I think everyone knows that Nintendo is very important to the video game industry even if you're somebody who primarily plays on PlayStation or Xbox, PC, mobile phones, handheld PCs. Heck, maybe you game primarily on Mac for crying out loud. The point is most people can agree Nintendo is important. And that could be for various reasons whether it's their legendary IP and Mario's and Zelda's and Pikmin's and Pokemon or if it's just in what they've done for the industry in terms of bouncing it back back in the 80s when the market was being oversaturated with bad video games of very little let's just say quality control and so many system options that it probably confused the market. And even if you just want to talk about expanding gaming at times with brand new ideas whether it was the D-pad or stuff like when they popularized motion controls and touchscreens before smartphones or even a thing. I know that Nintendo has done a lot and this is because I've been a big Nintendo fan for a majority of my life at least 30 plus years at this point. But what's also interesting is when we look at modern gaming today and I'm someone who does have experience with modern gaming I game on PC. Heck, I game on Mac a little bit too to be honest. I have a PlayStation 5 and an Xbox Series X and S in my house and multiple switches. It's interesting that when I walk around playing all these various games and I've played some of the best of the best games this year that Nintendo's importance seems to only be growing for me. Now Nintendo doesn't get everything right. They certainly make their fair share of mistakes. The fact I can't message friends on Nintendo Switch or even on their phone app is pretty damn ridiculous for a paid service.  Nintendo is one of the last companies holding out on charging in the console space to play online. But there are just a lot of industry trends that have been going on for many many many years and Nintendo kind of defies those bad industry trends and there's one major thing they do that allows them to do this and it's maybe one of the most criticized things at the company. But if you look at the alternative you have to say you know what all right Nintendo I think that's a pretty fair trade off. So what are we talking about here? Well Nintendo does this thing where they defy a lot of the bad industry trends even though there's a maybe a super lucrative thing they could be doing instead that would certainly please investors. Let's just dive into some of these bad industry trends that Nintendo defies typically not always typically there's always exceptions to the rule and Nintendo isn't perfect then they make mistakes and they do dumb things and make anti-consumer decisions at times like any other company. But let's talk about one thing that's maybe been around the longest and that's DLC. Now look Nintendo absolutely has DLC and they've had good and bad DLC but we're talking about the type of DLC that exists that makes the base game feel like it's being piecemealed to you where a game comes out and it feels incomplete without said DLC and Nintendo does a really good job for most of their games releasing what would you consider to be a final product and while the DLC comes in general that DLC is in addition to and often praised. Let's just do a recent example the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC is wrapping up here in November on the 9th and that is adding an additional 48 tracks they just doubled the size of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe which had already been doubled in size from DLC that they dropped for Mario Kart 8 back on Wii U and the crazy thing is when Mario Kart 8 came out it was the same size as all prior Mario Kart games so the original $20 DLC back on Wii U was already considered a massive value addition and then they do it again and add even more value that's what we mean by the original Mario Kart 8 back on Wii U maybe today would feel like an incomplete game but at the time it didn't feel like they cut content from the game to deliver you a lesser experience they really created what was par for the course for the entire Mario Kart 8 you know the entire Mario Kart series today it might feel antiquated to go back to the number of tracks and playable characters and carts that they had back in the original Mario Kart 8 when it came out but that's because of Mario Kart 8 the the amount of DLC they added just really expanded it now expectations are obviously much higher for that next major console Mario Kart but that's just one DLC what about Xenobite Chronicles 2 and 3 those games do feel complete they are whole experiences it doesn't feel like they cut something from those games but then they went ahead and dropped DLC for both of them and gotta say that DLC is not only massive it's impactful and it adds to an already complete experience same thing when they did these Super Smash Bros DLC adding all those fighter passes is anyone going to try to argue when Super Smash Bros Ultimate came out that it did not feel like a complete package it was literally the most content-rich Smash Bros game of all time and Nintendo has this tendency a lot of their games if they add DLC to really add impactful DLC and not add DLC that makes the base game feel like it wasn't complete at the time and this is just unfortunately not true across the whole of the gaming industry and no Nintendo is not the only ones that get it right there's supposedly some Elden Ring DLC coming out yeah Elden Ring feels like a complete experience but you guys know the games there's so many that come out that just feel stupidly incomplete without some form of DLC you have stories that just are cut off randomly you have you know modes entire modes just missing from the game added in through DLC and like Nintendo did that a little bit with Breath of the Wild I don't think Breath of the Wild felt like an incomplete game but you know they added Master Mode and all that stuff which feels like it probably should have been in the base game I'm gonna be honest it felt like a cut feature which is ironic because we have no DLC coming for Tears of the Kingdom and there's no Master Mode maybe they'll add it as a free update someday but we got Master Mode slash Hero Mode for free and then some of the earlier entries such as Skyward Sword where they had their Master Mode was called Hero Mode but you know what those are sort of the exceptions as I said Nintendo is not perfect but it didn't mean Breath of the Wild didn't feel like a complete game they didn't cut content so that's one thing that Nintendo seems to do well and this is probably maybe even the least valuable thing that I'm going to talk about because again other companies have done a decent job at this what's some other stuff that companies lean on a lot I know what about microtransactions well I understand that it's been widely accepted in the mobile phone space and that's just how things are because games are mostly free to play so they gotta have a way to charge you microtransactions have led into almost every major IP it really doesn't matter what the game is if it's a triple A experience on some sort of system you can almost expect there to be microtransactions and Nintendo's had a lot of opportunities in the you know console space here with their games to take advantage of it thinking some of the power-ups and costumes in things like Mario Odyssey or things like Kirby and the Forgotten Land or how about the Zelda games think about how many outfits exist in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom and yeah they could have charged you piecemeal money to buy individual items even if you could obtain them in the game they still could have offered us the option to just buy them without finding them and Nintendo decided not to do that in fact Nintendo's really only participated in the microtransaction stuff primarily in their mobile games which yeah again that's a totally different space and it's a reminder that Nintendo will participate in some of these practices but only in areas where it's a widely accepted practice and while microtransactions are heavily featured in many triple A console games Nintendo doesn't really feel that that adds to the experience I mean imagine all the microtransactions they could charge in something like Splatoon 2 or Splatoon 3 they have games out there that are ripe to take advantage of their consumers and make a buck or an extra buck here or an extra buck there and Nintendo just doesn't do it again they're bucking the industry trends now as I said there's a trade-off for what they're doing we'll get to that in a moment but we have more things that we need to talk about what about season passes right everyone's looking for that next big mega free-to-play or super cheap game that could just sell you season passes you know what game Nintendo has could really abuse their consumers with season passes that they wanted heck every Splatfest as an example yeah we're talking about Splatoon 2 Splatoon 3 it is right Mario Kart 2 all these like massive multiplayer games Nintendo has are ripe for season passes and Nintendo could be charging us 20 bucks every few months if they wanted but they don't and that's a credit to Nintendo not wanting to not only not piece me all their games but find other ways to keep those communities active as an example they add content to Splatoon all the time but why do they add content to Splatoon to keep the community active the Splatfest the new maps the new weapons the new gear this keeps people consistently active without having to charge them more money it's just expected to be included in the price of the base game so when you think about that from a logical perspective yeah Nintendo is doing really really well with these Splatoon 2 Splatoon 3 games without season passes and keeping the player base engaged again it's an industry trend I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it but gosh everyone's trying to do it except for Nintendo so far anyways this could all change but this really really spells why we need Switch to be here and we need Nintendo's next generation to come and help lead the way in a different way now the other thing we need to talk about and again Nintendo isn't perfect with this uh buggy launches there are a number of games that come out in this industry that are super super buggy uh where you've even heard some things with spider-man 2 I personally haven't ran into much in spider-man 2 but we've been hearing a lot about buggy launches and we're not going to pretend that Nintendo doesn't have them they published Scarlet and Violet and we know how big of a mess that game was Xenoblade 2 had some performance issues way back in 2017 most of that went away with the DLC and obviously Xenoblade 3 doesn't have the same issues but yeah Nintendo has had some performance slash bug issues with some of their games but the funny thing is those are like the exceptions most of Nintendo's games come out and they run very very well and they're relatively bug free you almost have to