Dogtown Media Tackles Tech Education with Jikei University

In a continuation of Dogtown Media’s commitment to tech education, CEO Marc Fischer accepted an invitation last week to speak with visiting students from Tokyo’s Jikei University.

During the talk, Fischer touched on the startup industry, the many ways that tech is re-shaping the international world, and how it has enabled students of this generation to shape their careers in ways that were simply not possible in the past. Bringing your passions and ideas to life in the form of tech startups is a universal dream for technologists and designers worldwide. For Jikei students, this was the best possible place to get a taste of the app development dream.

To that end, Fischer also collaborated with some other Los Angeles iPhone app developers to conduct an app ideation workshop with the group, getting a glimpse at the possibilities for the next generation of tech in Japan.

Fischer’s app ideation workshop is a particularly powerful experience for students who, like those attending Jikei, are specialized in a specific technical discipline but new to the idea of building a “brand” around their own app ideas. During the project, each student got an introduction to the basics of building an app brand, the fundamentals of design thinking, and the chance to collaborate on teams in a setting similar to that of an early-stage startup.

Students also got some hands-on experience with a variety of app development stages, including mockups, sketching, and wireframing their ideas for the creation of semi-functional prototypes. While the results were varied (and often a bit tongue-in-cheek), one value was clearly on display from Jikei University: creativity. These are some app developers we’ll be keeping an eye on.