Labour Market Information for Career Decision Making

New Media: An Illustration of Finding LMI for Emerging Occupations

New media or multimedia has already captured the imagination of telephone, cable television, communication and entertainment companies, and has created a vastly changing multi-billion dollar world of digital convergence where computer graphics, text, video film and sound merge on the desktop. The use of real-time broadcasting of events, courses, seminars, movies, and news shows is growing in business, education and the entertainment industry. But, neither "multimedia specialist," "Web master" nor "Web caster" is listed in the traditional job indexes of the NOC manual. The Cultural Human Resource Council speaks of the emerging area in Careers in Culture, The Interactive Zone: careers in new media.

Futurists are predicting that our three most powerful technologies - the telephone, television and computer - will merge into one "media appliance" that will be inexpensive and available to everyone. In this future, people will be empowered in ways they never imagined before. Think about interactive television movies where you, the viewer, push a button and determine the final outcome of the plot. Or consider a political debate in real-time where you, the watcher, can indicate your opinion on every statement just by clicking your mouse. No one knows what's going to happen when these three technologies merge, but everyone agrees about one thing - we're going to witness incredible changes in how we live, work, shop and use our leisure time. (HRDC, Cultural Human Resource Council, http://www.culturalhrc.ca, 1998.)

The next part of this section is a compilation of the information that was found using some of the research options mentioned earlier.

Industry Information

The starting place for this information was the Internet search engine Google^TM. One site, Multimediator in particular, http://www.multimediator.com/dmcg looked promising and on exploration, a list of multimedia books and reports was discovered in The Essentials section. Here, there was a report called Playing to Win: The Digital Media Industry in Ontario, (Digital Media Champion Group, 1998). Following are some interesting facts from the report.

• By 2000, the market for digital media products is expected to be worth US$15 billion (p. vi).
• Ontario is Canada's leader in digital media. The estimated 400 interactive digital media companies operating in the province already employ about 8,000 people and have significant potential for growth (p. vi).
• Digital media's products are unique because they are interactive (pg. 5).
• The use of digital media extends to many industries:
  • interactive banking kiosks;
  • flight simulators used by airlines and the armed forces;
  • virtual caves for product testing of prototypes before the car leaves the drawing board in the automotive industry;
  • virtual training in new practices and procedures in the medical field; and
  • virtual travel destinations in the tourism industry (p. 5).
• The digital media industry includes companies at various stages of development and distribution:
  • companies that develop software used to create digital media;
  • hardware companies that develop the platforms;
  • creative content developers and publishers;
  • digital media distributors; and
  • consumer and corporate markets.
• Most Ontario digital media firms are small- and medium-sized enterprises. Together they employ about 8,000 highly skilled people (p. 7).
• Concentration of digital media companies in Ontario is as follows:
  • 69.7% Toronto;
  • 14.6% Ottawa;
  • 3.4% Kitchener/Waterloo;
  • 2.5% Hamilton;
  • 0.8% London;
  • 0.6% each in Kingston and Belleville; and
  • 8.4% in other areas combined (p. 8).
• Regulatory frameworks, licensing requirements, copyright laws and investment restrictions are important issues to consider for those interested in working in this area (p. 31).

Occupational Profiles

To find information on what one does in a particular job, the sector council that encompasses the field of multimedia, the Cultural Human Resources Council (CHRC), is a good start. Search for CHRC on the HRDC Web site because it is government sponsored or use another search engine such as Google. The CHRC site refers to its resource, The Interactive Zone: careers in new media, Careers in Culture series, which can be obtained in career resource centres or directly from the Cultural Human Resources Council (Appendix G). The resource talks about the types of occupations required to develop an interactive game, design an infotainment CD-ROM or build an educational program. There is a flow chart of occupations with brief descriptions of the main duty of each one. Examples are:

• Interface designer. Determines the look, feel and navigation of a program/Web site.
• Graphic designer/animator. Creates the graphics and layout, creates digital motion for graphics.
• Audio-visual production specialist. Customizes visual, audio, and photographic materials.
• Media co-ordinator. Organizes all production media such as video, audio and graphic design.

Some provincial labour market sites (see Appendix B, Provincial/Regional Job Futures) develop occupational profiles for emerging occupations in the province that may not be in NOC. Alberta Learning Information Service (ALIS) has `Web master' in its profiles, describing duties, work conditions, educational requirements, skills and interests, and values, employment and advancements, and salary.

Education and Training

Phone a community or technical college, or a university and ask for the media program or the IT program. Ask about new media courses and work opportunities for graduates. Or, look on the Internet for a list of colleges and universities and visit their Web sites to see if they have media or computer programs. Find a list at Schoolfinder, http://www.schoolfinder.com or Canlearn Interactive http://www.canlearn.ca.

Once on the college or university websites, find the relevant programs and the program co-ordinators for such programs as:

• Television Broadcasting at Algonquin College in Ontario;
• Computer Animation at Sheridan College in Ontario;
• Multimedia Production at the College of the North Atlantic in Newfoundland; and
• Media Studies at Malaspina University-College in British Columbia.

Then, some in-person interviewing can be done by contacting the co-ordinators and also the graduates of the programs.