try to trigger a glitch or a bug versus so many other games that just hey we'll release now patch later and Nintendo just doesn't really participate that much in that culture again they're not completely innocent but we all know a majority of Nintendo's games just come out and frankly they just kind of work now there's a few other trends as well we could talk about the idea that Nintendo tends to put most of their game if not their entire game actually on the cartridge so you don't have to download giant multiple gigabytes of information just to play that's obviously really really nice honestly I could go on and on and on about the many examples that Nintendo provides for how they do things differently and avoid some of the common issues I find in this gaming industry and that's why this is so important that it's being led by an actual platform holder and not just an individual developer because I think it really spreads a greater impact on the industry when one of the leaders of that industry from a platform perspective is you know really going forward with this and again this isn't me trying to tell you Nintendo's perfect we can talk about all the issues with NSO all the issues with their eShop and a lot of things Nintendo needs to improve especially with their online and some of their communication but when it comes to these specific aspects Nintendo should actually be praised for how they handle most of this stuff in general and it again it's just nice to see a platform holder really looking ahead now I told you that there was a cost for what Nintendo's doing there is a uh a caveat to all of this Nintendo can afford to not be pushing micro transactions not releasing buggy games and patching them later not doing season passes because Nintendo tends to not lower the price of their games for five plus years that's right uh MSRP for Breath of the Wild technically hasn't changed since launch although it's pretty hard to just straight up buy the game beyond digital at full price at this time it's since years the kingdom comes out it's pretty much 45 40 bucks and under at most retailers but the point is that we're all we're like seven years into the system so Nintendo the the caveat is they just don't lower the price of games and that is one of the major criticisms lodged at Nintendo all the time why the hell is Mario Kart 8 deluxe still 59 99 when it was originally a Wii U game why this why well because Nintendo isn't doing all these other things that other companies are doing to make money after a game launches they continue to make their money by continuing to sell games at MSRP prices and maintain somehow maintaining their evergreen status I even wonder sometimes if how Nintendo prices games helps them stay evergreen because when parents and people go to stores and they see a full price game they might still think that game is new I don't know that that's true of all consumers I'm speaking from a more general consumer sense that might not keep up with all the latest news but usually when you see things at full price for other systems it signifies it's a new game so I don't know I'm just kind of throwing that out there is maybe it helps a little bit it's not like I've done enough market analysis from a professional perspective to state that but again I do think the reason Nintendo doesn't feel like they need to microtransaction they need to do all this stuff they need to always shove DLC in our face with incomplete games is because Nintendo is going to keep releasing games at full price and keeping them there for many many years and it's just it's significantly different than what the rest of the industry does and that is the trade-off and I'm going to be honest I think I like that trade-off versus having games nickel and dime me every single day so I don't know maybe I'm a little crazy and you can call me Nintendo defense force I you know I think they should discount their games definitely much sooner than like six plus years later but I will say that if that's the cost for us not to have broken games at launch us not to have games of ripped out content put in the DLC us to not have microtransactions and season passes it should sign me right up man all right guys I'm Nathan and Robert Jans from Nintendo Prime let me know do you think about this stuff down in the comments below and I'll catch you in the next video


beautiful nerds and welcome back to the second city. We're here in Chicago at KubeCon, CloudNativeCon, and I am, Savannah Peterson, delighted to be joined by my co-host, Rob. Rob, how you feeling? Interferee in the day. I'm pumped, I'm stoked. This is great, this is great. This is great. Well stated, my man. Thank you. Well stated. I'm full of words though. We are just, we are getting the engines ready. Off to a fine start. I am delightfully surrounded by three rad dads today on the stage, which isn't always something I get to say and I'm super excited. Michael and Ian, thank you so much for joining us. We've got Red Hat and Dell on the stage. We've got cats and dogs and dinosaurs. Ian, what's the connection between all of this? Let's get the audience up to speed. I mean, so Red Hat and Dell, right? We've actually been partnering for a quarter century. I was going to say real long time. That's, it's a real long time. I learned that some of the people are kind of live off. Back in when Linux was just a little emote in Larry Ellison's eye, or something like that. How romantic. That's the most romantic I've ever heard Linux spoken of. Maybe the most romantic you've ever heard Larry Ellison spoken of. Also true, also true. You know, but as it's, the world has moved on, of course, Linux has made its place in the marketplace and Kubernetes and OpenShift is really powering the next generation of application deployments that we're seeing out there. And, you know, it made sense for Red Hat to partner with someone who can handle the hardware, the infrastructure layer, for that to create a true integrated experience for our customers, you know, and who better than Dell with whom we have that existing relationship. Yeah, I think it's been exciting because actually we helped launch Dell Apex Cloud Platform for Red Hat OpenShift a couple of weeks back where it's simplifying how you bring all of this together and, you know, get up and running and building containers on bare metal within seconds. And that's really awesome. It's a bold claim and exciting. I know, but it's getting up in, as we heard earlier today, you know, it's not always the easiest thing to get up and running with Kubernetes. It's a lot of moving parts. So it's getting all of that together. It takes time. And so what we've been able to do is working with Red Hat to design a process where we can automate so much of that for you so that we can get everything up and running, get you into an environment where you can start deploying applications. But then not just the deployment side of it, the ongoing maintenance of the application or the cluster itself, where we actually take the approach instead of making you use separate dedicated tooling, we project all of the infrastructure management directly into the OpenShift web console. So the same tool that you're using to manage the cluster and the applications on the cluster, you're now using that same tooling and processes to manage the infrastructure underneath it. You know, that ties into something, our last conversation here, 76% of developers saying they have too much cognitive load, getting to use this and not surprising, I don't think to any of us here, especially in this particular space, but having the ability to use the same tools or to have that same user experience at every layer really makes a difference. Is that one of the things that has you most excited this week? Oh, there's so many things about this week I'm excited about. Tell us more. Tell us some of those things. So one of the things that we just announced was our new Dell Validated design for the OpenShift AI on top of the Apex style platform for Red Hat OpenShift. And we have a sample application which is actually doing generative AI on top of this platform and showing customers how they can get up and running with these types of capabilities without having to go through the process of building and training their own model and all of the work that's involved in doing that. Being able to pull in open source projects, assemble them together in a way that makes sense and lifecycle all of that together in a single flow. Yeah, I think that's the exciting piece is it's bringing things like we just had Red Hat on a few minutes ago talking about backstage, for instance, how you have to develop a portal and how that really brings that to these types of solutions where people can get up and running fast, again, Dell handling the GPUs and all the CPUs and all of that stuff in there. It seems like that would be a great jumping off point for something like what we saw with the demo this morning that Priyanka was doing that kind of went a little sideways on the laptop, but you don't want it to go sideways. So bringing that into that hardware, there seemed to be a message that, hey, Kubernetes to the hardware is not an easy thing. It would seem like this is an easy way to get to that. And it makes it a lot more open, right? So you don't have the heavy lift of creating all this stuff yourself which makes AI a lot more accessible to organizations that don't have teams of data scientists or all of this compute power. It enables it on hardware that can easily run on premises, but then you can take those models and you can run those models anywhere, right? So you're not tied into a specific hyperscalers implementation of an AI service, right? So you've done this, you can train this on-prem where your data lives. So you don't have to move any of this proprietary data somewhere else, train it exactly where it lives, take that model, run it on-prem, run it at the edge, run it in a public cloud, you're not tied down to anything. It's getting these projects out of silos, really, and allowing people to collaborate in a way that wasn't possible before. Getting them out of silos and providing the tools to manage the full life cycle, if you will, of all the various artifacts. So an AI workload, just like any other workload, it needs, it's got a development, or in this case, maybe model development stage, but then it's got to be tested. It's got to be kept up to date. It's got to be versioned. At some point, it's got to be retired and replaced by the next thing. It's got to be distributed. OpenShift does that already for applications. So let's take the power that it has and apply it to this new space of artificial intelligence. How big of a shift is it to be able to accommodate that? I mean, we've got a lot of processing power. There's a lot of things going on if we're dealing with an LLM or training a big model. I think it depends on what layer you look at it. It's like, it's like any abstraction. Abstractions are great right up until they're not. Yeah. So it's at the high