In early 2020, TeamPeople joined forces with the International Game Developers Association Foundation (IGDA-F) . Together, we set out to diversify the gaming workforce and provide individuals across backgrounds with the tools and resources needed to better position themselves within the gaming industry and, ultimately, land video game-related jobs! 

The IGDA Foundation’s 2020 Grantee Online Program

In response to COVID-19, the IGDA-F switched their annual, in-person GDC Scholarship programming to a virtual 2020 Grantee Online Program. Since May, we’ve been sponsoring the program  alongside some of the largest gaming brands in the world, such as Xbox, Riot Games, Activision Blizzard, Iron Galaxy Studios, Zynga, and Audiokinetic!

Building A Skilled & Diverse Gaming Workforce

The 2020 Grantee Online Program  provides individuals from underrepresented communities around the world with opportunities to build gaming skills and learn from industry veterans/mentors who can steer them towards career success. Since our mission at TeamPeople is to help talent pursue their passions and do what they love, we saw the IGDA-F’s program as the perfect opportunity to instate ourselves as a resource to the grantees.

As sponsors, our responsibility is to provide a support structure for diverse, early to mid-career game developers navigating in-person and virtual networking, the job search, interviewing, and career development opportunities. Grantees represent a wide span of countries, including Africa, Australia, Canada, Chile, Eastern Europe, Estonia, Europe, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States. Each grantee can customize their experience and seek help in critical areas they need it the most by choosing between three tailored skill trees: Leadership Skill Tree, Video Game Skill Tree, and Entrepreneurship Skill Tree. Despite the nuances of each grantee’s background and the skill tree they pursue, these individuals are the next generation of gaming industry leaders, and we’re thrilled to be a part of their career progression!

TeamPeople & IGDA Foundation Panel: Finding A Job During COVID-19

In addition to sponsoring the 2020 Grantee Online Program, we support the program by providing mentors to the grantees for one-on-one guidance in the form of presentations, workshops, Q&A sessions, and hand-outs.

One actionable way we’ve done this so far is through a virtual panel discussion on finding a job during the pandemic. In August, two of our top-notch recruiters went live during a virtual Zoom discussion in front of 25+ grantees from the program to share tips, tricks, and insights on navigating the tricky undertaking of job-seeking amid a pandemic. Check out the full panel discussion here:

Meet the Panelists from TeamPeople’s Talent Acquisition & Recruiting Team:

	Mandee Neubauer is TeamPeople’s Talent Acquisition Lead! She has 7+ years’ experience in recruiting and talent placement, She knows all of the in’s and out’s behind what it takes to get your foot in the door in the workforce and land your dream job. Mandee’s an ANA Certified Staffing Professional and has recruited for a plethora of big-name brands, including several well-known gaming brands.
	Robyn Johnson is TeamPeople’s Talent Acquisition Specialist! She’s an experienced recruiter and human resources professional with a demonstrated history of working in multiple industries, including Media Production, Food & Beverage, Legal Services, and Non-profit. She’s currently involved in key initiatives for TeamPeople clients who are making a splash in the gaming world.

Creative Pursuits Podcast Meets Gaming

The ball doesn’t stop rolling with the 2020 Grantee Online Program! TeamPeople is also a sponsor of Creative Pursuits , the podcast that explores the intersection of art, communications, and technology. Recently, the podcast set out to discuss gaming in a two-part series that we’re thrilled to support.

In the first part of the two-part series titled Level Up: Diversity And Equity With Gaming Advocate Nika Nour , host Alex Crow virtually interviews IGDA Foundation Executive Director, Nika Nour (@Nika ). She’s a leader in diversity and inclusion within the video game industry, and her mission is to advance inclusion efforts and open doors for minorities apiring to get their foot in the door in the gaming workforce. Throughout the conversation in this episode, Nika shares her most profound experiences and insights as a female gamer and diversity advocate. She also discusses what it was like navigating grade school bullying as young female gamer in the 90s, the 2008 economy, Capitol Hill, Gamergate , #MeToo, and recent reckonings with racism and sexism in the video game industry.

Listen in to the first episode of the two-part series featuring Nika Nour here, and stay tuned for the upcoming part two of the series!

Raising the Bar in the Workforce

Nika’s story and the IGDA-F’s mission inspires us to continue raising the bar for diversity within the gaming workforce. Through programs like the 2020 Grantee Online Program and platforms such as Creative Pursuits, we can promote the next generation of aspiring game developers and amplify the voices of leaders like Nika.

