Crashing Hard in KMD Crash Course

Dear Reader,

If you’re planning on joining the KMD program, prepare yourself for the awesome intensity that is the Crash Course. Boy, what a way to start school! They really just throw you right into it, and you need to be quick on your toes to make it work. You’ll definitely feel “crashed” afterwards, as they say. In all seriousness though, this 3 day intensive does give you a good taste of what’s to come.

Professor Kai Kunze and M2 student Phoenix Spaulding feelin’ good! Photo by Marcel Ferragi

The People

All of the professors attend this retreat, which is supposedly one of the only times that everyone is together. This gives anyone who attends a great opportunity to get a feeling for their different personalities and interests, which can help when deciding what Real Project to get involved with.

Many graduate students who enrolled in an earlier semester also join the Crash Course, and talking with them is your best opportunity to get an idea of the program from a student’s perspective. They will tell you the more pragmatic perspective compared to the professors who will mostly only shower you with rose colored aspects of their individual projects.

The Workshops

Another aspect that gives you some perspective are the workshops that fill up the entire day. They work you nonstop besides breaks for food. You even get a chance to go through many major aspects of content design and implementation. Over the course of the workshops we built a PC, designed a city, conceptualized and made a product prototype, and pitched our prototype to “investors” (i.e., some professors). They even threw in some curveballs and twists along the way, but I won’t discuss them here. It wouldn’t be any fun for you if you knew what to expect!

creating an Embodied version of a star network system. Photo by Marcel Ferragi

I was part of team Good Vibes, and we designed a futuristic city called UniCity in 2025 the will act as a hub for international collaboration to promote intercultural and global understanding. We envisioned a time in Japan where someone could take a stroll through any place in the world to get a real sense of “being there” in that city or country. In my experience, travelling outside of my own American bubble opened my eyes to the vast amount of ways that humans can live. It also put my own lifestyle and culture into perspective, whereas I once thought that the American way was the “best” or “only” way to really live. My team and I wanted others to be able to experience these sort of revelations that will be necessary as we interact increasingly more with other cultures.

Hi Kimi 😛

Next we made a prototype of a cafe in UniCity that served foods from all of the world. The catch is that with augmented reality (AR) technology, we could recreate a real scene from anywhere in the world for visitors to experience. With the sights and sounds of, say, Morocco all around and delicious Moroccan cuisine served fresh to order, this cafe would induce a real idea for what it might be like to travel there. The best part is that it would be cheap enough for anyone to visit, not just those with enough time and money to have the luxury of international travel. I believe this type of cafe will be something people really do in the not far off future.

My team, minus me! Photo by Marcel Ferragi

Pitching the idea to an investor was by far the most challenging aspect for me. Public speaking is not all the new to me as I taught a few classes in college and represented the Brain, Mind, and Consciousness Society at UCSC in many public events as the president. However, with these pitches we only had twenty minutes to come up them, which means I had almost no time to prepare. And I’m terrible at improv, so I can’t think of things on the spot. This made me unconfident and nervous during the pitch, and I did a horrible job. However, it was a first step! I’ll make it there one day (I hope). This program provides a great opportunity to step out of the comfort zones that we all have.