level, they're the same steps, but you tend to use different tools along the path. Yeah, and I think you have a little dinosaur says platform engineering on there. We'd be remiss if we didn't go down that path of the dinosaur here and kind of say, you know, this is a way to make platform engineering, which is just the new word for IT for the most part. Make it a lot easier. So how are you guys doing that and how do you look at platform engineering? Well, the whole concept behind the dinosaur is platform engineering is typically looked at as a little archaic and possibly in danger of extinction. And if the cats and dogs, the developers and the operations can get together, then platform engineering should be embracing that as well. I think by helping to enable these teams to work inside the same tools, to speak the same language, to collaborate better together, it makes that a lot easier. Yeah, I think that's the key is that platform engineering kind of is the glue that keeps everything going and it is that connective tissue back from the hardware into the container world, into the, you know, from the bare metal on up kind of thing to bring that. And are you seeing that customers are really looking just an easier way to get there? I mean, again, I think there's, again, once again, about 50% new users, new to Kubernetes coming to this show this year again. Are you seeing that as they come in, they want the easy button? Is that? Yes, absolutely. I mean, who doesn't want an easy button? I want an easy button. Everybody wants an easy button. I mean, you know you're just a masochist, I'm not exactly sure what's going on there. And we got to hear from Michael. What has you most excited this week? It's me most excited this week. I'm just, I'm truly excited about the potential that the Apex Cloud Platform has to accelerate, you know, and kind of democratize the access to Kubernetes slash OpenShift for often for smaller organizations for whom, you know, a multi-week services engagement potentially simply to set up a platform is not something that they can easily bite off on. If we can deploy that now in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks, that's a tremendous accelerator for them and it's going to open, you know, this whole new world that they really couldn't get into on-premises before. I think it also helps to bring the AI to the data as well. Because still, I think it's, depending on whose numbers you look at, it's between 50 and 80% of data is still on-prem that people are using for AI. I'm not saying all the AI, all the data in the world, but when you start to look at the usable data and where it is, is that a big piece of this as well because you go where the data is? Yep, data gravity, regulatory considerations in some cases, and then of course, economic drivers, all are things that are driving people to look at on-premises solutions. Yep. I mean, you see a lot of organizations, or a lot of countries that have started implementing laws about where data about their citizens has to reside. The hyperscalers do a great job of building massive data centers, but they can't just stand up a new region in every sovereign country, right? It's not feasible. So having that ability to bring those types of cloud services to where the data needs to live, a lot of customers have gone from on-prem to cloud, and a lot of customers have made the switch back to on-prem, and I think the reality for most customers is a hybrid in between, right? There are very few customers are going to be completely on-prem or completely in the cloud. Everybody, the vast majority, are going to be somewhere in that spectrum in between because that's the reality of business today, right? You have to be able to make things accessible to your users. You need to store data where your regulations and your laws say that has to live. So it's making that hybrid easier to achieve. Yeah, and I think what's neat, just to give you another little useless stat you can use some other time, five countries have actually outlawed Google Analytics for this exact reason, because that you can't have it. It's France, Netherlands, the Swedish... I'm rooting for you. I'll believe you no matter what you say right now. It's back, check it in the description, it's fine. Italy or something like that. But when you look at it, I think... Largely Western European nations. Yes, Western European nations have gone, and five of them at least in the EU have gone and outlawed Google Analytics. And I think to your point about multi-cloud and hybrid cloud, I think again, OpenShift is in the cloud already, many of the hyperscalers. And as part of this APEX, I know there's a unified storage layer as well that helps you with that data. So if you're going to move up to go and say burst and do big training things, there's an easy way to actually move that data for the data gravity aspect. There is, and if you've followed the industry and followed Red Hat, we've been talking about Open Hybrid Cloud for at least a decade, you know? And it's really cool to see it coming to fruition, kind of. Well, I do believe AI is definitely a catalyst there in making that happen. Yeah, that's a great point. Absolutely. It is fun to see. There's an interesting debate going on both of us internally. I think we're going to have Kelsey Hightower on tomorrow to actually debate this into your conversation. As computers, as chips are getting more powerful, are people going to be doing more on-prem and locally versus in the cloud because the machines can handle more? So it's powerful is one aspect of it, but the other is more efficient, right? So we're seeing the wattage required for CPU cycle. So a lot of those efficiencies are going to make that more accessible. So you don't need racks and racks and racks of servers anymore. You can use a much smaller data center footprint, more efficient power, less cooling. So a lot of those things make that type of compute a lot more accessible to organizations that don't need to go massive hyper scale. And more sustainable as we think about our future. Yeah, and then just running the workload, latency is often a consideration as well. And you can think of things like autonomous vehicles and stuff like that. So the ability now to run these AI workloads, not just in hyperscalers or data centers, but now pushing them all the way out to the edge and the far edge is going to happen. That's where I was going to go. It's also funny enough, the far edge is not necessarily in a cloud. And it's somebody's prem, couldn't be a field. It could be a power plant. All of these different things. Is that where you're also seeing this as being really applicable out to those so that we have smaller deployments out there and smaller form factors that are powerful still. To do inference at the edge, for instance. Yeah, and providing the common application platform that scales from the hyperscaler to the on-premise data center, to the branch office, to the vehicle, to the light pole potentially. Yeah, and I think that's it, is that it's everywhere. And I think as people are building these apps as microservices in containers, they want to take them where the data is. And especially, I think I was talking to a rail of a company that does, happens to be a Dell customer, by the way, that is using, taking photos of trains as they go by at upwards of 125 miles per hour. And they can't move all that data back because they actually are looking at the trains for defects as they're going speeding by. So it's a really an edge use case that's right there at the track where you have 8K video, a lot of 8K video. Well, you don't want to pull all that 8K video back across the wire. You want to do the inference at the edge there. Yep, yep.  It's like a Rubik's Cube. You got to get the colors all right. Why are you talking about Rubik's Cube? I don't know. I'm shocked. We're going to be the inspiration of that here on theCUBE at KubeCon. I'm trying to just get it as Kube as possible. I got Kube's tattooed on my body, folks. There's no one more Kube than me. I'm living the brand. Although these guys, I mean, I got to ask, are you always this well-branded? You guys are crushing it. I mean, absolutely smashing it. I'm a marketer by trade and run a marketing agency. And I love, when I see a team walk out like this, so proud. You really just make the marketing part in me, just beaming. It can be an afterthought sometimes. And of course, we're going to remember the cats and dogs and now the dinosaur. Do you guys have a favorite dinosaur? Oh my goodness. My four-year-old daughter was a Triceratops for Halloween. We've introduced her to the land before time movies. They still own my 35-year-old ovaries. So she was a three-horned. Oh my gosh. So you also mentioned, Michael, that your daughter reads to you about Kubernetes. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yes. She's actually teaching you. Last year's KubeCon in Detroit, I picked up a number of the kids' illustrated Kubernetes books and those have become some of her favorite. And just the other night, she said she wanted to read to me Admiral Basch's Island adventure. I hope you obliged. Absolutely. Gladly. Do you have a favorite CNCF character? Oh, I don't know. There's quite a few. The original, Fippy. Yeah, I'm a Fippy fan myself. I feel like Fippy's been the gateway. Fippy's the giraffe for those of you who may not know what we are talking about at this point on the Kube. I know they're all over there. Don't tell John May that. It's 2023 and we're still talking about PHP applications. I just want to point that out. Yeah. Absolutely. What about you, Ian? Last question. Do you have a favorite dinosaur? Do I have a favorite dinosaur? Stegosaurus. Well, like that. Okay, that's great. And actually one more in conclusion for you. What is more scary to you? The misuse of AI for bad or teaching your daughter how to drive? Oh, man. I'm coming out hard. I came to play this KubeCon, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you're all ready. I'm going to go with the driving lessons. You've got to go with the driving lessons. That is white knuckle, you know, all the time. I admire the honesty there. I really, I feel like I can trust you. And I'm hoping she'll never see this video. Yeah. Oh my gosh, that was an amazing response. Ian and Michael, thank you both so much for joining us and sharing about this partnership. I can't wait to talk dinosaurs, children whatever comes next in our AI future. Maybe a little Kubernetes, right? And maybe a little Kubernetes if we feel like in a KubeCon in Paris. I look forward to that. You know we were actually in the Paris of the Prairie they call Chicago, so we'll be there next time. This has been great. I'm now Rambling Rob. Thanks for tolerating me. You're the best. I love it. And most importantly, thank all of you for listening to this scintillating interview here from the Prairie, from Paris of the Prairie and CloudNativeCon. My name is Savannah Peterson and you are watching the Kube. The leading source for emerging tech news.


