncture have in common? They’re all great characters whose individual stories can tell us a lot about our world.

That was the premise of Advanced Multimedia Storytelling: People and Story, the course I co-taught with Sarah Stuteville this past quarter; that a short film focused on an individual character’s experience is an extremely effective means to communicate a message, whether it’s about a product, a service or a broader trend in society.

The eight students in the class produced some powerful work, and sometimes got more than they bargained for:

Erika Takeuchi set out to produce a lighthearted profile of guide dog trainers, but when she met a trainer named Joseph Skillings, things took a turn for the serious. Joseph suffered severe head trauma a few years ago after trying to help a women being harassed at a bus stop. He took up puppy training as a way to deal with the lasting impacts of his accident.

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Louis CK makes really funny jokes and he wants you–even if you are broke, especially if you are broke—to be able to laugh at him. His newest venture, Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theatre is a full-length show available to download for $5. I just paid $19.99 for Chris Rock’s “Kill the Messenger” on iTunes, where full-length stand-up routines range in price from $4.99 to over $20. But here’s the thing—at this point we know that artists and comedians are making a pittance selling product through venues like iTunes and getting even less though streaming websites like Spotify and Last.fm. So Louis CK, ever the innovator, decided to take matters into his own hands and start selling his work independently.

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Who quits their day job to pursue a career telling stories? Well, it seemed like a good idea to Ben Pohl. Pohl gave up a full-time gig as a motion graphics and visual effects artist to pursue a career as a writer and director. He recently wrapped his first independent film, “Divination,” a movie Pohl describes as “madness meets magic.”

Pohl is a digital storyteller. He is fascinated by the mystery of communication and all of its moving parts. Until now, much of his time was spent locked in a basement editing on the post side of production for Victory Studios, a production house here in Seattle.

I recently sat down with the 30-year-old director at a Starbucks in Phinney Ridge. When I walked up to introduce myself, Pohl had already settled into a table, sipping an Americano as he thumbed the pages of Stephen King’s “Danse Macabre.”

Although Pohl enjoys the editing process, his real ambition is directing, high-end imagery and motion graphics. Read more…

With the rise of online video sites such as YouTube, Vimeo and Viddler, the almighty video view count has become increasingly more important as a way of ranking success. Success of not only the producer, but also those paid to promote or “syndicate” online videos. While some of us might be uploading videos we think will quickly become the next YouTube sensation, we shouldn’t be disappointed when we only get 100 views and others with similar videos have thousands – they’re likely paying for them.

Online video syndication services have been around for several years and are helping many businesses, advertising agencies and producers transition from paid television ads to paid online video ads. While many of these services provide legitimate ways of attracting consumers to the videos, others have developed ways of short-cutting the process to quickly increase view counts and other forms of engagement.

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