Berkeley Digital Media & Entertainment Club

Hello everyone! We are the newly elected co-presidents of the Digital Media & Entertainment Club. We’d like to tell you a little bit about our club, our objectives, and how you can get involved!

Digital media is a fast evolving industry that represents a huge business opportunity. The digital world is gradually becoming more open, more connected, and more social. The goal of DMEC is to connect people who are interested in pursuing careers in digital media and entertainment and empower them via education and networking opportunities.

It goes without saying that DMEC is our favorite club at Haas. It combines our nerdy passions for digital media and entertainment with good times and good friends. We have selected an outstanding Executive Committee that will be working hard to organize career treks, pub-crawls with start-ups, gaming competitions, tech talks, and much more in the coming year.

If you have an interest in technology, we encourage you to reach out to us with your questions. Additionally, be sure to visit our website to learn more about how you can be more involved!

Last but not least, you can connect with DMEC on Twitter (@berkeleydmec) and Google+!

– Katie and Teresa

ABOVE: DMEC visits Twitter

Are You Ready To >play?

Last Saturday was the 7th annual >play Digital Media Conference, a student run conference hosted at Haas that brings together over 500 business professionals, industry leaders and graduate students to discuss the most important trends in digital media and cast predictions for the future.

Let me step back to last Thursday, when >play actually kicked off with an amazing event at the headquarters of Couchsurfing in San Francisco – a great space with couches (obviously), but also swings, and cool murals on the wall. It was a great night with about 150 attendees – a mix of student volunteers, >play vips and friends of Couchsurfing – who all enjoyed the sushi, sake, tea, beer and wine.

Back to the conference on Saturday. I was blown away by how professionally run the conference was. There was definitely no indication that this was a purely student run event. My day began with a breakfast hosted by Groupon which was really informative and interesting given their upcoming IPO. After breakfast it was time for opening remarks from the Dean, Richard Lyons, followed by the morning keynote – Jeff Jordan who is a partner at Andreesen Horowitz, and a real Bay Area identity, sitting on a huge array of Boards, as well as being Chairman of the Board for Open Table.

The keynote took the form of an interview from Kara Swisher, and they both played off each other for a really enjoyable hour, in which they discussed topics from Steve Jobs (Jordan said: “He made science fiction a reality”), to how VCs make investment decisions (Swisher joked:”to me it’s like a bunch of teenage girls chasing Justin Bieber”).

After the keynote there were rocket-pitches from the companies showcasing their products in the expo including Kno, Yelp, Yahoo!, TubeMogul, Rakoko, Pulse, Bre.ad, Sifteo, Wallit, Snapette, OnLive and more. Other companies at >play were Sony Computer Entertainment, Microsoft, Rexly, localmind and many more. Between the rocket pitches and exploring the expo during the day I was fascinated with all of the exciting products and trends … although one of the more fun was playing with the XBox and the Kinect that Microsoft had set up.

Other highlights of the day included talks from Sony Computer Entertainment, and Kno, who are fundamentally shifting the textbook market, to a panel on Search vs. Discovery in which we heard about the need to balance tailored results with the problems of overpersonalization.

The day closed with a final keynote from Geoffrey Moore, a best selling author and chairman emeritus at TCG Advisors, who spoke about Crossing the Chasm vs Spinning Up The Web – the different strategies needed for B2B and B2C success in digital media, which was fascinating to hear.

All in all, it was an excellent day – I had a great time, and also learned a huge amount!

Media / Entertainment 101 Panel

Today I participated in the Media/Entertainment 101 panel. The purpose of this panel was to give the class of 2012 an overview of the space, the typical roles and work performed along with information on what is needed to conduct a successful job search.

On the panel was a handpicked selection of second years who spent their summers at Apple, Disney, Facebook, Google, and Zynga. From launching new products to managing global teams, the class of 2011 panelists showed that it’s possible to accomplish a lot in 2.5 months! While we had different roles and responsibilities, it was no doubt that we were all enthusiastic to talk about our great summer experiences!

This was a great opportunity to share our insights on not only the recruiting process but also give the first years an inside look at what it’s like to work at these companies. Given the insightful questions, we are confident that the new class has hit the ground running and will continue to stake their claim in the digital media and entertainment industry!

—Marcelo