You can let go when the show, when the guilt, and the suffering be left Full of desires, needing this, needing that Wanting more, got to have, fighting for what's mine And building primes, tearing them down, climbing mountains, hitting them Round and round and round and round


It's my pleasure to welcome you to the Level Up Symposium presented by the Associated Designers of Canada with support from Toaster Lab's Mixed Reality Performance Atelier. I am a member of the board of directors of the ADC and really excited to be your host for this our final streamed event. To begin our session today, I would like to acknowledge that I am currently located on Treaty Six territory, the traditional lands of First Nations and Métis people. Edmonton, as it is known colonially, is and has been home to a diverse range of Indigenous nations and peoples, including the Cree, Blackfoot, Métis, Nakota Sioux, Iroquois, Dene, Ojibwe, Soto, Anishinaabe, Tsutsina, Inuit, and many others. Since time immemorial, this land has been a meeting place for this diverse range of Indigenous peoples who have enriched this place with their histories, languages, and cultures. And as a settler, I have benefited from Indigenous generosity, hospitality, and knowledge. And for that, I wish to express my deep gratitude. In this spirit of gratitude, I would also like to acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, our primary funder of this symposium as a whole, as well as our dedicated member volunteers and volunteers on the board of the ADC who have made this symposium possible. Thank you so much for your care and your time bringing this symposium to our attendees. We're equally grateful to our additional sponsors, IATSI, University of British Columbia, CITT Alberta Chapter, Theatre Alberta, Concordia University, Ryerson University, and York University. For your information, all symposium events will be recorded and are presented in a freely available archive. Check back in a few days after any of the events you've missed to see the recording at levelup.designers.ca. And in a few days time, the full compendium of all our events will be available online. And as soon as possible after that, the final summation events of some of our design experiments will also become available. Thank you so much for joining us today. You're watching this Level Up livestream either on the Level Up website, levelup.designers.ca, on HowlRound at howlround.com through our partners at Toaster Lab, or on the respective Facebook pages for the ADC or Toaster Lab. Regardless of your viewing platform embedded on the same page as the video is the chat function, it's right here in the top right hand corner of your screen. There's an icon there. Questions can be asked by clicking on this icon and typing them into the chat at any time, and they'll be read out during the session as we go through. If you have any technical difficulties at any point in the session, please send an email to levelupatdesigners.ca for immediate support. This event can be enjoyed through auditory or visual access, or a combination of both. I will read aloud all questions or comments we address from the chat, and this information will also appear visually at the bottom of your stream. Visual access is also supported with live captioning for myself and the other presenters right here at the bottom of my stream window. If you require technical assistance to support your access, please email levelupatdesigners.ca for immediate support, or provide much-valued feedback following our events. Thank you. If you enjoy this session and or any of the other sessions you've attended throughout this symposium, I hope you'll consider donating any amount to the Associated Designers of Canada. This helps support our National Arts Service Organization, achieve its goals in the areas of advocacy, mentorship, and industry promotion. Donation links are available in screen on all viewing platforms, and will also be posted up in the chat. Thank you so much for your patience with our announcements. This is the last time I will do these announcements, and this is our last formal event. Tonight we have a social event happening, which we call the Drinks with Designers. This is a nationwide event that's been ongoing in real life for the last number of years, and during the course of this symposium we've been doing them as virtual meetups online for everyone's safety. So please consider registering and attending that event this evening. That will be the final event, but this is our last of the sort of formal streamed presentations, which we'll be making as part of the symposium. So we are calling it our closing ceremonies, and it will be featuring specifically the curatorial team of the Level Up Symposium, which includes Emily, Susanna, Andrew, Scriber, and myself. So welcome Emily and Andrew from Behind the Scenes. Andrew, you know who's been a host at many of our events, but Emily may be seeing, for the first time, she presented a number, I should say they presented, a number of wonderful projects of their own and workshops, but this is the first time in a stream that we're seeing Emily, both as technician behind the scenes and as curator in front of the scenes. So thank you both, Andrew and Emily, for joining me. I really appreciate it. Welcome. Yeah, it's great to be here. Though I just got an email from someone that one of our URLs was not quite right, so I'm actually dealing with that right now. Okay, great. So Emily's gonna check out and be our tech support. Thank you. And Andrew and I will get things started. So we prepared a small slideshow where we're going to share with you some of the things that brought us to this symposium in the first place, why it came to be, and also a little bit of the outcomes as we've been able to record them so far. We're going to continue to learn about the outcomes as the symposium wraps up and we get feedback from the community members who attended and the artists who participated, but to date we've had some success and we're happy to be able to share it with everyone who's joined us today. Andrew, did you want to share a few words about what drew you to level up and what eventually became level up, I guess we should say, and what got you interested in participating way back in the grant writing days last summer in the June of 2020? So long ago, so long ago. A whole lifetime. I mean, I was always just very excited about the idea of bringing together like-minded and non-like-minded people to talk about something that I've been excited about for eight years, nine years, however long I've been doing digital creation, technical video design, and all this fun theater stuff. I was very happy to, I was very excited about the idea of just bringing voices in from all around the world, around the world, but around Canada and when we started talking about bringing people from different countries, I was like, wow, let's make this an international event, let's try to bring in as many ideas as we can. And yeah, and I think the thing that I was most excited about right from the get go was our experiments and this idea of just giving people the space and the time and a little bit of money in order to just be here and be present for a number of hours with other creators that they've probably never worked with and just to see what they can actually accomplish in that amount of time. And I think that that was always my touchstone as far as excitement for the whole project, but and then in once we got the money and we started planning the events together and I started to meet some of the people that would be presenting, that those ideas, every conversation that I had was just super exciting and every person that I spoke to had so many different ideas about how they could help this symposium be greater, what they could bring to the table, what they were working on, it was all just very exciting. So I think, yeah, I think just the people and the experiments and the ideas has always been what it's always been about for me. So absolutely. How about you, Emily, what did you want to share about your experience as a comparator? I mean, like for me, I've always been very interested in education and the ability to to share knowledge and make things open source, make them freely available. And it's one of the things I think as a team, we were really passionate about like not putting a paywall in front of any of our events, keeping the archive up. And something that the community has really responded well to in terms of being able to go back and access material if they weren't able to make it the first time, because a lot of times with these symposiums or these events, you know, you see it come up on your feed and you're like, Oh, that seems interesting. Maybe I'll get to that in the show comes up or life gets in the way, whatever. So being able to go back and and look at all these all these items and still use all these resources, I think was really important and exciting, creating a place where also through the website where you can just go to like one URL and then you have access to all these different talks by so many fantastic people. I'm very, very proud of the lineup that that we were able to achieve, which is really just, you know, a statement of the generosity of the artists that we approached. Everyone was always like, Yeah, I'd love to do it. Like, here's, here's an option. Here's a topic. Here's a panel. Because like, when we started out planning, we had, you know, panels that we wanted to do and sort of this rough outline. And then as we would talk, like, we were the three of us were talking almost every day. And, you know, we'd get on zoom at the end of the day and be like, Okay, so I know we approached this person about this panel, but they also pitched like these other three ideas. So like, do we have space for these other three ideas? And we'd move around the schedule. Because everyone has come with such a wealth of knowledge and such great options that that's been very exciting. It's been really thrilling. And I know for my part, that in the beginning of the pandemic, I was hearing, you know, I was lucky enough to be working with Michelle Ramsey on a number of workshops series that ADC was presenting. And that was before we had written grants before we had received any funding from Canada Council and was purely on the basis of volunteering. So other designers volunteering their time to share a workshop to help other designers get up on their feet, have something to do at home, keep our minds sharp, keep our creativity flowing. And that real spirit of generosity of the, you know, ADC members supporting one another is what really sparked for me this idea that we could do a bigger project like this and that there was interest both on the attendee side and the presenter side to share in this time and that people were really looking for that kind of connection. And so I began collaborating with a lot of people on the board of the ADC as well as the grant officers at the Canada Council about how we could go about creating something that would have a real impact. And for me, it kept coming back to this idea of many people I was talking to, thinking, you know, having this attitude that, well, everything I know or everything I have access to isn't useful, that I don't know how to use this digital stuff that digital isn't for me, that we don't do this in theater, this is not what theater is about. And I kept thinking, every time I heard someone say something like that, I thought, I don't think that's true. You know, I've been working in the digital sort of adjacent or kind of touching my toe into digital stuff throughout my whole career the last 10 years and I've worked with incredibly wise and wonderful artists who dedicated their themselves for, you know, 10, 20, 30 years to advancement of tools and integrating things from a dramaturgical perspective and a technological perspective into live work. And every time I heard someone say they felt like they didn't have access to that, or that it didn't even exist in their mind, I really felt like a desire to push against that and say, listen, we have wise people in our community with tons of access, tons of information, tons of tools and tons of wisdom. And I want to bring those people together with, you know, with those who maybe lost their confidence a little bit in how live theater could be presented in this current situation.  