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Bob Allen's Dad

Written by Bob Allen.
IDEAS was hatched in the most amazing creative incubator imaginable- Walt Disney World. We love our Disney heritage and treasure our Disney clients and friends. My own connection there goes even deeper. In 1955, a struggling student going to Cal Poly in Long Beach California on the GI bill heard about a new place opening near his home in Anaheim. We stood in line every day and on the last day of hiring, he got a job. His task was to ride on the back of a small train and blow a whistle if anyone looked like they might fall off! Over the course of 33 years, he rose to the position of Vice President of Walt Disney World (there were only a few of those then!). That guy was my dad, Bob Allen (he was Robert C, I’m Robert M and my nephew is Robert C too!).

Dad served Disney till his death at the young age of 55 in 1987 and while he was there, he worked tirelessly to make Disney a truly generous member of the Central Florida Community. Since his death, Walt Disney World has generously given large community service grants in his name every year. This morning, the Hope Community Center in Apopka received $45,000 to continue their extraordinary work with a community of farm workers. My family was there, along with Mickey of course, and I am filled with gratitude to the “kick-butt sisters” at Hope Community Center, to Walt Disney World and to my dad for practicing unrestrained generosity.

Florida Film & Entertainment Tax Credit

This past Friday was a monumental day for the Film & Entertainment industry in Florida. For the first time in many years, a bill passed in Tallahassee that will put the industry back on the worldwide map when it comes to work. I moved to Central Florida in April 1998. About a month after I started working for this company (at that time we were part of Disney), until Thanksgiving of 2001, we had at least one television project in the building at almost all times. It was Petsburgh, then Donna's Day, then Good Dog U, then season 2 of Petsburgh, then season 2 of Donna's Day, then Dooley & Pals, then Sheena then season 2 of Sheena. I may have actually forgotten one or two in there as well. And that's just what we worked on, not to mention everyone at Universal and other projects that we didn't work on but were at Disney (Instinct, From the Earth to the Moon, Mortal Kombat, etc.). My point is, there was broadcast work coming out of our ears.

Then it all stopped. I'm not sure what year it was when the state of Florida decided to stop offering incentives to the entertainment industry but it was within a year of September 11, 2001. The combination of those two events devastated the industry in Central Florida and I'm assuming the entire state. Since then our industry has been destroyed by the likes of Louisiana, North & South Carolina, New Mexico, Canada and a couple other places. Those places used direct cash rebate programs but the real key to their success was a tax credit program. In that time our business (our company) has changed a lot. We depend on traditional entertainment far less than in those days. But that doesn't mean we don't miss it and want it back. It has taken a number of years and a lot of pain & suffering but Florida is now back in the ballgame by joining the tax credit parade.

Productions can earn up to 30% back based on the criteria, instantly making Florida a choice destination for productions. In this budget-sensitive time that we live in the beauty of tax credit process is that it costs little if anything to the state. My sense is that the bulk of the cost the state is going to incur is going to come from increase in staffing to deal with all the people applying for the tax credits for the many productions that will be coming to Florida.

Since Friday I've read how this budget was cut and that budget was cut in the state. At the same time, through a non-cash commitment, the film & entertainment industry was resurrected. Just in the last couple days the film office here in Orlando has seen a significant increase in inquiries about shooting in Central Florida. Who knows where all of this ends up. A year or two from now Florida may be the hottest place to shoot, just like it was 12 years ago. Or maybe this time next year we'll be sitting around trying to figure out how to get people here. There's no way to really know but if the past is any indication (the 1990's) and the recent interest plays out, we will look back on April 30, 2010 as the first day of the rest of our life in the film & entertainment industry. Thanks to everyone in the industry who helped make it happen and to all of the politicians who pushed it through.

New Photos for Website

A couple years ago we were trying to come up with creative for our then new website. We kept coming back to one thing- while the work we do for clients is important, what we really sell is relationships. Ultimately for a project to be successful there needs to be mutual trust between us and the client. The client needs to trust us enough to do what we do best. And we need to trust the client that they are telling us everything we need to know and openly and respectfully participating in the process. Having that mutual trust is huge in order for us to be successful together.

So, as we were coming up with what the website should look like, we believed that someone viewing it needed to be able to get to know us personally instead of just reading about us on a flat text website. Building the relationship with the client needed to start from their first look at the website. The result is the images of each employee on the website. One image has us dressed and looking in our normal everyday work attire. And the second image of each of us has us in our personal off-hours attire. Those are the photos that people really had fun with. Most brought extra cloths, a lot used props, some even brought their pets. It started out as a little thing and quickly got out of control, in a good way. In the end, the result was one of the most popular elements of our current website.

In the next couple weeks we'll be rolling out a new and improved website so we thought we'd give everyone the opportunity to update their photos if they wanted to. Today was the update day. We had a number of people that brought in changes of clothes, props, children (I think belonging to them), and a couple dogs. When we did it the last time it was over a couple days and it was a lot of fun and today was a lot of the same. Keep an eye out for the new website and you'll see some of the results from today.

Bob Allen Honored at Modeling and Simulation Event

Written by Bob Allen
Last night there was a quiet celebration. The Simulation Interoperability and Standards Organization and the Society for Computer Simulation International teamed up to host “CELEBRATE Central Florida Modeling and Simulation”. Now, that’s a mouthful of organizations and pretty geeky looking till you look deeper. 11 of the honorees represented work right here in Orlando. That has assured that our military is better able to face the rigors of the battlefield, our hospitals are beginning to be able to “rehearse” the most pressing kinds of emergency care and that commercial aviation is safer than its ever been- not to mention how we get human beings safely to space and home again.

