Tomorrow is my last day of cooking professionally. I've been in the foodservice industry since I was 14, that is 13 years. I start a new job on Wednesday. For the foreseeable future I'll be designing "interactives" for museums, visitor's centers and the like. Here's the good part: Pd got me the job, or at least helped. Thanks to my interest in Pd, and the help of y'all over the years, I was able to WOW my new associates sufficiently for them to take a chance on me. A large part of my new job will be prototyping multimedia-based exhibits with Pd and arduino.

Now, the interesting part...
Did Pd get you a job? Do YOU use Pd at work? Let's hear it folks.

actually, Pd cost me a job one time! a couple years ago I was interviewing for a video game tester position that was one or two days a week and sounded like a great way to fill in my schedule with some extra cash. unfortunately, since I put all my Pd, programming, and new media work on my resume, they thought I was over qualified, and that I would get bored and quit!

@nestor said:

Do YOU use Pd at work?

yes, but don't tell my boss about it

anyway, congrats with what sounds like a really cool job nestor.

d.

Big congrats mate. That makes me so happy to hear.

Pd has landed me a contract or two in the past, but more to the point .. MUCH more to the point, it has massively influenced my whole career. I never would have developed my theories and examples in procedural audio had I still been working with Csound or something. Pd gave me the productivity to forge ahead and break ground that I would still be stuck programming (trying to work round limitations in other languages, or just debugging it because it's not real time)

Thanks to Miller, the whole developer community and all you guys we have a very enabling thing. I hope it keeps yielding fruits for everyone.

Pd has gotten me some pretty nice marks at uni, and got me into the honours program.

@domien said:

@nestor said:

Do YOU use Pd at work?

yes, but don't tell my boss about it

anyway, congrats with what sounds like a really cool job nestor.

d.

ha ha classic! me too. I have to keep the patch windows in the corner of the screen hidden

Nice one Nestor!

Just how do you get into doing this kind of stuf for a living? I mean I release music, but it doesnt pay the bills. I would LOVE to be somehow involved with using this stuff everyday to earn my dough.

That's great to hear Nestor! Hearing stories like these on this forum is a big thing that keeps me going, though I need to learn to avoid bankrupting myself working on Pd

Pd has gotten me a few jobs at this point, like working on the Moveable Type installaton in the NY Times building was directly because of Pd. Ben Rubin, one of artists, is a long time Max/MSP user. They were using embedded Linux computers and they had heard that Pd ran on Linux. So they asked around to find a Pd person, and found me through a common connection.

.hc

@hans said:

That's great to hear Nestor! Hearing stories like these on this forum is a big thing that keeps me going, though I need to learn to avoid bankrupting myself working on Pd

Pd has gotten me a few jobs at this point, like working on the Moveable Type installaton in the NY Times building was directly because of Pd. Ben Rubin, one of artists, is a long time Max/MSP user. They were using embedded Linux computers and they had heard that Pd ran on Linux. So they asked around to find a Pd person, and found me through a common connection.

.hc

Hans, what about IDMI? I was planning on applying there for the fall until I go the job! Now I guess I can wait to narrow my focus for grad studies.

Congratulations Nestor!!

Great to hear news like this one.

Put the best of your cooking recipes into the interactive installations you are going to make.
Be sure to add a lot of spice and do not forget the salt and pepper.
I don't use Pd at work (no sound in the space) but Pd distributions
have several MB of space on my HD..

Ciao,

Alberto

yes, PD helped land a job doing the same type of work. PD works great in conjunction with Flash and Director using the FlashServer object and XML sockets for audio kiosks.

audio kiosks? care to expound a bit on them, jon2211?

@jon2211;
Good too hear there's someone here that's more experienced than I at this stuff. My predecessor used MAX. I've been thrown into several projects already, using Processing and Pd. I bought the Flash missing manual this weekend, so I'm gonna start learning that(actionscript too) ASAP. Any other pointers?

@sunji
Some of the kiosks have been 8 track mixers. I start off 8 audio tracks at the same time and route the outputs to a stereo mix. Using a MIDI mixer (BCF2000) I control each audio tracks volume before it goes to the stereo mix down that the user hears in headphones.

In one kiosk I use the audio output levels to control Director based VU animations.

I also used PD in conjunction with vvvv to do a live foley interactive. Pd recorded a sound wave while vvvv showed the video, then pd trigger a synced playback of the two files.

Stuff like that.

If interested, the museum I work at is EMP|SFM in Seattle (empsfm.org)

@nestor
feel free to hit me up for flash help - I suggest going ahead and learning Actionscript 3.0, it is much faster than AS2
also, somewhere in the forums i posted some flash examples (they are as2, I am just starting AS3 myself)

I wonder if anyone else has been employed, thanks to Pd, since nestor's post.

This is a very inspiring post for newbies to PD like me who are trying to find time to learn after a long day at work. Been working drudge jobs for more than 4 years and it would be good to transfer to another more creative line of work once I get the skills.

Finally pd has got me a job. And although it covers just a very little percentage of my income, it's a job. We're doing school performances to demonstrate the capabilities (and joys) of making music with three laptops. You can check it out here : http://www.domxh.net/ctrlaltdel/index.htm .

It's nice to see that all the effort i've put in pd sofar have lead to some financial revenue, although i was totally addicted to and happy with pd when i wasn't making a cent with it.

pd got me unemployed :/
but its ok, it was boring me anyway...

I would love to get a job with pd? and all so I am a artist

Hey, good to see this thread is still alive. I've been too busy (with work, ironically) to keep up with the forum. Check out my employer's website if you want: Monadnock Media.

Some of the things i've gotten in over my head on are:

1. many actionscript/flash based interactives
2. Database-driven media applications
3. massively ambitious electro-mechanical human interfaces.

I've used Pd quite a bit for prototyping, especially for OSC/TUIO and serial communications. Still my go-to 'sketchpad'. Did some recent sound design work with Pd and reason.

I am also VERY pleased to announce that after 2.5 years of being the sole hardcore-geek here, we are hiring me an assistant! I'll make another post regarding this; cheers!

Put PD or Max/Msp on your resume it will help.