And then many of the presenters who were able to then recruit were people who had been mentors to me or whose work I had admired or who I had the chance to talk to either at Pro Quadrennial or at the BAMF Center when they've done workshops in the past. So wanting to bring together almost like a cheat sheet or a, you know, a hack so that people could kind of really quickly get access to that pool of knowledge. And also to the community, because I know that I was really shocked and surprised when I began working in the digital milieu, how much support there was out there. And it didn't look like the support I was used to.  But all of a sudden, and through these weird forums I never had any experience with before, through emailing strangers and through all these kind of strange methods online, I was able to get access to a huge community. And I felt embraced by that community to really explore my creativity. And so I wanted to bring that spirit of mutual support and creativity that the digital forum provides to people who have access to it and sort of open that door, throw the door open for theater artists who maybe don't feel like they have access to that or didn't know it existed. And so I think that that, you know, now you've heard a little bit from all three of us about the values we brought into this symposium. And maybe we can go ahead and share that slideshow and we'll just go through a little bit of the thank yous that are owed and very well-deserved and some of the outcomes we've achieved. Yeah. And just before we do, I just wanted to throw in, in addition to ToasterLab, HowlRound and the whole ethos in which they promote events and create work. And in the interest of something that we've been saying a lot through the symposium, which is you can only tell if things are live, either via interactivity or failure, my cat has just budged my green screen. So as we throw this up, I'm going to disappear for a second fix that. Yep, kiss. All right. So here we are at our level up 2021 closing ceremonies. It's been a huge marathon. Emily and Andrew have been incredible. Their dedication, amount of care and attention they've given to this symposium since, in November when we sort of launched ourselves in earnest is absolutely incredible. So thank you to both of them. And thank you here to the valued teams listed here who made this symposium possible. I listed there my co-curators, but especially ToasterLab's Mixed Reality Performance Atelier with support from Logan Crack now. We're really grateful to them and they're going to have a big influence. They've had a huge influence informing the symposium and supporting the grant from the very beginning. And they've also been going to be a big support in our archive work as well. We've had incredible amount of response, both from the public, around the world, across Canada. And that is in large part due to our ADC social media committee. Megan Koshka, Scott Penner and Cassenia Brode-Million have really gone above and beyond. They worked really hard to get the symposium out there and make sure that no stone was unturned, make sure that anyone who felt like they wanted access to this information knew that it was available to them for free. So a big thank you to the ADC social media committee and the ADC symposium development team, which includes our president of the ADC, Ken McKenzie, Michelle Cutler, Ian Garrett and Simon Rosseter. These board members and executive board members were really essential in connecting with people who eventually became sponsors in getting the word out to organizations and individuals across the country who would benefit. And in also just giving me a lot of ideas and support in the beginning around the grant ready to make this whole thing happen from the very start. So thank you to them. And finally, we couldn't do it without our technical team, Patrick Peachy Higdon and Emily Susana behind the scenes on nearly every event. And of course, Andrew Scriber taking over when Emily or Patrick needed a little bit of a moment to breathe. We did end up having what we've been calling our symposium marathon. The original proposal for this event way back a thousand years ago was to do one week of events, but we thought to ourselves, you know, screen time is a lot for people and it's challenging to do, you know, 10 or 12 events in a single week. We don't want people to be tired. Let's spread it out over more time. So we decided, okay, we'll do 12 events over four weeks. And in the end, you'll see when we get to the symposium in numbers that we did 40 events. So this really has been a marathon and our technical team has offered a lot of themselves to make that possible. So thank you so much to all the teams listed here. Yeah, I just have to I just have to jump in because because the not knowing, you know, that thing of where you're building a you're working on a project and you don't know that it's real until there's like something one particular event that actually happens that it didn't feel real for me until I think in our first week or right right before our first week, I got a targeted ad for our own event on Facebook. And then I was like, Oh, right. I didn't know that we were gonna. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Now it's happening. Yeah, it's happening. Yeah. Sign up.  It really made us feel like what we were doing that there was an audience out there who wanted it. And so honestly, we do have a big thank you to our attendees at the very end, but I can't help but thank them now before we get going too much.  There's 15 people now. And obviously, over time that snowballed and we couldn't have a micro celebration for every every ticket. But particularly at the start, it was it was very exciting. Yes, I believe Sean Kerwin, who's a Canadian designer and educator, deserves a shout out in that respect. Yes, a lot of early, a lot of early tickets. Yeah. Thank you also to the associate designers, board of directors and staff. The board of directors at the ADC are all volunteers, and they devote a huge amount of their time and energy to the support of their peers and their community. And this year, there was a major landmark goal met in the ADC becoming a local ADC 659 with the IATC. And so the amount that's happened in the past year to support our community and the amount of work the board of directors have been doing. Michelle Ramsey, I also have to mention again, who was part of the very initial ideas before we ever even began thinking of this as a symposium and her spirit and, you know, creativity and and tenacity around supporting fellow designers really informed my work on this piece. So anyways, here we have our executive, Ken, Kim and Simon, who nothing happens at the ADC without their hard work. And they put a lot of themselves into everything that goes on there. And of course, we could not have done this without Louise and Gail. Gail was really instrumental in us creating a successful grant. And Louise Plunkett is making sure that all the artists get get their invoices paid and that all of the questions and comments that come into the office are dealt with. So thank you so much to the executive and to the staff and to all my fellow directors on the on the board who sat through listening to me in board meetings and really supported this project and were really, really caring in finding funders, giving up their time in meetings and making this happen. So thank you, a big thank you to all of them. Great job team. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. And in that note, the last time you're going to get this message from me in the chat, please donate money to the ADC. The Canada helps is now in the chat. Please. Absolutely. If you've, if you're, if it's available to you and you enjoyed this symposium, I hope you'll take a few moments to make a donation to the ADC. The creators and presenters of this event without it, without them, we would not have had this platform. We also here, I would like to formally acknowledge again, I know I did it in the preamble, but it goes without saying that this symposium could not have happened without access to the Digital Strategy Fund, which was granted to us by the Canada Council for the Arts. They are our primary funder and we're so grateful to them for seeing, not only for seeing the potential of this event, but also for the grant officers who helped us work through how to make it stronger and how to create something that would have a more lasting impact. The concept of the archive, for instance, came from the Digital Strategy Fund requirements, and it's turning out to be one of the most valuable and important things about this symposium. And so it's, it's really true that the Canada Council not only funded, but also helped shape some of the really quality aspects of our symposium. So thank you to them. And of course, our additional sponsors, again, a shout out to Ken, Michelle Cutler, and Simon Rosseter, who helps, and Ian Garrett, of course, who helps support the relationships with our, with our sponsors, but we definitely could not have expanded this symposium to include the number of events and the number of artists that we were able to, without the support of these additional fundraising. In fact, this symposium may not have been able to move forward at all without the generous support of all our funders here. So I'll mention them again. We have Ryerson University, Theodore Alberta, IACI, CITT Alberta Section, New York University, Concordia University, and of course, Toaster Lab. So without their support and care for our community, symposium would not have been possible. Thank you. Yeah, so here I've listed out a couple of these were the sort of some foundational goals, which inspired the level up symposium. And we have talked about a few of these, but we'll talk a little bit briefly about a few more of these. The concept of digital literacy and capacity for digital production is another one that comes from the digital strategy funded by the Canada