I was headhunted by the international consulting firm Korn Ferry. They pinged me through LinkedIn and asked if I might be interested in the opportunity to be the founding director of the yet-to-be-created Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln – I said “hell yes!”… won the gig and moved half-way around the world!
The Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts is made possible by a $20M gift from the Johnny Carson Foundation, and represents a $57M investment (to-date!) from the Carson Foundation, the University and other partners. It’s truly the only interdisciplinary Center of its kind – filled with storytellers, filmmakers, artists, technologists, world-builders, data-scientists, and tinkerers. We are a community of experts in truly ‘emergent’ new fields such as Virtual and Extended Reality, Virtual Production and Real-Time Filmmaking, Spatial Audio, Speculative Design, Immersive Design, Data Science, Creative AI, and Human Computer/Human Robot Interaction as well as forecasting and scenario planning the future for companies, products and services that may shape policy and governance.
Like any start-up, we are literally building the plane as we’re flying it.
In two and a half years we had to design and build a building, design and create a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Emerging Media Arts, hire faculty and staff, and recruit our first cohort of students (magicians, wizards and pirates all). Three years later we have our first graduates! We do things fast here.
We’re now in the midst of launching our Design Innovation Core – an arts and technology-based research center which will enable industry and partners from all over the world to collaborate and engage with us.
In our vision of the future, the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts is the premier destination in the world for creative pioneers who use technology to innovate, to solve human-scale problems, to engage audiences and to tell breathtaking stories that stimulate, provoke and inspire.
A couple of fun facts about me? I’m originally from Oz and have lived and worked in over 14 countries and 25 cities throughout the world.
If I had five minutes to prepare an hourlong lecture, I’d start with asking the audience the best questions. I never learn a thing while I’m talking.
Interested in learning more about me and my work? I invite you to check out the following links:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/meganelliott/