April 2013 > Features > Communication Nation

Communication Nation

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Richard Smith
By Adam Ovenell-Carter
Photography Perry Zavitz

Everything’s going digital

Smith is a driving force behind the changing digital landscape he so often mentions. He’s ahead of the class when it comes to new and digital media, and the head of a class of young minds he hopes can “continue to shape the future.”

Richard Smith and I had a miscommunication.

Setting up this interview, I asked him on a Wednesday when he could meet. “Thursday at 10,” is what he said. The next day, I was waiting in the lobby of the new Centre for Digital Media, only to be told Smith had morning meetings. “Next Thursday,” is what he meant.

Such a mix-up is a rarity with Smith, as he is nothing short of an expert in the world of communication. A professor of communications at Simon Fraser University for more than two decades, Smith knows his trade.
Today, he is head of the growing Master’s of Digital Media (MDM) program at the Great Northern Way Campus – a school that SFU jointly owns with UBC, Emily Carr, and BCIT.

Smith, who recently moved to Vancouver and gave up his Bowen Island commute, is seconded from his position as an SFU professor to take on the new role at the helm of the MDM. He didn’t start the program, but he’s re-tooled it and seen it move into a brand-new building, which opened just this past fall.

The new 51,000-square-foot Centre for Digital Media, which from the outside looks like a mix between a yacht and a log cabin, stands next door to the existing centre on Vancouver’s False Creek Flats, along Great Northern Way. The multi-purpose building, which also houses 76 student-designated apartments, opened on August 20, though the official celebration wasn’t until September 21. It was there, on the correct Thursday, I would eventually meet Smith.

As I step inside, I feel it’s almost like walking into The Matrix. The vortex-patterned carpet is surreal enough to have me watching my step, and makes even the straightforward trek to Smith’s office seem like a bit of a maze.

“There’s a very clear distinction between our program and something like SIAT,” says Smith. “They might start out roughly similar  – students going to class, reading course material – but whereas those programs would end with a thesis, we end with big team projects.”

He leads me past the new project rooms, full of students, pen-in-teeth and nose-to-keyboard. We eventually reach his office, and after sitting down, it takes very little pushing to get Smith gushing about his program’s new building.

“Already, it’s been so great,” he says with a small, smug smile he rarely sheds, for the hour or so we are together.
“This building was built specifically for us, whereas what we were in was a former factory building of sorts that had been converted. It was like what Burnaby Mountain was in the old days – people would show up, go to class, and leave. It was a commuter campus. Now, with the new building and the apartments, it’s so lively. Moving here has been so transformative for the program. Students stay longer, are committed to the space, and are more engaged in their schoolwork.”

That schoolwork is quite unlike anything else you’d find in the country. While the MDM is often blurred with programs at SFU like the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT), Smith is quick to point out the differences.

“There’s a very clear distinction between our program and something like SIAT,” says Smith. “They might start out roughly similar – students going to class, reading course material – but whereas those programs would end with a thesis, we end with big team projects. While theirs is more theory- and research-based, ours is more practised and professional.”

He gives the example of a student who develops a video game, “basically about ending poverty and homelessness.

Richard Smith

“Whether or not he takes too long to make it, or whether anybody likes playing the game, is not so much an issue in those theory-based programs, whereas over here, if no one likes it, if it won’t sell, then what’s the point of making it? We look at the real-world experience of a project.”

And that’s not just for the sake of making a profit. As Smith will tell you, the world is quickly becoming a digital one.

“When you say, ‘Centre for Digital Media,’ well, what kind of media isn’t digital?” he asks. “Why not call it the Centre for Media? I think it may come to that. Everything is digital now; even knitting socks, you can share your patterns online. Everything is powered, enabled, or growing because of it. But, businesses, for example, are still in transition. So by calling ourselves the Centre for Digital Media, we’re talking about the future, and where we’re going. That’s why this program is so important.”

Smith, who first came to SFU as a graduate student of communications in 1983, after completing an undergrad in mass communications at Carleton University, has always been aware of where things are going, and he’s rarely wrong about them.

In the summer of 2006, when a small microblogging service called Twitter popped up, Smith took a chance on it and jumped aboard. As just the 2,179th person to join the social network that now has over 500 million active users, @smith was clearly an early adopter. “I was an early adopter of the Internet, period,” he laughs. “In the early eighties, the Internet barely existed, but you could read about it in magazines. I’d been reading about it, I was excited about it, and when SFU got a connection, I got to be part of the first test run at the university.
“Ever since then, that’s been my thing: to try, to learn, and to understand new technologies,” he says, adding that he almost crashed his Jetta coming off the Bowen Island ferry trying to customize his Facebook URL.
“I had to drive instead of click,” he laughs. “I wouldn’t recommend trying to do both.”

But Smith is a driving force behind the changing digital landscape he so often mentions. He’s ahead of the class when it comes to new and digital media, and he’s the head of a class of young minds he hopes can “continue to shape the future.”

Smith’s original secondment to the MDM is very nearly finished, but he’s signed on for at least another three years so he can continue to tinker with a program he’s seen almost double in size. “After that,” he says, “who knows what’s next? Three years is probably too far into the future to tell.”

As Smith leads me out of the centre after our interview, I can’t help but believe he will stay on after the three years. After all, three years after Smith joined Twitter, the service hit 50 million users. He’s likely on to something; he always is.