Re: XSI Hiring

[Andy Hayes <andyh(at)al.com.au>]

Educational facilities still have to pay for licenses - ok not full 
blown production amounts - but you'd be suprised how much it all adds up 
to if the Uni has to support multiple courses with multiple OS and 
applications. It goes without saying that you'd also need staff to 
support and teach all of these applications - the lure of industry 
sometimes makes staffing levels hard to maintain and if you don't have 
the right expertise then applications may have to be changed. You also 
need to maintain and purchase machines and servers powerful enough to 
keep up with the job...

You also have to consider that some courses/programmes are also housed 
under general schools so the propogation of fees may not be as straight 
forward as perceived -e.g. the course has to probably support the 
additonal costs of developing new courses in the school, supporting 
under achieving courses, cost of school admin, etc. In that respect, it 
becomes inefficient to have every software application under the sun 
housed on every students machine for the sake of it.

At the end of the day, Uni's dont ask for a lot of cash generally, so 
every penny has to count. I must point out though, that whilst I was at 
Bournemouth, Softimage were always very supportive and helpful in these 
aspects :)


Ben Barker wrote:

> XSI was installed at SCAD as well, but for some reason my last 
> semester it just disappeared from the computers, along with a bunch of 
> other software. I can't think of any reason why, there were even 
> professors pushing to get it back. The SCAD people who learned XSI all 
> got jobs. I don't understand their reasoning. I hope they keep Houdini 
> and Renderman classes and don't turn into yet another Maya training 
> facility. IMO anything that makes a student's resumé stand out from a 
> crowd helps them.
>
> On 9/5/06, *Steven Caron* <carons(at)gmail.com <mailto:carons(at)gmail.com>> 
> wrote:
>
>     I kinda agree... I am still a student technically, although i am
>     employed in the industry. My school teaches Maya and had 1 XSI
>     class as an elective. thats all i needed, but other people need
>     more. i actually talked with a friend thats still at school and he
>     informed me that class is no longer available. i tried very very
>     hard to get XSI accepted at that school while i was there, but the
>     right people were not biting.
>
>     i dont think though that its just this one thing. there needs to
>     be schools teaching XSI but also recognized projects/work done
>     with XSI as Lu pointed out and when a project starts and they need
>     to ramp up, their needs to be that talent pool as Todd pointed
>     out. we both of these in my opinion, and as someone else pointed
>     out its a catch22.
>
>     later
>     steven
>     guy who just repeats what everyone just said :)
>
>
>     On 9/5/06, *takita* <takita(at)earthlink.net
>     <mailto:takita(at)earthlink.net>> wrote:
>
>         Joe Laffey wrote:
> > Saturating the educational market is key, if you ask me. And
>         not just
> > Foundation. Get them using Advanced. Giving software away (or
>         very
> > cheap) to people who would never buy it anyway (like schools
>         who might
> > look at Maya/max, etc.) doesn't cost anything (charge for
>         support if
> > they want it), but it helps expand XSI a lot.
>         I'd agree with you 100% here.  I think that getting XSI more
>         deeply
>         embedded in the curriculm is key to increasing the userbase.  Most
>         schools simply don't offer it as an option and until it is I
>         think we'll
>         continue to have these problems with a critical mass in the
>         workforce.
>
>         You can say "well, just train them", but there's also a ratio of
>         experienced people to newbies that needs to be maintained, and
>         oftentimes on-the-job training is simply not an option when a
>         large
>         projects hits and it needs to be staffed and started immediately.
>
>         But I think a lot of it depends on what happens in the
>         education field,
>         if you sow the seeds for that now then you will see the fruits
>         of it
>         down the road.
>
>         -T
>
>
>
>
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>
>
>
> --
> Ben Barker
> Hair/Fur
> Omation 



--
+===================+
Andy Hayes
VFX TD - Animal Logic
Tel:  +61 2 9383 4128
+===================+


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