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SALT LAKE CITY -- Each time you watch TV, go online or play your favorite video game, you use digital media. The industry has a good history in Utah and continues to create jobs.
A two-day Pushbutton Summit at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in Salt Lake City aims to push the industry to new innovations and more jobs. It's the first of what organizers at Growth Utah Ventures hope will be many such events.
The industry has a good history in Utah and continues to create jobs. Steve Roy, a director for the Utah Science, Technology and Research Initiative -- or USTAR -- says Utah could be the digital media industry's best-kept secret.
"The state has a legacy of digital media," Roy says. "Graphics, animations, simulations -- and it's kind of been under the cover, so to speak, in terms of, most people are not aware of it."
When we talk about business sectors generating jobs for economic recovery, technology is always near the top, and digital media is a booming component. Think of the synthesis and collaboration of computer science and art.
Roy pointed to special effects work done in Utah on the TV show "Pushing Daisies" and the movies "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" and "Race to Witch Mountain" -- as well as Xbox Live programming produced out of Provo and Orem -- as evidence of Utah's impact on digital media.
We have the talent, we have the infrastructure, we have the companies. You can do business here at a much more cost-effective basis without losing any of the quality, so why not?
–Steve Roy, USTAR director
"Nobody seems to recognize in the state that we have all these," Roy laments, "and we're doing so much research and education on these programs that we wanted to pull things together to kind of publicize, internal to the state and external, ‘Look! Come to Utah.' We have the talent, we have the infrastructure, we have the companies. You can do business here at a much more cost-effective basis without losing any of the quality, so why not?"
If you use the Internet, Fusion IO already improves your Web experience: It allows the streaming of multiple channels of HD video. If you're a business, Fusion IO speeds up data storage so you can serve customers faster and put more content online.
David Flynn, Chief Technical Officer of Fusion IO, said, "Whether you know about Fusion IO or not, you've been using us, because Facebook, MySpace, Google, large Internet properties are already using the product."
IO Memory replaces 600 hard drives: It's a new type of memory for servers. Their customers: data centers, Web servers, MySpace, FedEx, the Department of Defense and the Stock Exchange.
"Even if we take user experience off the table, what this does is allow companies to use fewer servers to get the same amount of workload," Flynn said.
That saves money and power.
Flynn is a BYU grad who co-founded his company in Salt Lake County four years ago. Today he employs 200 and expects to double that number in the next two years.
"There's a talent pool that goes very deep," he said.
More than 400 industry leaders, entrepreneurs and students worked together at the summit to accelerate growth in the industry. Digital animation, gaming, mobile distribution, Web development and movies already create jobs.
Co-founder and co-owner of Adobe software John Warnock says it's time to show digital media companies outside of Utah what the Beehive state has to offer.
"Utah's a fertile ground," he says. "It's got a good, good educated populace."
Warnock says government has a role to play in keeping Utah attractive to businesses so they will want to come here.
"It's really up to how well Utah can build that support group and get the ideas seeded and funded and followed through," Warnock says.
"We have digital media here in Utah. It's green jobs, it's high-paying jobs," Roy said. "These are the kinds of jobs we want to attract and grow."
Grow Utah Ventures' Pushbutton Summit is going on Tuesday and Wednesday at the Rose Wagner Theatre, located at 138 West 300 South in Salt Lake City.
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Story compiled with contributions from Jed Boal and Becky Bruce.
