Jellyvision: Harry Gottlieb

Harry Gottlieb

Founded Jellyvision in 1989. The company had a different name then and the international headquarters was in his bedroom, in the corner, over by the closet. Around 1993, he programmed a little trivia game where the host read off all the questions and shot back smart-ass remarks when a player got the answers wrong. That eventually became “You Don’t Know Jack.” Soon, Harry got to thinking that this game interface, where the character in a computer program talks to you, like talks to YOU, could be used for a lot of other stuff. Ever since, he’s been developing what we now call the Interactive Conversation Interface. Harry spends most of his days scrunching his face, thinking real hard, and hoping brilliant ideas will result. It works out better than you’d think.

Wordy Version of Harry’s Bio »

Why I like to Work at Jellyvision

First of all, I can get the CEO to do any damn thing I want. Secondly, I don’t just love the people I work with (and at one time or another I’ve worked with everyone), I love *how* we work together. My relationships at Jellyvision seem to be intense and laid back at the same: intense because to a person, everyone wants to do truly outstanding work (and has the talent to pull that off); and laid-back because no one here takes themselves too seriously (anyone who did would be the subject of endless ribbing). Those qualities coalesce into a particular flavor of ambition that permeates the place: we want to kick-ass together.

Harry’s Wordy Bio

Harry began making Super-8 films at age 12; got a large, boxy RCA video camera (with large, boxy separate VHS deck) at 14 and first got paid to direct videos at age 18 (a series of funny training videos for a local grocery chain). Immediately after graduating college in 1989, Harry began Learn Television, Inc. to create educational films with Hollywood production values. This culminated in “The Mind’s Treasure Chest,” a feature-length educational comedy about libraries and learning that was distributed in five countries and won dozens of awards, including the highest award for grades 7 - 12 at the National Educational Film & Video Festival. Harry then turned Learn Television, Inc. into a multimedia company in 1993 (renamed Jellyvision in 1995), specifically focusing on the problem of how to make interactive communication more engaging. This lead to the development and release of YOU DON’T KNOW JACK in 1995, which Harry designed and directed. He also played the host, “Nate Shapiro.” It takes a special kind of actor to record the tens of thousands of audio files needed for JACK games: one who likes to sit alone in a very tiny sound booth for weeks at a time. It turns out that Harry is not that kind of actor.

During the early development of JACK, Harry realized that the design principles used in the game to make the host sound like “he was really there,” could be applied well beyond games. He discovered that the same methods could be used to make a more engaging interactive experience dealing with any subject matter at all. Over the next several years, Harry applied what he called The Jack Principles to create demonstration projects for interactive news, advertising, financial advice, commercials and tour guides. It is through this research that Harry discovered the core concepts of a new way for a human being to interact with a machine: the Interactive Conversation Interface (iCi – pronounced “icky”) He codified The Jack Principles of the Interactive Conversation Interface in a document first presented at the Game Developer’s Conference in 1997. In the GDC’s survey of attendees, Harry’s presentation was the highest rated of the conference. That totally went to his head and he lost his edge for a few years.

Still, YOU DON’T KNOW JACK is now one of the most successful interactive franchises of all time, with over a dozen products spanning CD-ROMs, console titles, online versions, books and one short-lived and embarassing television show starring Paul Reubens on ABC. The franchise has won over 50 major awards within the software and design industries. In 1996, competing against all software released in the previous year from companies such as Adobe, Macromedia, and Electronic Arts, YOU DON’T KNOW JACK won both the ’Most Innovative Interface’ and ’Best Overall Interface’ at Apple Computer’s distinguished Human Interface Design Excellence Awards. Harry was pretty freakin’ psyched about that. Harry also designed and directed the CD-ROM Who Wants to be a Millionaire for Disney Interactive, and had the pleasure of putting Regis Philbin into the same very, tiny sound booth in which Harry had recorded the first JACK. Thanks in large part to Jellyvision’s hyper-efficient toolset, Harry managed completion of the project in two months (typical development time for such a project is 9-12 months), in time for holiday sales and the peak of the Millionaire craze. That product was the fastest selling CD-ROM of all time.

Harry is now focusing his creative energies on advancing the art of selling through Interactive Conversation and training new writer/directors along the way. As CEO, he continues to provide the overall vision and leadership for the company.

Harry received a B.A. from Brown University. He didn’t do a traditional major. His cross-curricular independent concentration was called “Individualism and Community and the Possibilities for Balance.” His parents still don’t know what to say when people ask what their son did at college.



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