Council. But it really spoke to a primary value we had of being able to disseminate the wisdom from existing digital creators to theater creators who are hoping to move into this platform and develop a relationship with digital production that they may not have had before. And so I think in a time of COVID, this creates a really beautiful bridge between people who have personal natural curiosity about these things and also artists who may come to it as you know, from a place of necessity. And I think that what we hoped was that the symposium could be a meeting ground for the sort of two niches within our community to meet and sort of cross contaminate in a way and hopefully build new relationships and new connections, which would foster new work. Yeah, Emily or Andrew, I want to toss to you. Is there anything on this list you wanted to speak more to? Yeah, just actually kind of riffing off of what you just said. I think one of the really great things that started to happen early on in the symposium was artists coming to us and saying like I never would have had the opportunity to meet X artists or like I just been looking up someone's website and then I was in a roundtable with them. And it brought a lot of joy to all of us that these connections were being formed. People were talking who might not have had the chance to otherwise. And part of why we included the roundtables at all was to create those connections between the community in that sense when you go to a conference in person of being able to talk after the main presentation and those meetings that we've all been longing to have. And yeah, that really speaks to like the third point on this, which is actively bringing together collaborators from across the country and across the world, you know, like earlier today, we had folks in the States, we had Mark Kniglio from Vienna, we had people all across Canada, all talking together. So a very international audience and slate of presenters. And the concept of, you know, that was safe and without risk. And I think that really shines in our experiments. Because the whole point of those was, you know, trying and not being afraid of failure. And I think that every group of experimentes, that makes it sound like we're experimenting on them, we weren't. Every group of experimenters really embraced that idea of trying something out of your comfort zone, trying something new just for the sake of trying and learning. And I think that's really great. Yeah, the emphasis here being on creative risk and not personal risk.  If you have to go to the doctor, if you're caring for a loved one, we are put in a position now where at times we do have to put ourselves at risk or we have to assess personal risk with each and every project that we come to now in a way that we didn't have to, you know, a year ago. So being able to create a safe space, not only for artists to come together without COVID risks, but also a safe space where people could share what they've been learning in an environment where we're really open to learning. We're open to being a beginner again. We're really all trying to come with beginner's mind and learn from those who know more, but not beat ourselves up for being at square one or square three when someone else is at square 56. So, you know, trying to create a space where it's okay even though we're experts in our field in one way, we're allowed to be beginners in this other area and making room for that as artists, which is so foundational to what the symposium is here for. Yeah, I think that that itself manifested itself very well in the round table discussions that we had and that they all had large groups of people getting together, talking about things that they not necessarily didn't have any experience with, but they just had thoughts about it. And I think that that was really wonderful for community building and for just like feeling safe in and of yourself that you can start talking about something that you maybe I just have questions about. And then you can learn from other people who have questions about that. And then being able to talk in small groups and as a safe space, but then come back to a larger group where everyone can share amongst their groups, right? I think that that was really present in a lot of what we heard during those round tables. So that was really great. And the generosity in those spaces was just unbelievable. Like it just was so heartwarming to see other artists coming together and really embodying that. We had hopes for it, but of course it couldn't have happened that way with the artists themselves weren't willing to be open and be generous. So thank you so much to each and every person who logged on for those round tables and live design experiments and for your generosity with one another. Sorry Emily, I go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say speaking of questions, if anyone in the audience who's watching, we talked a little bit about this a lot like the feeling of speaking to the void because we can't see any of you, but if anyone out there has any questions, please put them in the chat. Whether it's about like us as artists or the symposium or our goals for the future, we'd be happy to answer anything. Absolutely. Speaking of outcomes and things that people had, these are some outcomes that attendees have shared with us or that we have felt through our own experiences within the symposium. We really felt that community building was a primary goal as we've already said and I did feel that it happened even for myself. I had an opportunity to speak with some artists who I've a long time been an admirer of or even artists who I worked with but haven't talked to or worked with in five or six years getting to reconnect. So being able to draw, redraw those existing lines between myself and other artists or to create new ones was really exciting and I did feel for myself as an artist an expansion of my not only my network of people I have a personal relationship with but also my network of fellow artists who are going through their own growth curve. So that was a really important one for me. Andrea, how about you? Yeah, no, that was even as curators that there were names that came up in conversation early on when people were saying when we talked to certain artists that we were going to be bringing on who said oh well maybe you should talk to this person the certain individuals that I'd never met or heard of before and so those connections right for even for us were quite interesting and unexpected. Yeah, big shout out here to Rachel Forbes and Joanna Yu on the board of directors who also had a couple meetings with us and spoke to us about some different artists in their communities and just in their own personal networks that we would not have known sort of across generations and across the country and around the world so we've been really lucky to get to interface directly with some really exciting artists. We also heard from a number of artists that through roundtables or through other processes within the symposium that artist connections have been formed which have actually resulted in some grant writing has been taking place some future projects have been happening some jam sessions um so just as a result of having attended a session they were able to you know make a connection with someone come light an artistic spark and get a little fire going so I'm really hoping that we'll see in the months and years to come that there's you know some some little artistic outputs will or even big ones will hopefully come from the the connections that were that artists were able to form themselves within this context. Yeah we've also heard from a few people um both when you know folks ask about where the when the archives available for individual events or where can they access things but people have said that they're going to refer to some of these talks for like years to come and that's uh really rewarding to hear that the things that are being discussed will be points of reference uh going forward in the future. Yeah and then from an ADC perspective this has been a venue by which we can really express our care and dedication to our extended family of theater makers so um I think the designers within our membership and non-member designers as well have been feeling you know our care and our stewardship throughout the COVID-19 crisis they've been able to see updates on our advocacy the work we've been doing with IACC but for the producers out there the playwrights the directors the other people who are within our theater community across the country um that this symposium has been a way for us to expand the borders beyond just the designers who are our members or even the non-member designers who are trying to support um with our advocacy work but to really promote ways in which visual dramaturgy or um or sound design you know that these things can contribute to a new performance modality and that we want the to be in conversation with all the members of our theater community so this has been a really important platform I know me and Ken and Simon have had a number of conversations about how much it means to us to be able to have a place to share um you know share space and to create an open space where people from different backgrounds within the theater community can all be in dialogue with one another um so that's been a really exciting way that ADC has been able to meet some of our goals um through this symposium and yeah I was just gonna say not even just the theater community right like we've had people coming from different artistic milieus which has been you know really exciting both in terms of perspectives that they bring and the fact that the amount of reach that uh this has had you know in part again to our really fabulous social media team absolutely speaking of reach let's talk about the symposium in numbers uh we won't go through every single one of these but maybe each of us can pick our favorite one uh we'll leave them up here while we're talking so everyone can get a chance to take a look at them um uh are you sure you don't want to just read them I mean we could go through them okay so um zero is the cost of attending any and all events at the symposium it will also be the cost of accessing the archive it's free and that is because of the support we got from Canada Council and our and our funders uh additional funders so thank you so much um that brings me to number one what one grant is uh what we received from the digital strategy fund which empowered the ABC to present this symposium so thank you to the Canada Council Digital Strategy Fund two collaborative organizations uh associated designers of Canada is obviously the progenitor of and presenter of this symposium but also toaster labs mixed reality performance atelier was critical in the development of this project and its success moving forward anybody else want to pick it up there three three co-curators that's us that's us we're all here we have four weeks of events even though we originally intended only to have one here we are four weeks later yeah yeah and uh five workshop instructors we have skipping a number seven valued sponsors enabling us to