Boulder Digital Works executive director David Slayden.

Set up to tackle the chronic dearth of digital talent, Boulder Digital Works is a post-graduate course in digital media launching this fall. Set up by MDC (which owns CP+B) and the University of Colorado at Boulder, the course is 60 weeks long, with just 15 to 18 students. Its aim is to provide integrated teaching in three disciplines – business, creative and technology – to rear a new generation of hybrid producers and creatives. Boards spoke to the executive director of Boulder Digital Works, David Slayden to find out more about this incubator for the digitalists of the future.

How did the school come about?
We get calls all the time asking when we’re going to start a graduate program in advertising. The truth is I’ve been looking at this for years and I don’t think it’s a good idea. [But] I was looking at what we would do that would make sense. At the same time it turned out that Crispin was on a parallel path: if there were a new school that could address this need in digital, which is to bring business and technology and creative together, what would that new school look like? We finally put together a digital round table together on February 19: we brought in Mattias Hanson from Hyper Island, SoDA, Winston Binch and Jeff Benjamin from Crispin, a range of different digital companies. At the end we said, ‘Well, how soon can you put together a school? We’ve been on warp speed since then.

Why is this needed?
I’ve never been involved with anything like this before where I didn’t even have to persuade people of the need. Everyone knows it’s a problem in terms of culture and cost and that you have these three talents that must work together and have a hard time doing it. There are great places, but they tend to be learning places, they tend to be siloed. I don’t believe anyone has come at it from this combined hybrid approach. I freely admit we are an experiment.

What’s different about BDW compared to other ad schools?
We’re an alternative. We’re really industry focused, completely driven by projects, and by the time you finish with us, you will have an amazing portfolio. About 90% of our faculty is currently from the industry. What the industry gets from this is 60 weeks to watch how you work individually, how you work in groups, how you work under pressure, how coachable you are and the quality of thought you bring to projects.

Who are you looking to take as students?
T-shaped people. You’re going to be on the descender, the long part of the T, in one area  – business, creative, technology – but you need to know business if you’re a technologist. That’s where T-shaped is good: people have a shared perspective, a shared value of what each area brings to the overall project. [We] keep talking about the best team model that we’ve seen is playing in a band: I’m a keyboard player, you’re a drummer... we all have expertise in each area, but we need everyone to work the groove that we’re trying to work. Q

bdw.colorado.edu