Boards presents Boulder Digital Works is a series of educational workshops set to land in cities around the world to educate industry and agency executives in the digital realm, launching in Toronto in April.

The two-and-a-half day intensive course will span creative, technology and business and is aimed at industry professionals who wish to upgrade their digital knowledge in all three fields. The Toronto workshop will be taught by Crispin Porter + Bogusky VP director of technology, Scott Prindle, and Joe Corr, the agency's senior technical lead, with help from six-to-eight supplementary instructors. In a recent piece for Boards' Input blog, Prindle outlined the rise and importance of creative technologists in agencies.

Boulder Digital Works at the University of Colorado offers 21st century graduate education and executive workshops in response to pervasive computing and the need for integrative thinking; it is a project-based initiative led by acclaimed practitioners and researchers from business, creative and technology disciplines, and is designed for those who seek to thrive in today's digital environment and lead tomorrow's innovation.

The first workshop covers a wide spectrum of relevant areas, everything from strategy, interaction design, social media, collaboration and emerging technology. An example of a full list of the course, its breakdown and curriculum, is supplied on the Boulder Digital Works website.

"As rapid technological innovation continues to change the industry, everyone who's in the business of creating and executing advertising and marketing needs, in a sense, to be a technologist," explains Boards executive vice-president Laas Turnbull of where the initiative was born. "That's of course an exaggeration, but it speaks to the fundamental idea that you can't be in the game unless you have the basic skills and language to compete. That's the void we hope to fill through this series."

When asked who Turnbull expected to attend, he said: "Anyone on the agency side - creatives, broadcast producers, account planners, project managers - as well as clients and independent producers."

After the initial workshop in Toronto, the dates for workshops are: San Francisco in May, New York in October, with Amsterdam in March 2011 and further iterations very likely in Brazil and quite possibly London, said Turnbull.

"We're expanding Boulder Digital Works executive education program and making it accessible to the wider industry via this new partnership with Boards," says Boulder Digital Works executive director David Slayden. "Each workshop in the series is very much geared toward audience need. We're constantly researching to identify those needs and then changing and evolving our content to suit. Our first workshop in Toronto in April is structured as an upgrade for creative, marketing and industry professionals. A lot of people need to move from analogue to digital in terms of mindset as well as awareness of what's out there and how to implement it."

"One of our strengths and our strategic plan all along is that we're not really in competition with anyone yet, we're an alternative," said Slayden of how the partnership had come about. "Also, it's because we're new. It's blue ocean strategy, nobody has done something like this and we're continuing to respond, refine and change. We have a global growth plan through affiliation and association. Our strategy aligns well with the University of Colorado's position as a world-class institution. Given the goals of this particular initiative with Boards it's a natural fit: Boulder Digital Works creates content, and Boards produces it."

http://bdw.colorado.edu

Watch out for the series website, launching shortly, for more details.