By Brandon Fiksel
On a Tuesday night this past February, Johns Hopkins’ Digital Media Center (DMC) was relatively quiet. Fifteen minutes before an iOS app development workshop was scheduled to begin, the only audible sounds were a couple off-shift student workers talking in low voices near the check-out counter and the muted sounds of video games filtering in from the center’s computer lab. Cute ‘CubeCraft’ paper cutouts of characters from V for Vandetta, Dragon Ball Z and Portal 2 decorated the walls, and 3-D printed trinkets, including a hefty ‘Poké Ball,’ lay scattered across a table. At 6 p.m., students began shuffling into the computer lab for the workshop taught by DMC Multimedia Specialist and professional artist Benjamin Andrew.

The DMC, located on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University, is a multimedia lab space dedicated to helping students explore creative uses of emerging media and technology to better communicate their ideas. Along with providing students with access to professional-grade software related to creative and artistic endeavors, the DMC offers a series of hands-on workshops each semester. These workshops teach students how to use the different software, hardware and equipment available for use within the center, as well as tips and techniques involving particular disciplines or mediums, such as audio editing or writing film proposals.

Erica Schwarz, a Student Staff member of the DMC, emphasized the importance of this hands-on lab coaching.

“[The DMC’s workshop program] gets people in touch with technology that they wouldn’t normally use. In that sense, it really breaks the technological boundary,” she said, taking a break from busily sketching on a Cintiq pen tablet at the center’s front lab.

During the iOS workshop, students received detailed instructions on how to build smartphone apps using two different programs: XCode, a traditional text-based coding program, and iOS Simulator, a more visual ‘storyboard’ program reminiscent of Microsoft PowerPoint, with blocky shapes and drag-and-drop inputs.

“The beauty of this workshop is there’s some code, but also some ‘not-code’,” Andrew, the instructor, said, once the students had taken their seats behind the large, sleek computer screens of the lab.

Over the course of the next two hours, Andrew introduced the students to the complex world of app design by guiding them through building a couple of bare-bones Apple apps using the two different types of coding programs. For the first app, “Hello World,” the students learned how to code a simple input-output message, where a name that a user enters into a textbox is utilized in a ‘Hello World’ message. The second app that the students programmed, “DMC Gear Browser” was designed to help a user preview some of the electronic equipment available for use at the DMC. The students created multiple pages, including images, for each piece of gear, and designed an app that would allow easy navigation through the inventory.

Andrew’s approach to the workshop relaxed and open. When students encountered problems in their coding, he worked with them one-on-one to resolve the issues.

Ali Afshar, a graduate student in attendance that evening, said he appreciated the chance to interact with the instructor. This wasn’t his first experience with DMC workshops, and in part it was the one-on-one attention that kept him coming back.

“[I believe] in personal interaction… If questions come up, you can just ask,” he said.

Andrew also managed to keep the workshop humorous and entertaining.

“We could call this label ‘snowdrift taco,’” Andrew said, while walking the students through putting in a test text label for the first time in one of the apps.

At the end of the workshop, Andrew encouraged students to stop by the DMC with any coding questions they may encounter in the future.

While the high-tech equipment available at the DMC can be intimidating, staff members counter it with a casual and “weird, interdisciplinary” environment that Andrew described as feeling like “working for an interesting startup company.”

The app development event was just one of many workshops that the DMC put on this past spring. In any given semester, the DMC offers an unusual and fascinating array of these kinds of events, including building contact microphones, soldering and using LED lights. Andrew listed these “maker projects,” in which students physically make something – such as LED light Valentine’s Day cards – as among the most popular workshops.

The variety of workshops available embodies the DMC’s potential to affect all of Hopkins’ different departments and programs, Andrew said.

“I think a big part of the DMC is bringing in a creative, artistic approach to those different schools,” he said.

Joan Freedman, director of the DMC, agreed that the center’s resources are applicable to all Hopkins students.

“We…started out with the concept that we wanted to make media, and media communications, available to everybody on campus regardless of major,” she said of the DMC’s founding 14 years ago.

While the high-tech equipment available at the DMC can be intimidating, staff members counter it with a casual and “weird, interdisciplinary” environment that Andrew described as feeling like “working for an interesting startup company.”

Indeed, first-year graduate student Tanvi Shroff, who regularly attends and enjoys the workshops, thought the workshops were absolutely accessible to all skill levels. Shroff confessed she first found the DMC when she was walking around campus and got lost, stumbling into ‘game night’, where she and her friends ended up playing Assassin’s Creed. It was then that she realized the DMC was a pretty cool place, and she found out about the workshops through the website.

“I don’t know anywhere else where you can just be like ‘I want to do this thing!’ and then have someone sit there and walk you through every step of the way—that’s a pretty unique service that we offer.”

“They are very chill. [Multimedia Specialist Graham Coreil-Allen] is very approachable, and he’s also enthusiastic to teach, so that makes me appreciate the setting of the workshop,” she said. Even though she is “pretty technically challenged,” the workshops provided a place where she could “just ask ridiculous questions” and not be judged.

Shroff also cited the DMC’s acknowledgement of their limitations as one of their most appealing features. They provide resources and a network in which they can connect you to someone who can help if they cannot, she said. She also personally suggested the DMC obtain a 3-D printing program, Rhino, and said she has been in correspondence with Coreil-Allen in order to make that a reality.

Despite the DMC’s manifold resources, Andrew pointed out that not everyone makes use of them.

“Every year we get seniors who come in here and have never heard of the DMC,” he said, and he encourages more students to take advantage of center’s workshops and resources. “I don’t know anywhere else where you can just be like ‘I want to do this thing!’ and then have someone sit there and walk you through every step of the way—that’s a pretty unique service that we offer.”

Though workshop attendance can be sporadic—Shroff said sometimes it would be just her and two friends she dragged along—student and faculty outreach is a priority for the DMC, according to Freedman.

“As long as I can make sure people are aware of all the tools that they might be able to use for a particular task, and how to use those tools to enhance any communication—whether it’s personal, professional, entrepreneurial [or] recreational—we’re happy to direct all of our energies toward that,” she said. “That is the main…goal for the workshop, and I think we meet it pretty well.”

In terms of what could be improved regarding the workshops, Shroff recommended the DMC have a recap of “a couple cool” workshops, for students who could not attend due to scheduling conflicts. Overall, she just wanted to see more students taking advantage of the workshop opportunities.

“I feel like [the DMC] can definitely work on putting themselves out there a little more, and having more people attend.”

Digital Media Center workshops are held weekdays from 6-8 p.m. More information, including a complete workshop schedule, can be found at www.digitalmedia.jhu.edu.