BEHIND THE CURTAIN...
How Digital Designers & Builders are our new Wizards...

Last Tuesday I hosted the  Dibi Conference, produced by those lovely people at EPIC TIMES. Part of my role was to open the morning and afternoon sessions, and close the event with a summing up. Here is the first of two Blog Posts relating to the conference - here is my opening speech...

“I’d like to begin with those references you saw just then from the Wizard of OZ. It celebrates its 75th Birthday this year, having been digitally cleaned and now remastered to IMAX 3D. 75 years since the world of Cinema took us from the sepia world of Dorothy’s Kansas to the Technicolor world of OZ.  I doubt there is anyone in this room who has not seen this film - as a child on TV and been captivated by that cinematic Magic. 

The Cinema and Television are probably the first time we experience, and are brought to ‘feel’ the efforts of technology. And in todays world the second is probably via a PC, Mac or indeed a Tablet. 

The ‘Magic’ as we might perceive it and indeed Dorothy and her friends did when they met the Wizard - is an illusion. The Illusion of Technology. ‘They’ say Science Fiction is the Science fact of tomorrow. Indeed only last month in the labs of Harvard and MIT they discovered a new form of particle matter born out of light that could see the ‘STAR WARS’ Jedi Lightsaber a reality.  Who wants one? Me!

The experience you feel as a consumer of Film, TV, Technology has been the paramount concern since, some might argue,  the birth of Microsoft’s Windows - when those designers and builders ( YOU GUYS or people very like you) closed the (WIZARDS) curtain and we, the consumer, the end user bought the illusion of the ‘relatively’ seamless user environment. No longer would most of us see that guy pulling the levers, switching the switches - or in conventional parlance - writing the CODE. 

Only those of us who chose the ‘Blue Pill’, were permitted to see the Matrix and create the world  - I call the 'iConcept'.  Apple, Steve Jobs now Tim Cook and their teams ably supported by Sir Jonathan Ive have mastered the art of creating iConcept consumer goods and software - iPhone, iPad, and the iMac... for the ‘End User’. Whether Consumer or Corporate  - its all about their user experience and that is the illusion of seamless friendly environments, that do what we require and well. 

Dibi Conference, goes behind the curtain - its a conference for the 'U Concept', you the designer, you the builder, you the developer  - you who have taken that ‘Blue Pill'  and are busy behind the curtain persuading us all through your design, build and development,  not to see beyond that Wizards curtain and to inhabit those environments you have created for us. Whether its the virtual world of a Gaming universe, an accounting software program to help us all pay less tax than Starbucks or a even a smart search engine that will help us find the nearest one! 

From the engineering, to the build, the development, and then marketing our efforts to the right audience in the right way - the world of Dibi is yours  - this is our 3D Experience for you - to connect with. Speakers, workshops and Seminars that we hope will assist you on your journey to boldly go where no one has been before. 

Those cinematographers and effect pioneers of 1938 at MGM wanted to create an illusion of an alternative world, an 'Over the Rainbow'. Today their efforts have been remastered by new technologies  - IMAX and 3D,  to bring the audience closer to that world. In another 75 years we might see that same environment remastered into a Holo-Deck environment? We could literally feel and be in that world. But those worlds will be engineered, designed and built by people like you.  We know what is possible for our future, we just have not built it yet. Dibi Conference is about connecting you all and inspiring you to deliver those iConcepts of all our tomorrows. "

*Introduction to Dibi Conference 2013 by Craig Wilde.