Ready to develop your diverse and inclusive team of game developers and industry experts?  Let’s raise the bar together! TeamPeople is working at the intersection of creative and digital to be your strategic partner. We’ll work with you to design a solution that best fits your team and operation. We hire talent across backgrounds to provide our clients with fresh talent and unique perspectives. Check out our gaming capabilities and strike up the conversation here.

To view our Partner blog, click here

“Everyone should go to CES, at least once” is often heard throughout the 2.7 million sq. feet of the Consumer Electronics Show, held annually in Las Vegas, NV. The Consumer Electronic Show  (CES) is the largest conference for consumer electronics products in the United States. Drawing over 180,000 creative and technical leaders from companies around the world, many people believe that not going to CES is the equivalent to starting the year off as slow as Las Vegas’s McCarran airport’s security line on a Sunday morning. In 2019, CES attracted 175K+ attendees and supported 4.5K exhibiting companies and 1K speakers.

If you can push past the awe of being at the center of technology and innovation, the real question is, where should I start in planning my CES adventure? Having been to CES for the past few years, I’m here to share my insights to help you make the right decision for you and your company.

Set your goals

If your New Year’s resolution is to increase your industry knowledge, dive into the session schedule and exhibitor list. Highlight the most significant trends, sessions, and booths that would be beneficial to explore and align with your business goals. With an open mind, you might find the right combination of sessions and products that could collectively drive change to move your business forward.

If your goal is building relationships with new and prospective clients, reach out and see if they will be attending. If asking directly isn’t an option, check out their social media accounts. If the list is long enough, CES could provide a unique opportunity to start, or continue the conversation, and move them forward through the pipeline. By planning and booking meetings in advance, you can help build out your CES schedule and increase the ROI before the event even starts. Plus, you will be more prepared for a successful meeting.

Learning

CES is a massive show with 15 conference tracks on a variety of topics, all jam-packed with the latest insights. From immersive technologies and robotics to autonomous vehicles and smart home gadgetry, the range of topics is extensive. Additionally, CES has hundreds of speakers representing companies on a global scale, both large and small, from across virtually all industries. Check out the speaker list and see who might align with your target accounts. If you end up attending, sit in the front of their session and see if you can strike up a conversation before or after the session. It can be tough to stop busy executives, but the forum for sharing information and ideas is what CES is all about, so many are very receptive.

Trending

The CES show floor will have over 4,500 exhibitors showing off the most cutting-edge technology and innovation. If you’re there to take it all in, you will come away with a personal, visceral reference for what the future might hold. Taking in each exhibit’s size, location, and attendee engagement can give you a first-hand glimpse at the emerging trends and might even give you a leg up on your competition.

Networking

Like all conferences, CES provides unique networking opportunities both built into the event schedule and just in the sheer volume of attendees. The number of brands that are present at CES increase dramatically year after year, and the representative ranges from C-suite executives to the talented teams of designers and technicians. Whether you’re standing in line for a keynote or exploring the show floor, you never know who you will run into at CES. It might just be your next big client.

Cost

Once you’ve carefully and strategically considered all the reasons why you should go and how you plan to spend your time at CES, you need to weigh in the cost of attending. On top of your conference pass, there will be travel expenses, hotel rooms, and meals, which add up pretty quickly, especially in Las Vegas. Hotel rooms and flights tend to double and triple their standard booking rates, so book early! And don’t forget to include extra spend for “wining and dining” your prospective clients.

To view our Partner blog, click here

A few short weeks ago, TeamPeople hosted a webinar entitled, “Immersive Media, Are You Ready?”.  With AR, VR and video 360’ being all the rage, we took a deep dive into what it takes to produce compelling content and if these technologies will become essential to a brand’s success. We posed these questions to our panelists, Raven Petuchowski, Renee Beck and Loreta Tarozaite, three trail-blazing women leading technology teams from all sides of the country.

To ensure that everyone started with the same level of understanding, we began our webinar by first defining the difference between immersion and engagement. Engagement takes place when a story or marketing message provokes some sort of action amongst the audience. Immersion takes place when the audience forgets it’s even an audience at all. Immersion blurs the lines between story and marketing or storyteller and audience.

Covering everything from personal experiences to advice and lessons learned, our panelists delivered valuable content. To view the webinar and slide presentation, click here .

Here’s what we found:

Content is King No Matter What Technology Is Used

Immersive experiences present endless opportunities, but is it right for your brand? Loreta emphasized that these new technologies should be used to our advantage to tell the story.  Forcing your brand’s story into the latest and greatest technology platform, doesn’t automatically create great content.  You need to choose the technology that brings your story to life. It may be VR, AR or Video 360, but it also may be a video, creatively designed infographic or other strategically-designed method. When deciding on the best tool or platform, choose what makes sense from a content and consumer perspective rather than just because ‘it’s the coolest new tech’.

