Media skills for media people

Archive for July, 2009

MY NEW BEST FRIEND: mentoring in the games industry

Friday, July 17th, 2009

Three wise men: Thomas Bidaux, Charles Cecil and David Wightman

Mentoring is to my mind a quite quixotic way of imparting skills. In effect it’s actually about knowledge exchange rather than skills, and hence is a little bit off the Skillset radar. It’s also usually a one to one activity, and hence rather expensive to institute. In fact one-to-one is a little misleading. There are usually (to paraphrase Princess Di) at least three people in this marriage- mentor, mentee and matchmaker or fixer. That’s a hell of a bill to pay at the end of the day for often unpredictable outcomes. But when you apply that equation to the Games industry, it might just be worth the risk for two reasons.

Firstly ideas have to be a lot hardier these days to weather the economic realities outside of the concept art stage- the previous originality of British brands like Elite, Lemmings and Worms just wouldn’t survive today’s climate without serious economic, logistic and even legal planning and canniness before hitting the market.

Secondly, the rewards can be huge for UK PLC; it’s reckoned Jagex make 60 million dollars of annual sales from Runescape. Estimates suggest that the IP for GTA has generated 1.9 billion for Take 2 (Games Investor report).
For those two reasons, it’s surely worth taking a punt at mentoring.

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Farewell and Thanks to Mandy Berry – a key part of the creative media industries

Friday, July 3rd, 2009

01_1_06Last night,  key figures in the education, skills and business world of creative media gathered in a Soho basement to wish Mandy Berry well in whatever she does next.

Mandy Berry has ran 01zero-one for the last five years. It is a fantastic resource for the UK creative media industry – a sector-specific training space, deep in the heart of Soho. Skillset has done many fantastic things with Mandy and 01zero-one in that time – things like First Post, cutting edge subsidised training courses for employees and freelancers, a brilliant networking programme called InSync, London Games Fringe, a new introductory qualification for new entrants into the industry… …

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people have benefited from 01zero-one.  Hundreds of lives have been improved, careers kick-started and fine-tuned, minds engaged and stimulated.

There are a number of remarkable things about 01zero-one. It is a media business-facing unit in the heart of a further education college. It has always been an establishment of partnership – borne out of a real drive to improve the creative industries in London. It has always kept industry at the very heart of everything it does (I sit on the industry board alongside other key figures). It has always been cutting edge – debates and discussions happen their before they bleed into the mainstream; courses available are always up-to-the-minute (some times too much; we once funded a course a number of years ago on multi-platform content that got little take up – at the time the industry didn’t see the point!). And it’s part of a wonderful Skillset Media Academy.

The success of 01zero-one is down to Mandy and her every brilliant team. She has always steered the work of it into interesting and crucial challenges. She has always worked collaboratively with key partners. She has always happy to experiment in content and delivery. She has always welcome our industries into the building with openness and great hospitality.

Wherever she goes to next, whatever she does, all of us at Skillset thank her for the support, dedication and hard work she has given our sector over the years and wish her the very best of her future endeavours.

Knowing Mandy as I do, I am sure they will be equally as important and impactful for our industry!

Skillset blog has been set up to stimulate and encourage debate around skills issues within the Creative Media Industries. The individuals who post at Skillset blog work at Skillset. The opinions and ideas expressed are their own and are not necessarily reviewed in advance by anyone but the individual authors. Neither Skillset nor any third party necessarily agrees with them.

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