Chris Boebel is Media Development Director at MIT Open Learning. He oversees media production for MIT learning initiatives, and investigates the use of emerging media forms in teaching and learning. He is the writer/director of many short films and videos and three feature films, including Exit Zero: An Industrial Family Story. His work has screened at more than 50 film festivals, including the Sundance Film Festival, and has received many awards including a New England Emmy.

Christine Walley is Professor of Anthropology at MIT. She is the author of Exit Zero: Family and Class in Post-Industrial Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and producer and co-writer of a documentary film Exit Zero: An Industrial Family Story (2017) along with Chris Boebel. More recently, she is Director of the Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project (sechicagohistory.org). Chris would like to thank Faye Ginsburg and NYU’s Culture and Media Program for inspiration in how to think about media.

Wyatt Roy You could call me a Narrative Technologist, or a multimedia Story Designer. But it may be easier to use fluid verbs instead of obscure nouns. I make stories. I use my hands, my eyes, and my computer to do it. I put some of them up here. The rest live on youtube, vimeo, XR headsets, and out in the world on walls, bodies, and stages.

I like to invent new ways to create and share immersive stories. My VR narratives capture and communicate nuanced human characters, the spaces in which we live, and the emotions embedded in our memories. In 2021 I founded Maku XR, an indie game studio. We make highly polished virtual reality experiences. In 2013 I co-founded Maku, a boutique creative agency, specializing in filmmaking and photography.

Sasha Goldberg is a software developer and former video editor, who enjoys working on socially conscious projects. She has deeply enjoyed working on mulitple projects for Chris and Chris over the years, including several semesters of this course. Her current focus is on open source software.