New Media Innovation Centre aims for four research clusters operating over next year

A British Columbia new media incubator has launched its first research program as part of a five-year, $12.5-million initiative to create several digital media research clusters for broadband networks and web-based applications. The New Media Innovation Centre, located in Victoria’s Harbour Centre atop the city’s biggest bandwidth pipe, has appointed its first university researchers and graduate students. As part of the Nortel Networks Corp cluster, Eric Manning and Ali Shorja will work on reconstructing the Internet to deliver high-speed new media applications like digital video and film. With $8 million in seed money from the provincial and federal governments, and the balance coming from corporate membership fees, NewMIC is touting itself as Western Canada’s answer to the MITMediaLab. The research centre brings together large corporations, small business affiliates (SBAs), university faculty, and grad students to help move new media applications from the lab to the market. The model is unique in that each research cluster will also include an artist in residence. "When you bring large corporations together with academic faculty, graduate students, small businesses with your artist in residence then you have a few views of looking at the world," NewMIC business development officer Ann Lévi-Lloyd told CNM. "To get a technologist to sit down and listen to what a small business might be saying about the technology or what an artist might be saying is no mean feat. This is a major challenge in my view. But that’s what’s critical to make the NewMIC model fly." Within 12 months, another three research programs should be in place, studying online games (Electronic Arts), e-business and tele-learning (IBM) and wireless broadband streaming (Sierra Wireless). Another company, western telco Telus Corp, is finalizing its concept for launching an e-lifestyle online community. The sixth corporate partner, Xerox Park, is still developing its area of interest and a seventh company is expected to be announced soon. Lévi-Lloyd says there will also be linkages between the various clusters. For example, Electronic Arts wants to be able to offer an online gaming environment where people can play in real time. The Nortel cluster is looking at how to reduce the latency – or delays – inherent in Internet networks, to provide a more real-time experience. As "sustaining members", the companies identify the type of research that is done. Its staff can use the research facilities, and the company has access to proofs of concepts, lab prototypes, software codes, simulation models and other technology developed at the cluster. Perhaps the biggest perk for sustaining members is that they have the right to use the IP developed at NewMIC for their own products and services. They also get first crack at NewMIC graduate students and researchers as potential employees, and work hand-in-hand with small innovative companies developing many of these new technologies. In return, sustaining members commit to provide $150,000/year in cash and an equivalent amount in-kind for five years. The other major players in NewMIC are Simon Fraser University, TechBC, the University of British Columbia, the University of Victoria and the Emily Carr Institute of Arts and Design. Lévi-Lloyd says the research clusters help the academic institutions to increase the number and quality of their faculty and grad students and develop closer ties with industry. "Our number one mission and mandate is to retain the excellent researchers that are left in our universities and to attract more from around the world, to fill the holes that have been left over the last few years when universities have been unable to be competitive with the private sector," says Lévi-Lloyd. NewMIC has also struck a search committee to find a CEO for the centre. Allan Winter has been acting as interim-CEO for several months.

New Media Innovation Centre aims for four research clusters operating over next year

Broadcast | March 8, 2001

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