What struck me the most in the array of future projects was the incredible potential of this set of largely misunderstood disciplines offers. Orlando has the most potent critical mass for the next generation of solutions for mission and life-critical human immersion in the world. Why? Its because of what I characterize as our four “power vectors”: UCF and its centers of academic excellence, Research Park and its corporate and organizational reach into a world of technological excellence, Medical City with its “greenfield advantage” in research and applied medicine and Creative Village- the nascent downtown nexus of creative digital media and entertainment professionals. As was noted last night, the puffery of “who’s the biggest” in any segment is empty compared to the real issue of who is actually innovating.

I like to think that’s where we get in the game at IDEAS. The 12th honoree was me and I’m really grateful that Priscilla Elfrey, the undisputed QUEEN of MS&T, saw fit to include me. We are an Innovation Studio. Our definition of innovation is “The applied confluence of creativity, artistry and intentional action over time for a specific purpose.” What we’ve been able to synthesize from our early efforts creating Battle Stations 21 for the Navy and Essentials of Modeling and Simulation for the ADL Co-Lab, have carried our work into online virtual worlds, our TeacherStudio™ collaborative professional online community for educators, new cultural attractions and redefined patient experiences in both military and community healthcare. As my old friend Chris Stapleton said last night, its invention until someone actually does something- then it can be innovation. I’m grateful not only for the kind recognition from SISO and SCS but moreover for being part of what is happening in Orlando. This is the right place for the next 20 years.

TeacherStudio Roll-Out In Indianapolis

Last week we met in Indianapolis with a group of teachers from the Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township to help them brainstorm about the best way to get started using the TeacherStudio. Rolling out a new product in a school district (especially one that requires a great deal of buy-in from those who will use it most – teachers) is a delicate yet exciting process.

We had the great privilege of meeting with a group of 30 teachers who took the first steps in implementing TeacherStudio in their school district. Since TeacherStudio is designed to help districts promote and share best practices, our first step was to give the group an opportunity to think about and list the instructional goals that were most important to them. Once they had this list in front of them, we thought it would be much easier to visualize how they could bring these initiatives to life inside the product. This group of instructional technology educators did an amazing job of listing the programs that are most important in their district right now – they were such self starters and really jumped right in. We then shared with the group what TeacherStudio was and the features (and possibilities) that the product offers. It was our hope that during the demonstration they could begin to get an idea of how they could move forward inside the TeacherStudio.

We spent the remainder of our time together creating a list of video clips (they felt they could capture) that aligned to the initiatives they had identified. It was quite an experience to look at the product we’ve been building over the past year through a new set of eyes. They had such insight and wonderful feedback about the product. So many of them saw potential and were already asking about next steps. We look forward to seeing this group evolve inside the TeacherStudio, as well as be a part of their collaboration with other districts.

For more about TeacherStudio go to www.TeacherStudio.com and for more about IDEAS Learning go to www.ideaslearning.com

Has Technology Helped or Hurt the Olympics?

As I watched the Olympics over the last two weeks I kept arguing with myself- has technology helped or hurt the Olympics? The truth is, I still haven't won or lost the argument. With this being the 30 year anniversary of the Miracle on Ice hockey game I watched a lot of retrospectives on the event. Besides the actual winning of the game, one thing that kept resonating with me was remembering that the game actually occured during the day and was shown tape delay that night. Because there was barely cable TV and it was long before the internet or 24 hour news/sports channels on cable, nobody knew the US had actually won until the game aired that night. Over the last 30 years, specifically, over the last 15 years, TV ratings for the Olympics have declined, except for the years in which the Olympics were held in time zones where most events could be shown live. Declining ratings, in my opinion, can be directly attributed to the internet and 24 hour news/sports coverage. Die hard viewers will always watch, but those who are more peripheral enthusiasts are less likely to watch an event if they already know the results. Over the last two weeks if I wanted to watch something at night that happened during the day it was a lot of effort to not hear the results before watching that night. Because less and less events are shown live, NBC has to resort to stringing you along for 3 hours before they finally show the winning US person in their 2 minute performance. And that's also why we get the never ending tear jerker personal profiles. The primetime telecast of the Olympics is less about the actual events and more about doing anything possible to keep viewers. With that said, the Olympics that just finished got great ratings.

On the other hand, 30 years ago if an event wasn't on the main network it wasn't shown. These past Olympics besides the daily and nightly coverage on NBC we also had MSNBC and USA. If we didn't have 3x the coverage we definitely had twice the coverage than if we just had NBC. The increased coverage is 100% credited with the infatuation people have with Curling now. People started getting in to Curling when it was shown as an after thought on those networks 4 and 8 years ago during the Olympics. More coverage means more exposure for the secondary Olympic sports which I think it good. Also, there is something really cool about watching downhill skiing and ski jumping at 500+ frames per second. Seeing details in extreme slow motion gives you a completely different sense of the action. All the different slow-mos and all the different camera angles really give you a different view of the events.

So there you have it. Don't know where I really stand. Maybe I'll pick up the argument in 2 years after the Summer Olympics or 4 years after the next Winter Olympics.