Vendors Form New Media Centers
Program promotes multimedia in education
A group of multimedia technology companies and publisher Prentice Hall have announced the formation of a multimedia consortium with a charter to grow the global market by developing interactive media centers within higher learning institutes around the world.
The seeds for the New Media Centers program were planted at last year’s Hakone Forum in Japan, where industry figures from the computing, communications, publishing and entertainment fields worldwide met to discuss convergence issues. Among the topics discussed were the need for a center or group of centers that would hand off technology from engineers to artists, filmmakers, educators and others — empowering and involving the broadest possible audience, so they could find out what new media can do for them, and more important, what they can do with new media.
One lofty ideal at a time. The New Media Centers program, which made its debut at Educom 1993 this past month in Cincinnati, seeks to implement this goal in higher education. The joint venture founded by Adobe Systems, Apple Computer, FWB Inc., Macromedia, Prentice Hall, Sony Electronics and SuperMac Technology plans to provide access to interactive media computing technology for faculty and staff, students, and alumni, as well as individuals in the community who are not involved in academia.
The consortium’s short-term goal is to establish 15 New Media Centers by spring 1994 among colleges and universities around the United States. By 1996, the group plans to increase that number to 100, according to Kimberly Jenkins, the acting director of the New Media Centers Initiative and a principal of the Jenkins/McMurray consulting group based in Palo Alto, CA.
According to Jenkins, the consortium will establish its first international pilot sites in late 1994. Already more than 260 educational institutions worldwide, including universities based in Japan, India, South Africa, France and Germany, have requested applications to participate in the program. Stanford University in Palo Alto has been selected as host for the first site.
They’re smiling at Stanford. The Stanford Media Integration Lab for Education (SMILE) includes a computer classroom; a curriculum development lab, where faculty and students can create instructional multimedia applications; and a “public computer cluster” made up of 50 networked Macintosh Centris 650 systems with CD-ROM drives. SMILE, under the direction of Charles Kerns, already has begun to work with faculty to develop interactive curriculum materials. The university has several additional projects underway within SMILE.
PARTICIPANTS WANT TO MAKE IT WORK
Building a global network of new media centers is not going to be easy. Not only does it require cooperation among individuals in the consortium who are used to seeing each other as competitors, but it also requires a long-term commitment from the corporate members as well as the host universities. The perks for both groups, however, seem to be highly motivating.
Such a bargain!>> The educational institutions that participate are promised discounted prices on media-related products that are even below standard educational discounts.
For example, under the New Media Centers Initiative, participating institutions can purchase a Quadra 840AV with 16 MB of RAM and a 1,000 MB hard disk bundled with SuperMac’s DigitalFilm and ThunderStorm cards, Adobe Premiere and Photoshop Deluxe CD-ROM editions, Apple Media Tool Kit, CoSA After Effects, Macromedia Director and MacroModel, and AppleDesign Powered Speakers, for about $7,500. The retail value of the package if each component was sold separately would be about $20,000.
In addition, participating educational institutes have an opportunity to influence the direction and development of future multimedia tools. The schools are being invited to work with new media products that are still in development — a mixed blessing to be sure, as anyone who has beta-tested computer technology knows.
“The universities can tell us what their needs are,” says Jenkins. “They will have a tremendous influence on how this group is put together and on what kinds of interactive media technologies develop in the future.” The groups will keep up to date with each other via electronic mail and an electronic newsletter that is expected to make its debut in the first part of 1994. In addition, corporate members are expected to make site visits to participating universities on a regular basis.
The content connection. Not insignificantly, member institutions will also have access to content in the form of educational materials created at Prentice Hall, one of the largest educational publishers in the world, owned by Paramount Communications, Inc.
According to Gary Lee June of Prentice Hall, the publisher will license existing college-level titles and help participating universities develop interactive learning media. “The real danger here is the new publishers who think that one of our calculus books can just be digitized and then sold as an interactive product,” says June. “What we provide is a brand name — a launching pad for these institutions to create interactive learning titles that make sense.”
June says Prentice Hall, as well as other consortium members, will also help these universities navigate tricky intellectual property, distribution and royalty issues, so that participating schools can potentially turn their interactive media prototypes into commercial products.
Growing the market. For corporate members of the consortium, the benefits of the New Media Centers program are fairly obvious. Not only do they get a guarantee that their respective technologies are being widely seeded into a rapidly growing tech in education market — about 20 percent of today’s U.S. college students own their own computer — but they also are assured that future generations of multimedia developers are being weaned on their products.
The schools participating in the New Media Centers Initiative must also open the centers to the community outside of academia through interactive media workshops and seminars — again, potentially expanding the interactive developers market, and therefore, the demand for these company’s hardware and software technologies.
AN IDEA THAT NEEDS A HOME TO BE REALITY
Right now, the New Media Centers Initiative faces one large problem: It got too big too fast. The consortium is moving forward so quickly that it is in jeopardy of being overrun by the educational institutes it has attracted.
Trouble at the grass roots. None of the individuals involved in launching the consortium — including Jenkins; Eric Wilson, a consultant on the project who brings a wealth of experience from his previous work on Apple’s failed Creative Media Consortium project; SuperMac’s president and CEO Mike McConnell and its director of strategic relations Tom Rielly; Bud Colligan, president and CEO of Macromedia; and Randy Haykin of Apple Computer — has time to manage daily tasks such as processing applications and mailing out information packets on the initiative.
And if the group is having trouble managing these more mundane yet essential duties, it certainly doesn’t bode well for its ability to develop future strategic directions for the initiative, including bringing on additional publishers and technology companies that can provide services for participating schools.
For the New Media Centers Initiative to succeed, the corporate members who collectively founded the group must now step back from it and entrust its management to another group with enough time to dedicate to the project and who are motivated to really serve the needs of the participating universities.
Becoming real. To that end, the group has begun the process of trying to turn the consortium into a not-for-profit business, complete with a board of directors that will include members of the corporate community and educators. It is certainly questionable, however, if five successful Silicon Valley companies, working with Sony Electronics, can justify creating a not-for-profit business that sells their technology.
Even if the companies can prove they are selling their wares at a loss, it might be difficult to raise the funding from the government and outside corporations necessary to keep a non-profit vibrant. According to Jenkins, the goal is to make the transition from industry consortium to a real business — whether it be a non-profit or a new company — by the first quarter of 1994.
For additional information on the New Media Centers Initiative, call (408) 541-5020, or send E-mail to NMC on AppleLink and NCC@ applelink.apple.com on the Internet.
Janice Maloney