City man takes helm of VR association
MIKE MCCREADY HAS 19 YEARS EXPERIENCE IN NEW MEDIA
Earlier this year, he brought conference participants from 86 cities around the world to Lethbridge — without having to leave their homes.
Now Mike McCready is leading an Alberta-wide organization that aims to make those kinds of virtual reality opportunities more widely available.
A Lethbridge College faculty member with 19 years of experience in the world of new media, McCready has been named Alberta chapter president in the of international Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality Association.
An instructor in the college’s multimedia production program, McCready coordinated the Merging Realities virtual reality and augmented reality conference presented by the college earlier this year.
While preparing to meet new and returning students in the fall, McCready is excited to be part of a group working to link all of Alberta’s VR/AR designers and developers. There are clusters in Calgary and Edmonton, he says, but Lethbridge College is Alberta’s only post-secondary campus currently involved.
Looking further afield, he cites the British Columbia Institute of Technology in Burnaby and Humber College in metro Toronto as places where students and teachers are linked with the organization. Globally, he adds, the organization has members in more than 50 nations.
McCready has been teaching basic VR game design, but he points out the college’s communications arts and interior design students are making use of the technology as well.
For the fall, he adds, there’s a proposal to offer the public a no-credit continuing education course to expand southern Albertans’ awareness of its possibilities.
As the Alberta president, he’s also looking at bringing VR/AR people together physically, possibly to events in Lethbridge and Calgary.
“They could talk and share and collaborate,” he says.
“And they could also showcase the amazing work being done in Alberta,” and attract investors who could help take it to the next level.
As someone who has invested plenty of his time — but not his money — in developing the field, McCready hopes he’ll be able to spur more collaboration between Albertans who are interested in developing the industry.
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