Another challenging and exciting year is about to begin and I want to welcome you to the Multimedia program at PCC. Our Multimedia Club’s officers have stayed in touch this summer and we plan to make this our best year yet. But before I tell you about our big plans, I want to give you some advice.

I can sum up my advice to students in the Multimedia program in two words; GET INVOLVED. I can’t stress enough how important it is to be involved in something besides your studies. The field of multimedia requires equal parts study, networking, collaboration and volunteering. Luckily, PCC’s Multimedia Club has got you covered.

Beginning October 6^th, 2008 we will be holding “Multimedia Mondays”. During these gatherings there will be presentations (social media, technology, what’s hot, etc.), networking opportunities, brainstorming sessions and just plain fun. But wait, there’s more! Each one of our club’s officers has made a commitment to help fellow students all year long, through our (unofficial) mentoring program. Some of us “old salts” will be available to mentor new and returning students throughout the year. We not only have experience with the courses, but insight into what’s happening in the real world.

Other plans this year include various fundraising projects (we like to help charities), joint meetings with other PCC clubs, event hosting and much more. Feel free to give us your ideas. Show up to a meeting, contact us with your ideas, or simply stop me in the hall or lab. PCC Multimedia Club wants you!

Doug Coleman

PCC Multimedia Club President

**EDITOR’S NOTE**  I am very excited to be covering an event like this year’s iPhone DevCamp for my new blog.  But due to Apple’s iPhone SDK Non-Disclosure Agreement, not much can be said about what is (or is not) going on with applications being developed for the iPhone.

Developers and programmers who rely on a free exchange of information in order to learn to build new applications, are being asked to remain silent about the company’s iPhone Software Developers Kit.  That’s the word on the street and I’m sure they have their reasons.[Note to self;another post on those reasons]

I have been warned that the mandatory minimum sentence for violating Apple’s NDA is a thourough ass-beating from a couple of Steve Jobs’ thugs and if I live through that, they would excommunicate me from the Apple cult community and banish me from the internet. The rebel in me sees this as a challenge.  After all, I can take (or give) a good ass-beating.  Even the threat of getting the bejesus sued out of me doesn’t really scare me because, as Jim Goings (who is not my lawyer) pointed out; “you don’t need no stinking NDA”.  He’s right.  I haven’t yet signed up for the iPhone SDK, so I am under no obligation to abide by its non-disclosure agreement.  The fact is, any attention I might get from Apple, especially negative attention, could gain me lots of readers for my blog.

If I want to write for a living, I need that attention.  And while any gonzo journalist worth his notebook should jump at this perfect chance to stick it to the man, I have reasons for playing this one straight.  My main reason is that I do not want to jeopardize any person’s chance to make money on their applications.  These people work hard, often in obscurity, to get a chance to make some real money for themselves and their teams.  The other reasons also have to do with respect.  Respect for Jive Software, who provided the venue for this event.  Respect for those who organized and attended this event.  And above all, respect for a community that has nurtured and been very kind to me in my new career. For these reasons, I purposely choose to puss out and provide tomorrow’s content censored according to the iPhone SDK’s NDA .  DC**

The largest gathering of iPhone owners at the iPhoneDevCamp in San Francisco. Can Portland beat this?

Good news!  iPhone developer geeks do not have to travel all the way to San Francisco for DevCamp 2.  There will be a live satellite event at Portland Community College’s Cascade Campus that is open to the public and is free.  For those of you who are not familiar with iPhone DevCamp, here is a brief explanation from iPhone DevCamp.org:

iPhoneDevCamp 2 is an upcoming not-for-profit gathering to develop applications for iPhone and iPod touch using both the native SDK and web standards. This is a follow-on event to the first iPhoneDevCamp, held in early July 2007.

iPhone DevCamp Portland will take place August 1st through August 3rd on the Cascade Campus of Portland Community College Map Link.

This will be a satellite event, linked via streaming video with the main event in San Francisco.  The event will be held in three rooms of PCC’s state-of-the-art Multimedia Lab.  The venue offers free Wi-Fi and access to 40 Mac Pro terminals running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard.

An agenda and further information can be found at: iPhoneDevCampPDX.pbwiki.org

Food, meet and greets, and other considerations are being planned and anyone interested in providing sponsorship for this event should contact myself dougcoleman1@gmail.com or Dean Martindale. Look for more information and breaking news about this event right here on the Multimedia Misfit.

Special Thanks to Dean Martindale for putting this together, visit his blog: webguypdx.com

You do not have to go to an expensive state or private school to get a great education in multimedia.  Portland Community College’s Multimedia Program offers accessible and affordable training in multimedia design and development.  After all, your education is what you make of it, regardless of where you go to school.  In fact, I have seen other more expensive options that offered far less.