support and expand the symposium and ensure free access for all eight live digital presentations promoted through level up website listings and nine weeks to prepare the symposium from the receipt of funding that's a nerve-wracking number that's a very small number in the end but thank you ten was the number of hardworking member volunteers promoting and coordinating the symposium behind the scenes so aside from the three of us and toaster lab beyond that we had ten additional people devoting a huge amount of their care and expertise and skill and time so thank you so much to our working volunteers uh 11 is the number of works we were able to put up in our digital art gallery if you haven't checked out the digital art gallery yet please do every time i look at it it just fills me with inspiration and excitement and there's such a wide range of work in there which i think really speaks to the heart of what symposium is and 14 was the number of attendees at our most intimate event so at our smallest of most intimate event we had just a 14 14 people and that was i believe for one of our round tables and it was great it was a wonderful conversation so i think i i included that in our symposium and numbers list because it's important to note that when we're thinking about the symposium and numbers it's not always the big numbers that are the most valuable um sometimes those small intimate events uh can have a huge influence on people and their their artistic lives and their careers so we had 23 days packed with programming originally 20 and then we just kept adding more because we wanted to do more things if we weren't already doing enough uh 40 events including workshops round tables project presentations panel discussions and live design experiments presented live during the past four weeks and available for free permanently via the level up archive uh 52 sorry Emily you go ahead it's okay uh 52 on average attendance with 52 percent higher than initial registration numbers so for uh mainly our streams uh we can take a look at how many unique visitors we have and how many people signed up beforehand so lots of people tuning in 55 artists presenters sharing their valuable time wisdom and generosity with our community and beyond and then 397 that is the number of attendees uh on our most highly attended uh single event which is one of our streams and we had 638 unique individual people who signed up for symposium events from across the world um that number really surprised us and we were really grateful and excited to see that the reach uh was so large uh for context the ADC uh has estimated that number of full time theater designers in the country's covers between three and 400 um so the fact that we had 638 really speaks to that broader community about reach that we're really reaching not only people throughout the theater community but as Emily said from other sectors as well so we're really grateful for that sorry I I momentarily got distracted which I want to do it we're at 3568 free tickets were issued for symposium events so these are all of our individual signups that number is also pretty mind-blowing um entry you can take the last one uh 33,000 33,000 dollars is the amount that we invested in a self-employed artist who contributed to the symposium so that's pretty amazing especially especially now when when a lot of people are not working so which is like pretty much primarily our grant and our sponsors so thank you again to the Canada Council and all of our sponsors because we were basically to take able to take the money from them and give it uh directly to artists into the hands of artists uh yeah yeah the so the reason I got distracted and I want to I want to say this because this is this because it was a number that I forgot that we should have put into this but the our level-up website uh has had uh 7.1000 unique views so unique people to the website so I think that that's uh that is the reach of people coming to uh check us out amazing um and I know already just from speaking anecdotally with my colleagues that many many people uh who signed up for events or or found out events too late have already accessed the archive and we do have some analytics on the fact that the archive is already getting a lot of traffic so for all you artists joining us today who are part of this symposium please know that the work that you graciously allowed us to make available on the archive um that your intellectual property and your ideas and and spirit that you're allowing to be part of our permanent archive that that is already being accessed by others um and people are already receiving benefit from it so that's really meaningful for all of us um speaking of the archive um all events will be available for free in the symposium archive enabling you to catch anything you've missed or to share anything you find valuable or relevant with future students collaborators producers and fellow artists I already know there's a number of events here in this symposium that I'm going to be um making use of whenever I'm teaching in the future around the ideas of um visual and auditory dramaturgy um and uh an important to note for anyone who was at the round table that just like I told you on those days and those events that round table events um those private conversations in the breakout rooms will never be published um it will be summarized to protect the private nature of those conversations but also will enable um future inquiring minds to benefit from the valuable conclusions or questions um happened upon by the participants so we'll have brief summaries um of the work that uh or the conclusions that were drawn through those conversations and many times those conclusions were simply we don't know the answer but we think this is the question um and knowing what the question is can be as valuable as knowing what the answer is so yeah and if I could just add on for a sec something that we're going to be adding related to the archive that we haven't quite gotten to yet but hopefully in the next day or so is a tools section we've been getting a lot of emails of people asking what we use for this or what was mentioned and that so we're going to be adding a section to the website where we list all the tools that we as a team have used in the symposium but also as uh conversations have happened and presenters have recommended using different pieces of software that's all going to be up there um so that hopefully people are able to uh continue their their learning and uh not have to try remember what uh what software was mentioned at one talk a few weeks ago yeah absolutely the the amount of dissemination of information just about tools has been incredible and we've had a lot of questions about that in our chat and if you have questions about tools you missed or questions you have about um the tech side of things please pop them in the chat now Emily can also um address them and anything we hear from anyone attending helps us to be informed about what we should include in that archive moving forward and finally thank you so much to all of our artists um we have I had to have three pages to get all these um artists on here um our collaborator our technical collaborator Patrick created this slideshow for us um so we'll just pan through I'm just going back again so these are all the artists who made this symposium possible and without their contribution um we you would have just been staring at our little talking heads which would have been very no one wants for four weeks just us these are all all amazing amazing creators all very very unique very wonderful people and so uh yeah thank you everyone that was a part of this you were all really great yeah we were joking a few times throughout the symposium that it it felt almost selfish to get this amount of amazing people together because even just being I've I've been on almost every stream uh behind the scenes making things happen so I've watched all of our presentations and it just felt like did we just program all these people so I could have a great time for a month watching this obviously not but it uh it's really it cannot be overstated how much the team of of artists that that came out uh really really worth to create an amazing symposium so I think that's kind of the end of our formal presentation uh if you have any questions please pop them in the chat if you have any comments that's good too it's all fair game um we we do have a question from Conner which is when will the next symposium occur uh thank you for that question Conner does anyone else want to take it away um not right now uh yeah but I mean I we've been taught it's one of those things where we kind of go back and forth in terms of like sometimes it's exhausting to think about uh just immediately getting back into the planning stage but also we do have a document on our drive label things to know for next time so I can't give you a date of when that is but I think that we're all at least interested because otherwise we wouldn't be bothering to log what we think we should do differently next time yeah let's do it next year let's go perfect let's do it um the ADC as part of our national art service organization mandate we do have a mandate to promote the um the art form of design for the theater and for live performance and so um the foundational values that have driven the symposium do come from a mandate that's within the ADC's naso uh designation and is very important to us and and I know that many people on the board have um powerful and meaningful ideas about how we can move forward from the momentum created here with this symposium so um this is definitely not uh the first and last we know that we we want to take the energy and the um foundational tools that Emily and Andrew have provided us with in this initial symposium and as well as Ian Garrett and his knowledge from the toaster lab symposia that they've been running and that this is just a sort of a first a first output but we're hoping that we can continue to promote the art of digital dramaturgy and design the art of dramaturgy of visual and auditory and all other forms of design within live performance in many different contexts and this is uh you know meaningful and foundational to the ADC's naso mandate and that we are planning to continue this work into the future um so this has been a bit of a proof of concept um you know is there a is there a an appetite for this do people want this kind of connection is this uh telepresence meaningful for people and is this a way in which we can truly um expand our our uh reach as a as an association and I think it's been an overwhelming yes has been the answer to all those questions that each and every person who's logged on has been telling the ADC this is meaningful for me this is helping me in some capacity and that allows us to make decisions moving forward about how we can support our community our direct community of members um you know the next circle of non-member designers and then the larger circle of live performance creators around the world and across the country so thank you Connor yeah I think um I I'd wanted I'd wanted to mention earlier but I never did this uh again it's a