Is the Risk Worth the Reward?

Tapping into immersive media can be an expensive undertaking. With technology investments, productions costs and distribution methods, the costs can be high. Plus, you need to find the individuals with the right skill-sets to create the high-quality content. Despite the hesitation of many big-named corporations, a Deloitte study reports more than 150 companies, in multiple industries including 52 of the Fortune 500, are testing or have deployed AR or VR solutions.  For some industries, such as education, the path to “reward” is much less foggy and uncertain.  As Renee pointed out, education has a longstanding history of being a very passive.  AR and VR has the ability to radically change the way we learn. Experiencing something first-hand, can create a learning experience far more effective than listening to a lecture or reading a textbook.

Getting Buy-In

After being highlighted by our panelists and discussed in our audience Q&A session, getting buy in from top decision-makers is a common obstacle. Our panelists agreed that building something from scratch and creating a demo for your senior leaders is a game-changer. They recommended partnering with a company or person that really does it well and can help showcase the value it can bring to your mission.  A well-developed demo will do wonders to your pitch. Seeing is believing, after all. The same goes for selling it externally.  In order to have mass adoption, you need to put it in the audience’s hands.

The Consensus

Collective immersive content experiences are estimated to become a 140 billion-dollar business by 2020 .  In many ways, our panelists agree that it will be imperative to leverage these new technologies to stay competitive in the future.  Whether its AR or VR, the answer remains to be seen, but what it comes down to is the experience.  Gone are days of static webpages and a quantity over quality approach. To succeed, you need to be disruptive and experiential.

Is your team looking to tap into immersive media, but need help getting started? We’re here to help! With our database of highly-skilled talent, we’ve created and implemented immersive experiences for our clients across the nation and abroad. Send us an email, we would love to hear about your ideas!

Meet the Panelists

Raven Petuchowski

Executive Producer for TeamPeople @Allstate

For the past nine years, Raven has led TeamPeople @ Allstate’s multimedia team to coordinate, produce and manage a wide range of interactive media projects. She’s the executive producer of a diverse team of more than 100 professionals creating high-end interactive audio and video projects and global events.

Renee Beck

Director, Video & Technical Operations @2U

Renee is a passionate media executive with 20 years of comprehensive experience in all facets of content creation. With previous experience leading teams at National Geographic, TV One, The World Bank and today, 2U, she’s worked her way up through various industries.

Loreta Tarozaite

Sr. Video Producer @Western Digital

First stepping foot in the cable industry as a news anchor and reporter in her home country, Lithuania, she entered the industry in a very non-conventional way. With 18 years of experience, Loreta has worked in various producing, directing, editing, and content generation capacities for companies including SanDisk and Western Digital.

To view our Partner blog, click here

InfoComm 2018 , North America’s leading audiovisual (AV) convention and exhibition, was held earlier this summer in Las Vegas, Nevada, and TeamPeople was there to take it all in.

The Place To Be For Pro-AV

Despite daytime temperatures reaching a high of 101 degrees, AVIXA , the Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association (formerly InfoComm International), reports a staggering 43,000 registrants. When factoring in 964 exhibitors spanning 550,000 square feet of exhibits, demo rooms, and special events space, AVIXA is proclaiming this the biggest InfoComm ever.

The event kicked off with a record-setting TIDE conference, drawing its largest crowd to date. Jason McGraw, Senior Vice President of Expositions for AVIXA, explained that the TIDE conference challenges AV professionals to “…. consider ways of applying human-centered design to AV solutions.” New programs such as Design Thinking for AV and Integrated Life Day were well received by the attendees and had participants collaborating in ways they’d never imagined.

Never Stop Learning

In a sea of new technology and innovation, the true value of InfoComm is not just in its products, but in its passion for learning and education.  Inspired by AVIXA’s new motto, “Together, we can change the way people experience the world”, InfoComm attendees were digging in to learn what they love and empower the industry.

Among our TeamPeople representatives were technology managers, audiovisual technicians, integration technicians, design engineers and others, representing many of our clients as well as our corporate headquarters. Three TeamPeople employees became CTS -certified on their first attempt at the very challenging exam. Others attended classes and seminars ranging from audio, video and unified communications to emerging trends, live events and technology management. As expected, classes dealing with the AV/IT merger were at the top of everyone’s list.

