The Digital Bootcamp is a three day intensive hands-on workshop held in advance of the Digital Storytelling Festival and structured to provide students with an introduction to the tools of desktop video in a production context. Course instructors Joe Lambert and Nina Mullen of the San Francisco Digital Media Center and the Digital Clubhouse, guide students in the production of their own stories using personal, corporate or artistic materials. Each student is assigned a workstation and uses Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Premiere software to create a finished three to five minute story. A selection of finished stories will be presented to the general Digital Storytelling Festival audience. Participation in the Digital Bootcamp is limited to 12 students.

"These "digital boot camps" take participants who've often had little or no experience with computers and teach them how to turn personal artifacts -- photos, clippings, and hand-me-down tales -- into five-minute QuickTime movies. The work that emerges -- love stories, memorials to dead relatives, ghost tales, road sagas -- is rarely revolutionary and often unpolished. But it is consistently surprising and frequently moving. And even with the pieces that are a mess, you can feel the fledgling filmmakers' pleasure and freedom." Scott Rosenberg, Salon Magazine