Environmental Design student Alvin Oei is busy building his professional network while managing the challenging workload that is an ArtCenter education. He arranged for a line-up of luminaries to gather at ArtCenter on September 23 for an industry panel on the future of themed entertainment. Alum and former Disney imagineer Geoff Puckett moderated the panel that included legendary Disney imagineer and alum Bob Gurr; alum and principal of The Hettema Group, Phil Hettema; Dave Cobb, principal at Thinkwell; Entertainment Design chair Guillaume Aretos and imagineer Chris Beatty.

If you missed it, here is some of the wisdom shared with the audience:

• Phil Hettema: “New technology comes along every 10 years. The secret sauce to the business of themed entertainment is that it is one of the last places you can go to have an experience with someone else.”
• Bob Gurr: “If you’ve been asked to do something you’ve never done before, the answer is YES. If you can think and you’re curious you can figure out anything.”
• Dave Cobb: “Completely unfettered blue sky is a myth. This is a highly collaborative artform that business and management are a big part of.”
• Chris Beatty: “We’re all salesmen, we need to convince everyone they have a dog in the hunt.”

After the event, Oei reflected on the importance of reaching out and developing professional relationships while you are in school.

All I have to say is, don’t wait until you graduate to build professional relationships. School isn’t just about producing work. Producing work is expected. Yeah, you don’t sleep. But you get over it. The real challenge Is about also learning how to build yourself as a young professional during this learning process who is open to new things, new ideas, new paths, and how to be strategic in your creative thinking.

Understand that even with blue sky concepts, there is a reality that needs to be considered. You will be working with consultants, teams of people unless you are just in the business to paint ideas because those ideas are 10% of the life of a project. The tricky part is…nobody really tells you that. On your own, you have to take risks, experiment, collaborate with folks in other disciplines, learn from industry leaders the concepts of business practices and politics, etc. Invite them to your school and reach others as well.

Most importantly…be excited about these things because they are a crucial component to “design” that really need to be understood from the beginning.

Renderings and models can be outsourced for 1/3 of the price you’re doing it for, but what can’t be is knowing how to appeal to the needs of different stakeholders in creative ways, understanding the feasibility of a project as well as it’s constructability. Can we just 3D print the entire building and call it a day because technology enables us to? Who are the consultants involved, what are the politics, and what can you bring to a team that the 2,986 other people applying cannot? These were all the touchpoints mentioned last night.

As Mr. Gurr said, dating back to his experiences with Walt, you need to be ok being a generalist and even if you don’t know how to do something or it’s uncharted territory…you just figure it out.

This event was hugely successful because it set out to inspire and educate. I’ve been told by many that it has so thanks to all who were involved, especially our guest speakers. This was an ambitious team effort. Time to think about the next event.