D23 Expo - WDI 60th: Craft of Creativity

On Sunday there were a series of Walt Disney Imagineering (WDI) panels celebrating their 60th Anniversary. The third panel of the day started at 1:00pm and featured Chris Montan leading a conversation with Imagineers Tom Fitzgerald, Eric Jacobson, Daniel Jue, Joe Lanzisero, Kathy Mangum, and Joe Rohde on the Craft of Creativity.

Geeks Thoughts/Observations:
The challenge with large panels like this is usually either one or two people respond to most of the questions or they all get such a brief time you really do not get to hear from all of them. Chris tried to get everyone involved but given the 45 min or so discussion it was a challenge. The format for the event was a brief video at the beginning, introductions of the panel, then they talked about creativity and leadership at WDI and then they took a couple of questions from the audience.

A couple notes from the panel discussion (I was taking pictures and video so these are brief):

• Joe Rohde - Was very outspoken on this panel. He shared his thoughts on creativity and the first step which is to define the core /fundamental idea then everything flows from there. He also explained his thoughts on budget constraints and how they are not the root of all evil but a necessity and fact of live. They are a factor but he does not have a problem with them. Later he went on to talk about how you need to figure out the idea is about this. He views his role as a creative lead as multifaceted but two key elements are to defend and protect your project and team. He views himself as a honey bee moving between the various components of the team to keep everything moving along. During the Q&A someone asked him about the Yeti at Animal Kingdom and after explaining how complex the system is and hard it is to work on due to its location in the building he went out on a limb and swore he would someday find a fix for the Yeti!
  
  
• Eric Jacobson - At age 16 Eric auditioned for a parade and got the role of a Christmas Tree. Before it started he was "promoted" to be the rare half of an elephant in the Jungle Book segment of the parade. The next year he was the front of the lead elephant and he kept moving up from there. Eric attended USC - FIGHT ON!
  
  
• Tom Fitzgerald - Worked at Walt Disney World one summer. He attended Northwestern but was accepted to USC film school. He then drove out west to California with a model of a Winnie the Pooh attraction he made. He was hired by Marty Sklar on the condition he would never make another model! He also confirmed he was sub boy in Horizons.
  
  
• Kathy Mangum - Is from southern California and started off in Adventureland stores. Her comment about the experience was they worked maybe half the time and the rest was flirting with the Jungle Cruise skippers.
  

Below are some pictures and a video clips from the presentation: