By STACEY BODGER
Multimedia students at the Auckland University of Technology expect an audience of thousands to tune into their final assignment.
The 66 students have spent six months preparing to launch the Multimedia 2000 expo, which tonight will broadcast five hours of live production to a global internet audience.
A further
five hours of the webcast will be beamed out of AUT's Wellesley St campus tomorrow night.
The programme leader of multimedia studies, Bob King, said the expo had been listed on the popular search engine Yahoo! as one of the websites of the week.
It had already attracted visits from as far away as Hong Kong, Malaysia and the United States.
The live internet feed will showcase students' work, including animation, digital video, 3D displays, interviews and CD-Roms.
Mr King said the course had a high global profile because it attracted international students.
Overseas multimedia companies had already expressed interest in several students and he believed there would be more job offers after the webcast.
Student Joanna McLeod said the expo was a wonderful opportunity to show the multimedia industry what she and her fellow students could do.
The website had been widely publicised within the industry.
"We have basically devoted everything to this. It's the culmination of everything we have learned and it's very exciting to think it will be screened worldwide."
Students will be marked on design and content for their final grades but will also receive marks for the number of hits the website gets and how long people stay connected.
The expo website is www.aut.ac/multimedia2000 and tonight's live webcast will begin at 5.15 pm.