super selfish personal thing besides how how important that is but allowed but uh as as a as a designer and a creator that all the the ideas that have come out of the symposium uh I think uh Emily and I work together a lot so we we were we're working on another show and um had a meeting last week and I think during that meeting there was probably like four or five ideas that came out of that particular meeting that I was like yeah we like pulled up the archive and we're showing symposium yeah so there were just all all like ideas that were like hey all of these creators and these artists that we've brought together your ideas are all really great now we're going to steal them so thank you for putting them out there and sharing them with us because you're they're all great and that's what we're all here to do right so thank you this has been this has been really lovely so yeah that being said of course we have a a true um care in regard for the intellectual property of everything that goes into the archive and it's really foundational to us that all artists feel supported but yes I mean what you're saying is right and the best idea that was a joke it was well our name is a joke I loved it um but just to say that yeah no but I think it's true that the conversation that we have and that also that what can be you know someone's idea about their project or you know we hear someone present about a particular thing they've done in the past and makes us curious it makes us excited as artists it makes us think wow I never would have looked into that okay I'm gonna do my own research or oh you know today the conversation about AI got me thinking you know I these are some areas of this symposium that I myself have resisted for years and thought that's not that interesting to me and suddenly it's presented by you know a peer a member of my community or someone I already admire for another reason suddenly it gets me thinking maybe I was wrong about that maybe I should revisit that idea and you know do some research and and go down a little bit of a different rabbit hole than I would normally um find myself looking into so you know yes this is really exciting for all yeah like so so inspiring like I won that one presentation that really stuck out in in my mind was the um uh the I am Alan Turing demo because I had been working on a project for a while where I was like uh I kind of want to like run a script for like a machine learning algorithm and see where it goes but like I don't know I don't really have the time to like get into any of those um like GPT2 or anything and then watching watching that demo I was like no I have time this will just carve a little a little chunk um because it you know it's it's something where you know you see someone present using this really innovative tool or creating work that uh really does work um so it's quite inspirational um and you know the things that people say like the comments that people have been adding to the chat as participants have been uh watching you know people have been posting their own links to to shows and pieces and like just I think that there's just been so much learning and sharing and it's great it really encourages me to think about that idea of simultaneous invention that we know from history you know oh there's different scientists who didn't have access to each other who were discovering the same thing um I felt like the symposium is given a lot of us opportunities windows into one another's um little code realities through these little green lights that we stare at in our computers and and reminded us that we're not the only one with this curiosity or we're not the only one exploring this and giving us access to some energy that we might have been you know maybe our maybe we were missing or or we were flagging a bit in our stamina um so I hope that those paying attention out there and watching and tuning in are feeling that positive energy and feeling that um sense of community and being in communion with us um because we know I know that for all three of us we've after every session just been filled with positive energy and joy so I hope that some of that joy is um is reaching all of you too yeah that we're not just joy vampires yeah yeah we didn't make this for ourselves we made this for all of you it's not for us definitely definitely uh great do we have any more questions I know we just have a few more minutes before our hour is up and and I'm sure everyone's tired of us droning on yeah we don't have any we don't have any more questions but it does take a hot moment after we ask before as as we all know it's about 30 seconds to get to the get to the peoples um so I'm just going to add super quick for drinks with designers tonight if you are like where is my link it is coming it will be to you soon um and uh I know normally we get the links out the night before but we needed a bit more time to work on this one which also means that if you have not yet registered but have decided you want to attend that you should do so right away um and then you'll be able to get that link as soon as it goes out yeah you can really register register right up until the event um awesome so I hope everyone who's watching uh considers coming out and chatting with us we'd love to hear your feedback and also I hope that you'll take a moment after the symposium ends even if it's a few weeks from now or months from now or any time to send us an email let us know how the symposium has supported you or things we did wrong we're really interested in what we didn't get right this time we want to make an effort to to improve and as I said we're planning to do more events like this and support our community in more ways um with telepresence and other kinds of online platforms so if there was a you know particularly something that influenced your access to these events or influenced your feeling of safe in these spaces um that we're really uh asked with humbleness that you would share them with us because we're really interested and open to hearing any feedback from you um you can email us at levelup at designers.ca or if you prefer to contact someone else on the board as opposed to speaking directly with us as co-curators please feel free to check out the designers.ca which is our ADC website and you can contact uh anyone on the ADC board um with your thoughts or feedback positive or negative um we're really interested to hear from you about how we can make this better in the future and also about what topics you may want to see covered in future symposia if there's something that you feel really motivated by and really want to see the conversation happening on a broader scale then please share that with us and we can use that in conversation um broader conversations um at the organizational level to consider what we should do next. Yeah yeah I think that's definitely an idea that came up many times and I feel like I a lot of times when I was having the uh doing the panel discussions or the presentations that I would always ask like what is something that you've done that uh did not work and you will never do again and uh that always got really great answers from whoever it was so I think that we as curators in this team are very open to uh criticism we want the notes just give us notes and we can take a note we're really good at taking notes so just give them more of those and we'll uh we'll learn and do it better next time. Absolutely I think that about wraps it up for us Andrew did you want to take it away? Yeah last time I get to uh do this um thank you everybody for coming out this has been the level up symposium we only have our one last event tonight as you've just heard repeatedly uh so that's at 9 p.m eastern or 6 p.m pacific so thank you so much drinks with designers come on out and uh of course donate to the ADC if you can on any of our viewing platforms on the designers.ca website or on CanadaHelps.org thank you so much you're all lovely uh take care see you around


It's such a fantastic institution, and it's so important to this city, to Merseyside, to the fabric of the community that's part of it. There are a few clubs that are so vital to the areas in which they live and play, Mae'r hunain, ac mae'r cyd-rhyw fawr a'r ysgwysbeth efallai yn oed i'r ysgwrs. A at y gwrth yr hyn, y gwrs y dyma'r Llywodraeth Llywodraeth yn oed i gyd yn hoffi'r gweithio i'r gwybod i'r holl, i'r holl, i'r holl ei ddefnyddio, ac mae'r holl yn hyn yn cyfosiwyr oherwydd y gallu sydd yn hyn oed i'r holl. Mae yna yn hynny. Mae'r holl yn hynny yn hynny, a'r holl yn hynny yn hynny i'r holl i'r holl. Mae'r holl yn hynny. I want to do my best to try and help everyone, give the fans a voice, give the club a voice when it needs to, and the club will have a, the club has the echo as a platform to respond, and it always will. I'm not always going to get it right, I'm well aware that at the minute I've had a lot of support for that piece which I'm very grateful for. I know there are times when I get it wrong, that's just life. That's just life, and there will be times when things aren't, the path isn't always as clear and you're trying to make wrong turns as you go through it. But for me, when I was sitting there in the Brighton game and I was watching what was unfolding and against the backdrop of everything that had happened over the past, it goes far beyond the eight months that I've been working on here. But I did that front page six months ago or so and it just felt like it was the right time to revisit it because six months on we're in this position again and that concerns me and I think it concerns everybody. I'm very privileged to have a platform, and I believe that platform should really, it's more important that I use that to give other people a platform rather than for myself. But I meant every word that I wrote in that piece and I think it was fair, I do think it was fair. There'll be people who don't think it's fair, there'll be some people who think it was too harsh, there'll be some people who think it should have gone further. I thought it was fair as it had to be to try and make the point and I just hope that I've played my part in helping to concentrate minds there and just hopefully get some acknowledgement that the situation is serious. Everyone can see that, but people genuinely care and people want the best and people want to help and I think people want to be able to support the club. I just hope the club can help, again like it did at the back end of last season, albeit it was the players and Frank under which we had a vehicle for it. We know how powerful the fan base can be and the club needs to harness it and if the club is going to dip back into that well, if it's going to rely on the supporters again to help get extra points, help get it over the line, to help make goodness of the bear pit, help make goodness of the cold run, helps the players home in a way, then I just think that those supporters who are making that decision as to whether or not to get the flares out again, whether or not to get the banners out again, I think that they deserve to be spoken to, they deserve to know that their concerns are being listened to and hopefully acted upon. Thank you.