by Chris Loeber

Contributing Writer

In media production, collaboration is as important as skill. For example, a musician who wants to shoot a music video might work with filmmakers but may first want audio engineers to record the music in a studio designed by acousticians and built by a general contractor on the dime of studio executives.

Columbia educates 11,138 undergraduates in 19 different academic programs as of fall 2011, according to colum.edu—but the college has not yet incorporated a way for like-minded students to easily collaborate on projects across these departments.

ColumCollab, a student organization that advocates interdisciplinary collaboration, is working to change that.

“To a certain degree, this ‘urban environment of creative arts’ is part of what is being sold to us as Columbia students,” said Zachary Berinstein, senior music major and president of ColumCollab. “A lot of our members feel like that is not being realized to its full potential.”

Berinstein formed the idea for the organization with several other students in November 2010, he said, noting that ColumCollab was not officially recognized by the college until this semester.

“I had a team of six or seven folks,” Berinstein said. “We were not officially recognized then, but [I] and students from other departments would meet with three or four different faculty members around campus every week and say, ‘Hey, here is what we are doing, here is what we would like to do and here are some opportunities that we see within your department.’”

ColumCollab has three main goals. The first is to create a website where Columbia students can easily connect to collaborate on projects, Berinstein said.

He has been working with Dirk Matthews, executive director of the Portfolio Center, to implement features that would foster interdisciplinary student connections via the Talent Pool website. The site can be found at Talent.Colum.edu and is designed to display work samples posted by Columbia students, as reported by The Chronicle on Sept. 15.

ColumCollab’s dialogue with the Portfolio Center has led to an additional feature that Berinstein hopes will be incorporated into Talent Pool before he graduates in May 2012—a forum where students can share their opportunities for cross-discipline collaboration.

“We just want to make it super easy—like, easier than breathing—to find people to connect with,” Berinstein said. “That is the next step for Talent Pool.”

ColumCollab’s second goal is to “hard-wire collaboration into the curriculum of Columbia,” Berinstein said.

He said he would like to see the creation of a part- or full-time staff position dedicated to keeping track of interdepartment collaboration opportunities and making sure that they are brought to the attention of students in the appropriate disciplines.

“Why is it that the Film [and Video] Department is across the street from the theatre building, [but] there is not an Acting III class shaking hands with a Directing II class and saying, ‘Hey, let’s introduce each other so now we have these opportunities [to collaborate]?’” Berinstein said.

ColumCollab intends to host events across campus to highlight student collaboration, which it has already done several times in cooperation with other Columbia student organizations.

Mike Else, a deejay known as Professor Kliq and senior music major, hosted an event on Nov. 28 to raise awareness for Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that offers an alternative to traditional copyright law by offering a degree of variation between the public domain and copyrighted materials.

Else said by licensing his work under Creative Commons, he has been able to work with other artists he would have otherwise never met.

The license he uses, one of several offered by Creative Commons, allows others to use his music for their own purposes, as long as they contact him first and agree to release their work under the same license.

“When I say that I give my work out for free, it bothers a lot of people,” Else said. “My argument is always, ‘Yeah, but what are you doing instead?’”

Casey Gold, senior arts, entertainment and media management major, is an avid supporter of ColumCollab. He also hosts an event known as C3 Networking once per semester, which he describes as “speed-dating for networking.”

Each C3 Networking event features a professional from the Chicago area as a guest speaker.

“We sit four students per table and they get [two] minutes to share their skill sets and then they have to switch,” Gold said. “One of the key messages of every speaker [is] that you need an ‘elevator speech.’”

Gold, who will be graduating at the end of this semester, said he will pass leadership of the C3 Networking event to Berinstein.

“Zack has done a fantastic job of bringing new students together and continuing the message of the C3 Networking event year-round,” Gold said. “I am very excited to be handing it off to him when I graduate.”

For more information on ColumCollab, contact Zachary Berinstein at ColumCollab@loop.colum.edu.