November Meeting Recap:
Cycle of Achievement -- From Student to Researcher to Professional

by David Geddes

In the November 4th meeting, we were treated to a sweeping panorama of what is to come in the world of technical communication and how we might take our place in that world. We heard how our chapter is contributing to an exciting new program, Digital Arts Communication (DAC), at the University of Waterloo. And we toured the university's research centre for testing digital prototypes on real people.

Dr. David Goodwin, of the University of Waterloo, described how the DAC program is a crucial component to the university's newly formed Canadian Center of Arts and Technology (CCAT). CCAT has a mandate to "build a research cluster that combines practical and theoretical analysis of human-digital interaction in an environment that unites artistic, cultural, and technological literacy."

The Meaning of DAC and CCAT

From a practical point of view, it means that world-class researchers in digital arts technology will be attracted to the University of Waterloo. Top quality students wishing to blend an honours Arts and Business co-op degree with the practical and theoretical knowledge available from four core DAC credits plus four electives will graduate from the university and go on to become leaders in digital communication. And finally, and perhaps most significantly to many of us, it means that we have an opportunity to participate in the program...no really. David went out of his way to stress that we can use our professional experience and wisdom to provide direction to the new program. We can help develop realistic case project scenarios, we can mentor, and we can speak up about what skills are most needed among new technical communicators as we embrace the challenges of designing with text, sound, video, and hypertext. As professionals, we were invited to participate in the "cycle of achievement" from student to researcher to professional.

Digital Junkyard

From what we saw, CCAT has begun the cycle of achievement with an excellent start. Dr. Phil Graham of the University of Queensland in Australia is a world-class researcher and is the first appointed Canada Research Chair affiliated with CCAT. Dr. Graham is heading a research project to develop the world's largest publicly accessible digital archive. Or, to put it more succinctly, Phil wants to build a "digital junkyard." The idea came out of a very real and very costly problem in the creative arts industry; that is, it takes a lot of effort to produce just about anything. Thirty seconds of footage might take several hours of preparation and shooting -- an hour segment might take several days, and so on.

A digital junkyard could lead to quicker and cheaper creative cycles. And it could provide the infrastructure for an explosion in creative enterprise as digital assets become freely available to folks who cannot afford the costs of producing their own material.

One of the challenges in creating a digital junkyard is to make things accessible. Of course, text searches are challenging enough but what about searching by sound or by visual attribute? Punch in the sound pattern of a loon and the light attributes of a moonless evening and we're at the cottage in no time. Students in the 400 level DAC course will participate in research projects that grapple with problems such as parsing, tagging, and retrieving digital junk using visual and audio elements from the digital junkyard.

Technological Wonders

Tonight there was a special focus on the world-class facilities available to CCAT and the DAC. We saw two main things: a lecture room on steroids and some very nice facilities to test digital prototypes on users. David Goodwin took us through all the technical wonders available in the flagship lecture room and Deb Maskens took us through the test facilities, which include recording and observation rooms and a room where the actual tests are done. Speech communication researchers and other university departments interested in testing technology-mediated communication in real-time also use these test facilities. For example, one theater group is interested in using the facilities to test the effectiveness of re-creating the acoustics of a community-based theatrical setting into a digital (virtual) environment.

The lecture room, or e-classroom, is where it all begins. The room features two data projectors and two big screens called "smart boards" that can be touch-activated just like a touch-sensitive computer screen. Two screens really are better than one (not like Spinal-Tap's amplifier, "but it goes to eleven, man!"). Two screens allow students to compare designs, evaluate before and after scenarios, and the like simultaneously. Users can also add markups to the smart screen and save the result as an image - no more DO NOT ERASE admonishments! Other goodies include document cameras that can scan pages of notes and project them to a smart board or save them as images. The room is wired for laptops and is soon to be wireless capable. Of course, no state-of-the-art classroom would be complete without multi-point videoconferencing, data logging, multimedia editing, storage, streaming, pan and tilt cameras, and oh so much more... David noted that while many lectures rooms are presentation-ready, this room is unique in that it is "production-ready."

The Podium that Pulls Everything Together

As you can imagine, a classroom that can incorporate just about any digital source can be a confusing place. How does one manage all this? Not so ironically, that's where the STC comes in. To make all this stuff "go," we donated $15,000 to the Digital Arts Communication classroom to purchase a "digital podium." The digital podium incorporates a hand held control and a user interface known as the Crestron touch screen that enables users to pull all this technology together. Instructors don't have to know about the underlying technology to use it and that's the point. The digital podium can be tailored too. For example, if you need an effective icon to symbolize a piece of equipment that can be activated, you could take a picture of the equipment and add the picture as an icon to the touch screen. It is particularly apt that the STC contribute in a way that enables users to use, learn, and activate. Isn't that what we do for a living?

Conclusions

By its own reckoning, CCAT "provides a physical and virtual space for bringing together people who share a common interest in the digital design of sound, text, hypertext, images, and video." From what I saw, CCAT is doing just that and we can be proud that we helped to make this happen. And we should be honoured that David Goodwin, Phil Graham, Glen Stillar, and Andrew McMurry, on behalf of CCAT, took the time to say thank you on this crisp November evening. But, perhaps most of all, we should be excited about the roles we can play as we complete and rejuvenate the cycle of achievement from student to researcher to professional.

Part of the November meeting was a draw for two free memberships: one full-time membership and one student membership. David Geddes won the full-time membership. Sarah-Beth Doner was the recipient of the student membership.