September 5th kick-off event September 12th initial submission deadline What is the Immersive Media Challenge? Come up with a concept for an engaging experience that should be buildable in 3-5 years. Explain what needs to happen that will make building it possible. It can be — a world, a tool, a game, a platform, a product, a service, a _____, … Think about what happens when tech catches up to an idea that resonates with people – e.g., Facebook, Fortnite, Minecraft, global K-Pop, esports/Twitch, smart speakers, Bird/Lime, Airbnb, …. Read More

Sign up below to get information about the Immersive Media Challenge   The Entertainment Technology Center at USC invites students and recent grads to participate in an Immersive Media Challenge. The ETC@USC is funded by the major Hollywood studios and Tech companies to help them recognize and prepare for “the ‘next‘ next new thing”. Your challenge is to come up with a pitch for an engaging experience that should be buildable in 3-5 years. Experiences should fit into one or more of these four broadly stated area; city Read More

The Entertainment Technology Center at The University of Southern California (ETC) will produce “vETC  | The Grand Convergence 2019: Innovation and Integration,” its 5th annual virtual conference, August 27-28, 2019, in Los Angeles, highlighting significant presentations of emerging technologies and their impact on the M&E industry. The 25-minute presentations will be recorded and posted on our YouTube channel. The Initial Expression of Interest seeking speakers and topics is open through Friday, August 9. Specific areas of concentration include 5G, AI, machine learning, adaptive production, blockchain, immersive media, virtual beings, and streaming. We Read More

This past spring, the Entertainment Technology Center at USC invited students and recent grads to participate in our Immersive Media Challenge, organized by ETC’s Director of Immersive Media Phil Lelyveld and funded by NBCUniversal and Cisco. The competition required students to ideate an engaging experience that should be buildable in 3-5 years and explain what needs to happen to make its construction possible. Judging took place May 29th, and here are the four amazing entries that were selected: Viewfinder An emotion-reactive first-person creature-based exploration puzzle game.   placeLA Read More

Original article and reporting by Debra Kaufman, ETCentric. The Entertainment Technology Center @ the University of Southern California held its 8th annual Studio Technology Leaders Dinner on June 26th, coinciding with the 26th anniversary of ETC’s founding. The event, underwritten by supporting sponsor Equinix and contributing sponsor WekaIO, honored industry leader Leon Silverman with the Bob Lambert Technology Leadership Award and featured a panel on some of the industry’s most pressing issues in “Media Fundamentals in Flex: Conflict, Chaos or Collaboration.” Executive director & CEO Ken Williams (below) Read More

At our June 20th All Members Meeting, ETC invited students from the University of Southern California to participate in a panel where they voiced their observations of current youth media consumption and to speculate the future of interactive media. The panel was moderated by ETC’s Immersive Media Initiative Director Phil Lelyveld. In order to engage with industry leaders on these topics, the students drew from observations of their families, analysis of their own personal preferences, and consideration of their academic studies.   Our participating panelists included:  Anil Ramakrishna Read More