Through the Looking Glass: return to the ETC

Over the last couple of years I have written a little about my previous visits to the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University here and here, a few things have changed since then so this visit was an interesting one in a number of ways. First of all Don Marinelli has now retired. As Don was one of the two founders of the ETC this leaves something of a hole in the place: Don is something of a superstar – inspirational speaker, larger than life character and a truly gifted teacher with a tight grasp on how learning works. A good friend too. Nevertheless, the ETC is bigger than any one man and Don and Randy Pausch provided enough momentum that I suspect their ongoing project is pretty much unstoppable now.

Also, last semester we had the pleasure of hosting one of the ETC’s project teams here at MediaCityUK, (I’ll document that in another post soon – complications around a parallel project meant that I’ve been obliged to keep quite about it till now). This was my first return visit since hosting the project at MediaCityUK and I was here to do more workshops on 3D audio and how ETC projects could use it in game development. The brilliant Dave Purta, the ETC tech support, made sure all the hardware was set up for me and ready to roll so I arrived with a couple of laptops on the audio evangelist tour pt II.

A nice welcome when I arrived

Last year I showed

Down the Rabbit Hole: the ETC at Carnegie Mellon University

On arriving at the Entertainment Technology Centre at Carnegie Mellon University I was taken straight up to the 5th floor to renew my acquaintance with Don Marinelli, the Executive Producer of the ETC whom I first met last year when he visited us at Salford. The lift doors opened and I was confronted by Robbie the Robot standing in front of me, guarding the flight deck of the starship enterprise.

Robbie the robot guarding the flight deck

Ha! The flight deck is complete with