I Want Something Great

For the past four years our studio has sent folks to attend the Flash-in-the-Can (FITC) conference in Toronto. Produced by Shawn Pucknell, it's one of North America's premier events for all things "Flashy". Our own John Jameson, then serving the role of Executive Director of MIDMA, convinced Shawn over a couple of beers to bring his roadshow version of FITC for Winnipeg. Manlab sponsored the entire studio to attend the 'Peg events in 2006 & 2007. Unfortunately looks like FITC is jumping over Winnipeg this year and heading out to Calgary. Hopefully they'll return next year. FITC is the ideal opportunity for our studio to learn and get inspired from the world's leading Flash developers. This year we sent a contingent of six to Toronto - John; our Flash development team of Ryan, Ryan, Aaron and Curt; and myself serving as tour guide.

The week after FITC, each of our four Flash developers presented their highlights to the rest of the studio, True to their geekiness, they all produced their 30 minute presentations in Flash. True to Flash's "personality", all had minor technical problems. Why the aversion to PowerPoint guys? Just like my hero Norm, you need to use the right tool for the right job.

Today was my turn. I fired up my PowerPoint slides for my "inspirational" ramblings on "Building a Better Studio". Over the past year and a half, our studio has grown significantly as our project demands have increased. Most challenging for new members is the expectations of our studio. We demand each member to contribute to a project - to offer ideas, to develop and nurture the broad strokes that the senior staff have outlined into a quality product that made sense, and to speak up when our ideas are just too screwed up to work. And to paraphrase Brad Hamilton, they must "learn, know and live" our mantra, "We're only as good as our last project." Otherwise its "No dice!"

So 30 minutes and 93 slides later, I finish on time. As I often do, I cited 14 movie and television titles ranging from "With Six You Get Eggroll", "Hello Down There", "Bye Bye Birdie", to my all-time favourite "The Fountainhead". And I finished with a personal guilty pleasure, a video clip from "Eddie and the Cruisers" where rebel rocker Eddie Wilson says "I want something great. I want something that's never been done before!". His best buddy replies "Why? We ain't great. We're just some guys from Jersey." It's a beautifully bad scene in a bad rock and roll movie; never less, a staple in my music-based movie fest.

So that was my rallying call. Are we just some guys from Winnipeg? Or do we want something great; something that's never been done before.... like tossing Brent off the dock in Ottawa?