In a search for 'Computer Graphics' on the Google site, university computer graphics sites came up and these three Canadian universities were listed with links to their programs:

• University of Alberta, Canada, Department of Computing Science Computer Graphics Research Group, and Computer Vision and Robotics Research Group;
• University of Calgary, Canada Computer Science Department: - Graphics Jungle - Computer Graphics Research Lab and the Biological Modeling and Visualization Research Lab; and
• Simon Fraser University, Canada, School of Computing Science - Graphics and Multimedia Research Group.

Books and Reports

Books on the new media can be found in a library or bookstore or on the multimediator Web site. Following are some examples.

• Careers in Multimedia: Roles and Resources. Hal Josephson and Trisha Gorman. Wadsworth Publishing, 1996.
• Getting Started in Multimedia Design. Gary Olsen. North Light Books, 1997.
• Managing Multimedia: Project Management for Interactive Media. Elaine England and Andy Finney. Addison-Wesley, 1999.
• Writing for New Media: The Essential Guide to Writing for Interactive Media, CD-ROM, and the Web. Andrew Bonime, Ken C. Pohlmann. John Wiley and Sons, 1997.

Employment Resources

The Multimediator site again provided valuable information in the form of a list of multimedia employment resources with a one sentence description of each. Here is an example of some sites to explore for job descriptions, work titles, companies that hire, and sample wages.

• BIG GIGS http://www.keylight.org/biggigs.html Provides corporate jobs for freelancers to bid on.
• BrainBuzz.com http://www.brainbuzz.com IT jobs listed.
• Flashskills.com http://www.flashskills.com Freelance flash developers are listed here.
• Multimediator's Betaville http://www.multimediator.com/betaville Find job postings for the multimedia industry.
• Next Generation - Now Hiring http://www.next-generation.com Video games site with job opportunities listings.
• Positionwatch http://www.positionwatch.com Canadian IT position job board.

New Media Companies

• Look in the yellow pages (hard copy or Internet) under Broadcasting companies, Television Stations, Internet - Web Page Design, Internet - Products and Services, Video Conferencing, Video Production, Video Games - Wholesale and Manufacturers, Digital Imaging and Printing, etc.
• The Multimediator site has a list of Canadian multimedia developers as does New Media B.C.
• Newspaper and magazine articles often mention names of companies. Find the articles in the library, or on the Multimediator site in "Publications," or search the Web sites of newspapers and magazines such as the Globe and Mail and Macleans for archived articles, or search the whole Internet on a search engine such as Google.

The results will include companies to be contacted by phone or fax or to look up on the Intenet such as:

• Digital Wizards Inc. Cambridge, Ontario
• WorkdayTV.com Ontario
• INSINC Burnaby, British Columbia
• MediaSpark IT Solutions Sydney, Nova Scotia
• Minds Eye Interactive Regina, Saskatchewan
• Navigator Multimedia Kelowna, British Columbia
• Overdrive Communications Inc. Montreal, Quebec
• Pro-Play Systems Limited Edmonton, Alberta
• Sonoptic Technolgies Inc. Saint John, New Brunswick

E-mails to some of these companies resulted in replies that offered more specific information and invitations to contact staff by phone with further questions.

Associations and Organizations about New Media

Relevant associations and organizations can be found in the Cultural Human Resource Council booklet, The Interactive Zone: careers in new media in the Careers in Culture series. These booklets can be found in the career resource centres of colleges, high schools and universities. They may also be ordered from the Cultural Human Resources Council. (See Appendix G for contact information.)

For those who go straight to the Internet, a similar list can be found on the site MultiMediator under "The Essentials guide to multimedia associations." Find this site by typing "multimedia Canada" into the Google search engine.

Association for Interactive Media (AIM)
Tel: (202) 408-0008, Fax: (202) 408-0111
E-mail: webmaster@interactivehq.org
Web: http://www.interactivehq.org

Association for Multimedia Communications (AMC)
Tel: (312) 409-1032
E-mail: membership@amcomm.org
Web: http://www.amcomm.org

Computer Game Developers' Association (CGDA)
Tel: (415) 948-CGDA, Fax: (415) 948-2744
E-mail: info@cgda.org
Web: http://www.igda.org/

Digital Media Association of Alberta
Tel: (403) 284-6418, Fax: (403) 912-5672
E-mail: info@DigitalMediaAssociation.com
Web: http://www.albertanewmedia.com

New Media BC
Tel: (604) 739-9878, Fax: (604) 736-7290
E-mail: newmediabc@bc.sympatico.ca
Web: http://www.newmediabc.com

Ontario Digital Media Professionals' Guild
Tel: (800) 465-5190, Fax: (416) 222-1728
E-mail: ck@odmpg.com
Web: http://www.odmpg.com

Quebec Association of Multimedia Producers (APMQ)
Tel: (514) 845-5115, Fax: (514) 879-8701
E-mail: info@apmq.org
Web: http://www.apmq.org

Saskatchewan New Media Developers Association (SNMDA)
Tel: (306) 790-8427, Fax: (306) 791-6140
E-mail: snmda@snmda.sk.ca
Web: http://www.snmda.sk.ca

Although emerging occupations are difficult to find in the traditional occupational profile locations, it is possible for a motivated searcher to gather quite a lot of information. The Internet, people who actually work in the field, career sections in newspapers, media and technology news in magazines, and educational institutions can all be sources of up-to-date information.