A couple of weeks ago, myself and several members of the PCC Multimedia Club tore down the old Mac lab and installed brand new Apple computers and software.

From an email by PCC Multimedia Coordinator Greg Walters :

“The PCC Multimedia Center recently upgraded it’s computers and software to the latest and greatest that our industry has to offer. Brand new Apple G5 Towers, 20” flat screen monitors, 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, Final Cut Studio 2, Adobe CS3 Design Premium, and much much more. We also recently got state approval of our Video Production Certificate this past month, which we will begin offering to students along with our current Multimedia Certificate and Associates of Applied Science degree in Multimedia. What better time to be a multimedia student, eh?

If you have any questions about classes, events, degrees, and/or advising here in the Multimedia program, please don’t hesitate to contact us. All of our current information is available online at: www.pccmm.com ”

However you choose to pursue a multimedia education, be sure to network with fellow students and become involved in your community’s multimedia network, or “scene”.  One great way to do this is join the PCC Multimedia Club.  We are still sorting through administrative issues on our website, but you can contact meand I will get you set up.  Look for more posts about the exciting things we are doing in our community coming soon.

Why would any self-proclaimed website designer like myself use a WordPress blog template? The answer is easy. Because they do a pretty darn good job of designing their blog sites and that frees me up to concentrate on content. Besides, the type of website “design” I do is not really pure. By that I mean that I don’t usually start with a blank page, lay it all out, write the code and attach a CSS file, etc. I usually start with a template in Adobe Dreamweaver , choose a color scheme (COLURlovers monitors and influences color trends), choose an appropriate font and start plugging in content. Choosing fonts for web use is easy. There are only about seven fonts that really work in all browsers, so I use one of them (Arial, Comic Sans MS, Georgia, Courier New, Tahoma, Times New Roman and Verdana). This is hotly debated among font nerds but trust me, these are best if you want everybody to be able to view your pages in all browsers. Remember, computers can only display the fonts that are installed on that computer. The average internet user does not have all of your fancy fonts installed on their computer.

Once I find appropriate places to put content, I go to town. Making graphics, finding and linking pages, writing, taking and optimizing photos, making animations, video editing and music are the fun things I like to do. It is usually pretty easy to insert these things into an html page.

When I run into any trouble with the inner workings of a page (often), I call upon my trusty sidekick, Robin (after all, I am Batman). She tidys up my mess and makes it all work. If my design isn’t working then it is easy to plug the content into a new design. This is also what having a WordPress blog site does for me. I can concentrate on content and leave the real design to the pros. I have designed a couple of pretty cool looking websites by slicing up a Photoshop document and importing it into Dreamweaver. There are many perils accociated with this method, so I warn against it. I will write about that in a future post.

Until I can get my hands on a copy of Adobe Thermo, or until someone throws a big pile of money my way, that’s how I roll, dog.

I am taking a course right now at Portland Community College that is called Multimedia Review, Test and Delivery.  It is a two day, 1 credit course that I need for my MM degree.  I must admit, I was not looking forward to it.  My weekends are precious to me and this is on a Friday and Saturday.  However, I have changed my mind after attending the first day.  The instructor, Mark Dustan, works for Jupiter Systems, who supply…”visualization solutions that help customers respond to the complex operational demands of security, defense, transportation, public utilities, education, and business communications”.  They are “The Display Wall Company”.  Without filling this post with Mr. Dustan’s entire history, I will say that he has worked for Sarif, Smart Technologies, Planar, and other multimedia companies and is a very informed expert on all things multimedia.

In the course we are going to test and deliver our Adobe Director projects from an earlier course.  One of the main ideas about this course is that you can re-purpose content for other applications.  To show us a little example of this, Beth Fitzgerald demonstrated how we can make our .dir files and convert them into .dcr (Shockwave) files that can be used on the internet.  I was familiar with how to do this, but the point about re-purposing content was well taken.  A good example of this is that more and more content is being used and produced for mobile phones and devices.  It makes sense for me to learn to make some of my web related projects useful on these devices also.

In this evening’s class, we learned who is using multimedia.  The list of multimedia applications and the spaces they occupy is staggering and continues to grow every day.  Airports, banks, news channels, casinos, briefing rooms, corporations, visitor experience centers, lobbies, conventions, grocery stores and gas stations are only a few of the places we are likely to see multimedia.

We were also reminded of a couple of important tips for anyone in a creative field like multimedia.  I will write more about these tips in later posts because they deserve their own attention.

It is important to note that multimedia and technology is always changing and we need to keep up those changes.  Mr. Dustan turned us on to the IEEE Video Blog, a video blog especially for the multimedia community.  I urge everyone to check out these videos made by experts who are on the bleeding edge of multimedia and technology.

I will be sure to write a full post about what I learned when the course is complete.  Stay tuned