Interviewer: Great idea.

Ana Serrano: And to us after having seen this kind of framework again and again appear, in three very different instance, .ideas, it became clear that this is a potential framework for using this new media as a way to express either needs, you know career resource and or just plain stories or narrative or entertainment. So it's not rocket science.

Interviewer: But it's like what is emerging is that we are creating a different educational pattern that is based on this kind of stages of cognitive understandings that aren't about discipline you know, kind of discipline specific. And that we, my sense is that, that the word leadership has a lot to do with it for me as well, that there is a sense of self awareness that you can work with people about that makes them be able to work in a process and give leadership to that process as opposed to that sense of, let me find my little niche and do my job, and that you just tell me what to do. And while that may have worked in an industrial environment, it doesn't work in an informational economy. And if we don't teach people that then they are missing a critical survival skill.

Ana Serrano: Yeah, no, absolutely.

Interviewer: And there is no question to me that many training facilities are still based on that idea of, all I want is my expertise in my one area and I want somebody else to do that leadership role. And the reality is that you can't make an interesting piece of media and frankly you can't even make a car, you know you can't make anything.

Ana Serrano: I mean that is a really, really sad thing. I mean a lot of my experience, a lot of what has formed the creation of this program was personal experience for me. When I came out of university I was really interested in multi media. And the only training programs available were the software training programs which I did. And as I was taking them I was like what the hell? This is crazy. Nothing, you do the project on your own. No one teaches you any theory. There is no discussion about why this is important in the first place. And so I think that is...

Interviewer: And so you end up coming out of something like that and you may be partially employable. But in fact, you're not that employable for really developing work in an economic environment as chaotic as the one that we're in.

Ana Serrano: Yeah. And the thing that really upsets me is that most of the people who end up taking these courses, tend to be people who would like to upgrade their skills. So that they probably have industry jobs. They save all of their money to take either an IT course or one of these new media training courses, and then they think that there is so much hype about how this new media is the next industry of the future they are so excited about finally being on a career path that is right for them or that will be lucrative. And then they can't get a job. And I think that it's the moral responsibility of educators to make sure that especially in training programs not in the university or college, but in private training programs to make sure that their clients, their students are armed with the appropriate information. That just because you know how to program doesn't mean that you're going to get a job. Just because you know how to use Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop doesn't mean that you're going to get a job if that is the kind of training you want to do. Or if to try to figure out a different kind of training program that will give them more than just the tool skill set. And that will give them the soft skills. And I think that it's actually the soft skills are more important.

Interviewer: No, I agree wit you. Well where do you see, I mean this is a wonderful program, but you're commitment to innovation is so complete that you must have some ideas of where else you might be growing your program for some of the other directions in terms of collaborations or intersection with other sectors of the economy or other industries and whatever. Do you have any...?

Ana Serrano: Well one of the things that we want to do is actually start creating a new program called the New Media Product Development Program. Where we take the best of our prototypes from the new media design program and where we solicit proposals from outside the Canadian Film Center and we actually develop a sort of a research model for developing some of these products. And where we would have typically these incubators might have a stable of programmers as part of the resources that they would provide to the completion of a research project that let's say a Bell Canada might have given them to do. Here what we want to do is not only have programmers but have artists, writers, etc, to be part of that stable of resources that will allow that prototype to be developed fully as a commercial product. And so that is one idea. And then the other idea is to take our four course modules and this is where we get into the whole corporate sector and actually develop them as workshops that the corporate sector can participate in. And so let's take leadership development for new media companies and provide that as a workshop for the corporate sector. Or a new way of looking at technology, new media and the medium as opposed to a tool and give that as a workshop to the banks or to a lot of these other places.

Interviewer: Now that makes sense.