Flashback to Helsinki's virtual world
On April 1st, FACTS, Belgium's biggest Comic Con event at Flanders Expo Ghent, kicked off. FACTS is one of the biggest pop culture, comics, sci-fi and gaming events in Europe and attracts thousands of visitors every year. The start of FACTS lets us remember and look back at one of our previous events back in November 2022: The Game Hub Meeting and Slush 2022 in Helsinki.
The Game Hub meeting - Helsinki
The Game Hub meeting is an annual event where Future Media Hubs (FMH) members gather to network, attend workshops and social events. Last year, the event was co-hosted by the Helsinki XR Centre and Yle and took place in Helsinki. During this strategic meeting, Game Hub members had the opportunity to meet each other, including EBU, VRT, RAI, RTE, Epic Games, Nvidia, Respeecher and Radical. They held this strategic meeting to get inspiration by seeing how others are doing things like ‘how to secure a safe online environment?’, ‘how to facilitate their work using AI?’ and so on. Another reason why the strategic meeting was held, was to start possible collaborations to save costs. They also talked about ways to improve their current collaborations and connections with the newest tools in the gaming industry. They discovered several new opportunities there such as documenting their work and working on specific topics such as virtual productions, hosting real-life events and workshops, making collaboration easier and discussing trends.
A highlight of the trip was a workshop, given by Epic Games, about Unreal Engine, a powerful game engine used for real-time rendering in various industries including games, film, architecture and automotive visualization. The workshop inspired Future Media Hubs and the Game Hub to further explore the potential of Unreal Engine for storytelling in different media and for making connections for future projects. It also allowed them to experience the workflow of Epic Games. Furthermore, since a prominent company in the game industry organized the workshop, it immediately also connected the media players directly to the industry.
Next up were two other visits to top gaming companies in Helsinki: ZOAN, an international company active in the virtual manufacturing and metaverse landscape, and Match XR, an exhibition of VR games created by students and companies at University Metropolia. While ZOAN ensured that media players were literally connected to companies in the game industry that provide virtual productions, Match XR gave a look into the latest technologies and collaboration opportunities.
Slush 2022
Slush, the world’s leading startup event, brings thousands of people together to share knowledge, network and collaborate. The event provides a platform for startups as well as entrepreneurs, investors and journalists to showcase their ideas and connect with the right people to turn those into reality. Slush also brought the FMH network together with other leading companies and speakers from the tech industry. The event included presentations and panel discussions on topics such as AI, blockchain and sustainability, as well as an Audio Networking Event in collaboration with FIT, Yle, Storytek and The Exit Academy. With Future Media Hubs’ Audio Networking Event, the focus was on audio. New technologies were presented during the keynote and startup pitches and the panel even explored the possibilities of the future European audio landscape. One of the biggest takeaways is that the way people are listening, is changing. For example there is a major shift to video podcasting. Find out more about this and the rest of the Audio Networking Event at Slush 2022 in this article.
What have we learned?
With this visit to Helsinki and Slush, Future Media Hubs was able to gain new insights on innovative technologies and collaboration opportunities. The focus was on innovative projects (metaverse, virtual productions, real-time CG animation, etc.) and this brought insights on how media partners operate in a rapidly changing technological and innovative landscape and what they can learn from it. Furthermore, new connections were made, specifically within the game industry. The media industry often faces problems that the game industry can help with. Hence, Slush and the Game Hub meeting in Helsinki were an important link here to facilitate collaborations.
