One of the first conferences that came onto our radar was the 2014 SXSW EDU Conference.  The deadline was late July 2013, in the midst of our group coming together.

We quickly decided to pitch our philosophy as a talk and put together a team of panelist we felt was well-rounded and representative of the group.

Our application was completed and submitted on time. After submission, the application goes live on the conference website where the public votes via a panel picker.

We had a whole social media team put together for this effort to to help get word out and hopefully earn votes.  As there was no official ticker, we tracked our votes by social media “influence” and we seemed to be in the top 10-20 percent.

Unfortunately we recently found out we were not picked as a panel this year (2014).  So why are we posting this?  Because failure is worth reporting.  With failure comes learing.  Something we at the Convergent Media Collective feel is a critical part of being a cutting edge innovative group.

So keep an eye out, we may be at SXSW EDU 2015 or another conference near you!

joey has been involved with Boost Logic for nearly five years.  One of the very cool things about Boost Logic is they have always been welcoming to joey and his students to visit and learn about the automotive industry.  In the last three years Zohair Jaffery, owner of Boost Logic, made a critical decision to transition from not only being a leader in the Toyota Supra platform but to begin developing cutting edge Nissan GTR packages.

This year Boost Logic’s transition has been one of huge success and as such, documentation of this transformation needed to occur.

Having produced videos for Boost Logic in the past, joey approached Zohair with the idea of bringing in The Collective to develop a new style of video where a slide arm and proper lightening would be used to showcase the car’s build.

Fran Trechta, a member of The Collective offered to drive up to Austin and teach anyone interested how to light a car as well as how to use a motorized slide arm.

The results were amazing. As you can see in the video, The Collective’s working knowledge of production skills grew.  In addition Boost Logic garnered a video that showed off the Nissan GTR BL1500 package in a very appealing format.

In addition to the GTRBL1500 package video, the collective was also able to collaborate on the Al-Anabi & Boost Logic GTR1500+ dragster project.  Over 6 months Joel, Johnny and joey documented the build and drag strip runs.  It was amazing to see an international collaboration taking place, with people flying in literally from all over the world with one goal:  to make one of the fastest GTR’s on the earth.  They succeeded and the video and photos we captured help exude that to the world.

Through open minded for profit companies such as Boost Logic, rapid hands-on learning has been able to occur for both students and community members of the collective.  Thank you!

Our Convergent Media Collective members come from a variety of backgrounds and occupations, but what makes our work unique, is how ideas can cross into real world situations and events. That’s exactly what happened when projection mapping was integrated into Palo Alto College’s annual fundraising event also known as Celebracíon.

Convergent Media Collective member Andrew Valdez is the Sr. Digital Media Specialist at Palo Alto College. He was involved in the planning of the event and recommended that projection mapping be a visually engaging solution to showcase the college and it’s sponsors of the night. They previously had the idea of simply using a projector to project a looping PowerPoint on a portable screen.

Projection mapping has been a developing project for us as noted in a previous blog post. We had done some testing involving new technology such as the Matrox triple head projector, which allows 3 projectors to project one extra wide projection. Rather than use a projector screen we would end up projecting onto the entire side of the building. Collective members joey lopez, Joel Pena, Jonathan Guajardo, Kaye Cruz and Andrew Valdez set up a test run a few weeks before the event. The test run served as a way to fine-tune the process.

We were finally able to utilize all of this technology and provide a projection mapping service for the event. This service included custom animated graphics and required an AV setup of 3 projectors, 3 tripods, 1 Matrox triple-head, and a Macbook Pro.

The final product resulted in a visual accomplishment that was praised by several professionals at the event. A couple of small business owners have expressed interest in using the service for their future events, stay tuned.

And that’s what is cool about doing works like this in the community, we were able to expose new crowds to projection mapping and we were able to get “real world” experience working with a great institution.

Here are some photos from the event: