Interviewer: Could you give me some background on your work?

Ana Serrano: I am the director of Media Links Habitat at the Canadian Film Center. And my background five years ago was actually an interesting mix of interests in the new media industry. In Toronto at the time, most of the people who were in new media tended to come from two types of backgrounds. One was the programming or computer science or information technology background. And then the other one was graphic design. And I think that both of these disciplines, sort of formed the way a lot of the different media industries around the world grew up. I came at it from an English literature background. I an English literature degree at McGill University, had run reading series in Montreal for three years. I edited and published magazines, literary magazines as well as opinion magazines and had become quite involved in the desktop publishing world which then became my segueway into new media. As a person with an English literature degree, many people in the industry found it rather novel that I would be even interested in what at that time, was still known as part of the computing industry. And so my approach had always been that this was a medium that had a potential for communicating ideas in a potentially deeper and more interesting way than some of the other media that we have around, like print, television and film, etc. Not that it was better than the other media but that it was different. It had the capacity not only for depth but also breadth in terms of exploring ideas and topic areas. I started out by learning the technology but always keeping it sort of as the background as the toolset rather than as the main stage for new media. Then worked as a freelancer for a while developing media products. And then became a research consultant for a medium sized firm called The Alliance for Converging Technology. And here I started doing a lot of work on the impact of these emerging technologies on the enterprise. And again we saw technology as an enabling tool for the creation of more efficient business processes and for the creation of high performance organization. Again we saw it as an enabling technology. After that, I came to the Canadian Film Center where I was mandated to create a training program for new media.

Interviewer: And that is how you ended up where you are today? Why don't you briefly describe the breadth of the program that you have developed there?

Ana Serrano: The Canadian Film Center has been around for the past ten years. It was started by Norman Jewison to kick start original feature film making in Canada. Because at the time most people were really involved in documentary and animation. And there wasn't much feature film development going on here. So he felt one of the best ways to jump-start feature films was to create a training institution. And he started training directors, producers, editors and writers at the Canadian Film Center.

They produced over 35 short films which have gone through festivals from around the world as well as five feature films, one of which had been premiered at Cannes Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival. And so on the whole the film center has been very successful in producing Canadian talent which have gone on to do great stuff in both Canadian film and television industry. Five years ago, the board, Norman Jewison and Wayne Clarkson, our executive director, realized that digital technologies were impacting on the entertainment industry in a major way. So they thought that it was time for the Canadian Film Center to get on the bandwagon of digital training. They appointed me as the director of MediaLinks Habitat two years ago.

Our seed capital funding came from Bell Canada's limited partner MediaLinks, hence the name. Originally, we were all thinking that we were going to do digital training around areas such as digital effects and animation etc. Again focussing on enabling technology in the entertainment industry. However, it soon became clear that the Canadian Film Center is a Canadian content development center, with three particular delivery channels, film, television and new media. And in the same way that we are not teaching directors how to hold a camera, we are also not teaching students the mechanics and programming of the computing machine. Instead we are teaching people how to tell their stories in the particular medium that interests them.

Media Links Habitat then started three major programs to satisfy this end. The goal was the creation of compelling digital media products that will kick start original content creation in Canada much in the same way that 10 years ago Norman Jewison was trying to kick start original feature filmmaking in Canada. Our three programs are the following, the first is the international public lecture series which is a monthly lecture series that brings digital visionaries from around the world and provides the public with the opportunity to hear what all of the latest and greatest things that are happening in North America and Europe are all about. Speakers have included Dana Atchley, Janet Murray from MIT, Don Hascott, and David Carson. Jarod Lanier and Robert Greenburg from RGA and a host of other people are scheduled to speak in the coming year. And the thinking behind the international lecture series is really first and foremost as an educational initiative for the public, because I think this is a very new industry and it's important that the people who are going to buy these products know why they should care about them in the first place. The second program that we have got running is the professional development jury. Which seeks to improve the professional skills of people already working within the new media industry. And to this end, we like to put together workshops that have less to do with technology training, because as you know, a lot of the software companies are already doing that. But have more to do with some of the major issues in new media and some of the key trends that are going on. And so one of our cornerstone programs in the professional development series is the digital storytelling workshop that you guys run at San Francisco Digital Media Center as well as game design and information architecture. And so these are key areas of interest that people who are too busy developing Web sites may not have the time to think about. But have to in the next five years because this is where some of the key trends, this is where most of the communication trends are moving. And then our third program which is really the cornerstone program of the Habitat is the new media design program. And this is a four month team based project program that seeks to develop original new media content products. And it's divided into two portions. The first half is what we call the knowledge sharing portion. And it's divided into four course modules. These modules are as follows. The first one is what we're talking about is leadership development. And here this module really talks about creating appropriate efficient personal leadership styles within each of the students that we have in our classes and teaching them communication skills, conflict resolution skills, entrepreneurial skills, out of the box thinking skills, critical thinking skills, etc. And it's really a highly intensive module that seeks to provide students with the appropriate skills to create a clear vision for themselves. And we think that this is important not only within the new media industry but also in all industries in the new economy. Because a lot of these skills are the ones that actually make or break people's careers. And unfortunately, these are not the ones that are being taught in traditional educational institution. And so I think that these are important lessons to learn. The second module is what we call the business and financial management module. And here we really look at what are some of the key business models in the new media content development industry. As well as your more ubiquitous and lessons in project management and production scheduling and budgeting etc. But the key in the business and financial management module is really trying to define what the new models might be. Because we could be creating the best products out there, but unless we can figure out how people are going to pay for them, or how we are going to actually build them and what the legal models might be, they are not going to go anywhere. And so here we really seek to sort of ask our students to think about what some of these potential models might be. The third module that we talk about is what we call technology. And again here we are not talking about software training, instead we're talking about really the demystifying of technology A, so that making people understand that the computer is the tool for a procedural medium, meaning that there are certain sets of rules that you can tell a computer to do and it will execute it. And to know that the user or the author whichever you might be at the time has ultimate control over it. So that is one part of the technology model. And the other part is really to start making distinctions between what we mean when we talk about new media. And how we make distinctions between new media as a medium as opposed to new media as a tool as opposed to new media as a technology and how these things are actually all different from one another. And also trying to keep a running tab of what the salient characteristics of the medium might be. And the fourth module is what we call story creation or storytelling story creation. And here, the hypothesis for this module is that any kind of communications medium that gets vented will be ultimately placed in the hands of the storytellers or the story creators. Because that is what people do and that is what is sort of separates us from other species. Or perhaps that is what separates us from other species...

Interviewer: We don't know what the whales really say to each other, so...