Link: Shawnee 3.0 - Building a new game board.
Silicon Valley did not rise out of the earth as the high-tech center of the planet. The little farm towns of Mountain View, Cupertino and San Jose were best known for their orchards through the 1960's.
Then Schockley and Bardeen and Fairchild happened - businesses started to grow - businesses whose products, in fact, had never really existed anywhere else. The activity began to attract more talented engineers - and then came all the people required to support a growing community. This is the realization that "Silicon Valley" has not always been with us - it arose out of a unique set of circumstances - the result of creativity, drive and passion.
Others have tried to re-create - purposefully - the kind of explosion that happened almost by accident in California. "Silicon" thises and thats have popped up around the country - with limited success. It's hard to re-create spontaneity on purpose - ask anyone who has tried to organize a mixer.
So it is not without a sense of risk that an effort to build a center of activity focused on games and "interactive digital" technology in southern and southeastern Ohio has begun. The effort has not received any billion dollar grants for the purpose of building a new technology community - but the targeted, application of individuals' energy and commitment has indeed begun to pay off.
A prime mover in this effort has been Bill Sams. He returned to Ohio after a successful career in California in high-tech industries, and got involved in the IT Alliance of Appalachian Ohio (ITAAO) and became known as a passionate speaker and committed reformer of education. He was appointed last year as Interim CIO of Ohio University, and has continued to be a vocal advocate for common sense in economic development and particularly education.
Bill has promoted the establishment of programs to support the computer gaming industry - seeing the potential for southeastern Ohio to benefit from a number of desirable attributes, if a consciousness could be raised, and programs could be established - to provide the kind of education that would result in a small but building pool of the unique sets of skills and talents required to make such an enterprise take hold. Bill started talking up the educational side, while cultivating the government agencies - local and state - in the tri-state area including Kentucky and West Virginia.
Building organically takes more time, but the results are already starting to come in - strongly and positively. Shawnee State now has 2 Bachelor's level programs - one in art and one in technology for gaming. Ohio University has ramped up its multimedia programs. Washington State in Marietta now has a professional game developer - Laura Kerbyson - on faculty, and courses that articulate (transfer) to Shawnee. A number of the local high schools and career centers are getting aboard, and the conference hosted a number of table-top exhibits demo-ing student projects.
And of course there are companies - within the tri-state area - that are emerging and hiring students. Obviously, if the graduates of these new educational programs don't have a place to work in the area - the program has a giant leak out the top as everyone heads elsewhere to find a job. The talent must have a place to make a living in the area, which attracts more talent, more investment, and on and on.
The conference highlights the incredible effort and sterling result - and was itself a success. A key-note address in the morning really hit home. Eric Johnston of LucasArts described why games - or interactive digital technologies - were important. Starting with the trivial (e.g., thumb development), he then pointed out that effective simulation and gaming were 1) among the first applications undertaken by computers and 2) were the nexus of art and science and required a working knowledge of virtually all the mechanics that made the world work. In short, an effective training program for gaming would naturally be an effective background for life.
He wrapped up his presentation with an additional insight - about how the knowledge of technology enabled accomplishments that could not be planned years in advanced. You get an education so that you can be ready for the unexpected opportunity. And he told the story of Ben Duskin - a 9-year-old cancer survivor who contacted the Make-A-Wish Foundation with an odd request. He asked not for a fantasy for himself - but for help in building a game that would help other kids get through the tough times of chemo and cancer recovery. Make-A-Wish contacted LucasArts and ended up capturing the imagination of Johnston, who worked with Ben for 2 years before releasing Ben's Game in mid-2004. "Make-A-Wish has a Web site which gets perhaps 50-60 hits per week. I am proud to say," Johnston reported, "That we brought down the servers of the Make-A_Wish Foundation 3 times after annoucning the availability of Ben's Game - and they were just as pleased as they could be. Within the first month, 60,000 copies of Ben's Game were downloaded."
Johnston's point was unmistakable. After all the minutiae of taking courses, completing degrees, getting a job - the skill sets that enable one to write great entertainment - also enable the ability to make a big difference. Making a big difference with small hurting people - can make a big difference in the world. And all those intangibles that constitute "job satisfaction" can be wrapped up in the single image of a 10-year-old, tongue sticking out of his mouth, completely focused - on Ben's Game.
Lest we lose perspective - or lose track of Bill Sams' vision - IT is a fundamental technology with the power to make the world a much better place. And the programs being pioneered by Shawnee promise to make southern Ohio a much better place - by virtue of the talent and the promise of interactive digital technologies, gaming and simulation.
(-- originally posted by Rich Bowers, Coordinator, Ohio IT Clearinghouse)
