Digital Diversity Day: A Recap in Diversity & Inclusion in Media

As we close and reflect on our accomplishments and events in 2019, I want to thank everyone who participated in making our first Digital Diversity Day at The Moody College of Communication a success, and share with you the much anticipated recap video!

Here are some key highlights at the event:

Winning team of Dell’s Project Innovate Pitch Competition: Bridge VR

• Five finalists presented their pitches to promote diversity in technology at the Project Innovate Pitch Competition sponsored by DELL. The top three finalists were chosen following their presentation. In first place: Bridge VR by Johan Panicker, Corey Morgan, Hayeong Choi, Josh Ramirez, Orhiane Savarese. In second place: Roots by Jake Crabtree. In third place: POP by Yoonsup Lee, Rick Kim, Seokhyun Baek, David Pham, Maruricio Canales, Andy Pham.
• Some of the D3 development team along with the team behind Bridge VR attended the 2019 Infinity Fesitival in Hollywood to get immersed in the future of storytelling and cheer on Bridge VR as they shared their project idea with industry.
• Our keynote speaker, Bernie Su talked about interactive storytelling in his latest web series, Artificial Next as well as The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Emma Approved. We recorded Bernie’s talk and this will be shared in all of my future classes ;-)
• Our panelists talked about a variety of inspiring topics, such as diversity in media entrepreneurship, diversity in interactive media, and diversity in esports.
• Students tested mixed reality, games and other technologies from our partners and sponsors in the D3 Demo Room.
• Attendees received advice and networking opportunities from mentors in a variety of multimedia companies.
• Three workshops were taught over the course of the event. Attendees learned about real-time virtual filmmaking, accessibility in indie development, and GIS and inclusive cartography.

Keynote Speaker: Bernie Su

This event was made possible due to the incredible speakers, judges, mentors, and workshop instructors for their undying support and sharing their expertise with D3 attendees.

We are so grateful for the knowledge given by our wonderful keynote speaker: Bernie Su; our panelists: Amy Brady, Estevan Aviles, William Hurley, Heather Watson, Kelene Blake-Fallon, Chad Allen; moderators: Austin Espinoza, Craig Watkins and Rohitash Rao; judges of the D3 Student Pitch Competition: Janice Omadeke, Ashley Jennings, Zuby Onwuta, Umang Patel and Bernie Su; and our workshop instructors: Sarah Abraham, Deepak Chetty and Michael Shensky.

We’d like to extend our deepest gratitude to all of our gracious sponsors. We truly cannot thank you enough! We appreciate our diamond sponsor Project Innovate at Dell, our platinum sponsors Blended Sense and Media Tech Ventures, our gold sponsors Mainline and Moody College of Communication’s Center for Sports Communication and Media for sponsoring our Esports programming, and finally our bronze sponsors Magic Leap and UT’s Office of Technology Commercialization for being our Bronze sponsors.

H-E-B Team serving Texas BBQ

We’d also like to thank the Infinity Festival team, SXSW, HyperX and Discord for contributing such fantastic prizes to the Project Innovate Student Pitch Competition and the Inclusive Smash Tournament. Lastly, we’d like to give a big shout out to H-E-B for providing the delicious lunch and to Red Bull and Honey Stinger for our wonderful snacks.

We had an amazing group of student volunteers making this experience happen, as well as Moody College of Communication staff supporting this effort. We cannot thank you enough for all the effort and hard work you put into driving digital diversity here at Moody.

Thank you for participating! We’re going to take 2020 to build up this program as a year-long investment to enhance digital diversity at UT-Austin and look forward to seeing you in the roaring 20s!