The Future of AV Starts With A Packed Booth

The exhibition itself is a collection of sights and sounds that would give the Vegas strip a run for its money. Arena-sized video walls could be seen everywhere you looked. Only a few short years ago there were a notable few, super-impressive, video wall manufacturers and almost everyone else struggling to compete for attention. Fast forward to the present and the challenge was to find a large format video display that didn’t impress its audience. Sony Corporation seemed to have won the attention battle this year with a stunning large format videowall that featured breathtaking content, detail, and color reproduction that had attendees shoulder-to-shoulder within the booth. Live audio continues to demand interest at the show with most manufacturers innovating in the direction of more compact, cost efficient designs. “Dante Spoken Here” signs were omnipresent throughout the exhibit hall as every manufacturer wanted it to be known that they, too, could deliver uncompressed, multi-channel, low-latency digital audio over a standard ethernet network.

Manufacturers are continuing to innovate in the direction of simpler and faster integration products that installers will love. Parts that are accessible and easy to swap, accessories that are interchangeable and snap in place, as well as product interoperability were all welcome advances for our industry. It’s difficult to pick a standout technology among so many innovators, but a few companies were displaying “holographic” images – seemingly floating in air – that demanded everyone’s attention. These large, 3D, multicolored, moving images seemed straight out of sci-fi and had dozens of attendees jockeying for the best position to video the strange, new, technology. Most attendees expect to see this technology make appearances in select settings in the coming year.

At TeamPeople, we believe in investing in our employees. Through training, certification, accreditation and exposure to emerging technologies and industry events, we ensure that our technicians, engineers, installers, and designers are consistently developing and evolving as technology professionals.

To view our Partner blog, click here

“Everyone should go to CES, at least once” is often heard throughout the 2.7 million sq. feet of the Consumer Electronic Show, held annually in Las Vegas, NV. The Consumer Electronic Show (CES) is the largest conference for consumer electronics products in the United States. Drawing over 180,000 creative and technical leaders from companies around the world, many people believe that not going to CES is the equivalent to starting the year off as slow as Las Vegas’s McCarran airport’s security line on a Sunday morning.

If you are able to push past the awe of being at the center of technology and innovation, the real question is, is it worth it?  Having been to CES for the past few years, I’m here to share my insights to help you make the right decision for you and your company.

Set your goals

If your New Year’s resolution is to increase your industry knowledge, dive into the session schedule and exhibitor list. Highlight the biggest trends, sessions and booths that would be beneficial to explore and align with your business goals. With an open mind, you might find the right combination of sessions and products that could collectively drive change to move your business forward.

If your goal is building relationships with new and prospective clients, reach out and see if they will be attending. If asking directly isn’t an option, check out their social media accounts. If the list is long enough, CES could provide a unique opportunity to start, or continue the conversation, and move them forward through the pipeline. By planning early and booking meetings in advance, you can help build out your CES schedule and increase the ROI before the event even starts. Plus, you will be better prepared for a successful meeting.

Learning

CES is a massive show with 15 conference tracks on a variety of topics all jam-packed with the latest insights. From immersive technologies and robotics, to autonomous vehicles and smart home gadgetry, the range of topics is extensive.  Additionally, CES has hundreds of speakers representing companies on a global scale, both large and small, from across virtually all industries. Check out the speaker list and see who might align with your target accounts. If you end up attending, sit in the front of their session and see if you can strike up a conversation before or after the session. It can be tough to stop busy executives, but the forum for sharing information and ideas is what CES is all about so many are very receptive.

Trending

The CES show floor will have over 4,000 exhibitors showing off the most cutting-edge technology and innovation. If you’re there to take it all in, you will come away with a personal, visceral reference for what the future might hold.  Taking in each exhibit’s size, location and attendee engagement can give you a first-hand glimpse at the emerging trends and might even give you a leg up on your competition.

Networking

Like all conferences, CES provides unique networking opportunities both built into the event schedule and just in the sheer volume of attendees. The number of brands that are present at CES increase dramatically year after year and the representative ranges from C-suite executives to the talented teams of designers and technicians. Whether you’re standing in line for a keynote or exploring the show floor, you never know who you will run in to.  It might just be your next big client.

Cost

Once you’ve carefully and strategically considered all the reasons why you should go, you need to weigh in the cost of attending.  On top of your conference pass, there will be travel expenses, hotel rooms, and meals which add up pretty quickly, especially in Las Vegas. Hotel rooms and flights tend to double and triple their normal booking rates, so book early! And don’t forget to include extra spend for “wining and dining” your prospective clients.

To view our Partner blog, click here