Archive for the ‘News’ Category

Future of Mobility 2023-2024

Saturday, October 15th, 2022

The future of mobility was centre point at the International Mobility Summit 2022 (TIMS20222) that has just concluded. It brought together in Copenhagen the global mobility, transport, and smart city ecosystems. The event attracted about 500-600 participants from as far as Canada and Japan.

The TIMS22 event’s purpose was to connect the public and private sectors within the global mobility and smart city ecosystem to help shape future mobility, liveable cities and sustainable transport.

TIMS will be in Copenhagen in 2023 and might come to Toronto in 2024.

TIMS 2022

The event provided a good overview of the next generation of mobility challenges and opportunities, explored cutting-edge Nordic technology and sustainable solutions helping to make cities and municipalities greener and more sustainable. It also provided access to experience leading-edge solutions in the real world through guided bicycle tours through Copenhagen (bicycle capital of the world), or the DOLL Living Labs where future technologies are piloted and tested on the ground.

One of the red threads throughout the Summit this year was the strong realization for the need to switch from competitive to collaborative paradigms, if we are to address current big complex challenges. That thread was present across sectors and geographies, a welcome hopeful sign.

A Future Mobility Player

This post is not the appropriate place to discuss details about the contents presented in the Summit and insights gained. However, we noted the presence of surprising electric cars made by X-Peng, a Chinese private corporation. Several models were on display and available for test drives. A short drive in one showed good handling, beautiful interior, and a body design described as part Tesla and part Audi. The turning radius was less stellar.

X-PENG P7 Wings -present future of mobility (Source: brasil123.com.br)

A Company To Watch

That same week X-Peng also tested its flying taxi in Dubai. This company seems to be on the move globally: it is already present in Nordic and few European countries, and in a couple of U.S. cities.

Future Mobility: A XPeng X2, an electric flying taxi developed by the Guangzhou-based XPeng, Inc’s aviation affiliate, is tested in front of the Marina District in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. Monday’s demonstration was held with an empty cockpit, but the company says it carried out a manned flight test last year of the two-passenger vehicle. (AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili)

Flattening the economic & social curve

Friday, March 20th, 2020

By now everyone hopefully is aware of the COVID-19 virus and most of us are learning how to really work from home, not for a day or two, but possibly for several weeks. We are all bombarded with various advice and resources for remote working, remote teaching, remote meetings etc. We are becoming finally proficient at using the various remote connection tools: Zoom, Microsoft TEAMS, Go-to-Meeting, WhatsApp, Skype, Messenger, Twitter, and even dreaded FB … We’re also beginning to realize that the internet connection and available bandwidth is a real part of “infrastructure” and as important as power, water, and even perhaps the roads, and bridges that we are currently not using.

For the first time we are becoming aware that scarcity in such a crisis goes beyond toilet paper and canned foods to include this precious resource called bandwidth. In a recent TEAMS call with 30-40 participants, when I suggested to switch off our videos to preserve bandwidth, everyone immediately understood and acted.

We seem to be learning to accept the realities of working from home: a kid barging on your meeting, a partner handing you a cup of coffee, and sometimes a colleague having a “bad hair day”. We’re much more accepting of these domestic events because for the first time, we are all in the same situation.

So, what is there to do beyond remote meetings and binging on TV or Netflix? There is no doubt that this crisis will be severely disrupting to our economy. Government help might be coming but we need to do our part. First and foremost by taking care of our family, neighbors, and communities. Second, we need to think sharply about coming up with constructive alternatives to many in-person functions that are now disrupted. Some parents trying to homeschool young children are despairing. Can their school teacher organize alternative virtual classes to assist? Design companies are standing idle and considering layoffs. Could there be a serious training opportunity on new and complex design software? Could they support increasing the production of materials needed by healthcare providers on the frontlines of fighting the virus?

The social distancing, self-isolation and shelter-in-place measures will hopefully flatten the dispersion curve of the virus. If we put our minds to finding virtual alternatives that are useful and productive, we may perhaps flatten the curve of the economic and social shock that will follow the pandemic.

Studio Summit #2

Thursday, July 6th, 2017

In August 2014 Studio Summit 1, an invitation-only gathering, was held at the Studio of the Copenhagen Business School. Its participants focused on exploring the studio educational methods, defining their essential components, and discussing studio pedagogy for business, engineering and science education.

Building on that successful event the Resilience Design Lab at OCAD University in collaboration with Autodesk is organizing Studio Summit 2 with the theme “Moving Studios into the Digital Age”. A strong Program Committee, whose member details can be found here, is guiding the Summit’s program.

Summit Studio 2 will not involve the traditional 20-minute monologues of other conferences. It is structured rather around a series of interactive sessions, a few panels, and technology demonstrations in a studio environment. The Summit is hosted at the brand new Autodesk Maker Space in the MaRS Discovery District.

To be considered for an invitation you must submit a half-page here describing what value you will add to the topic of the summit. Upon acceptance you will be given the password to register and pay the event’s fee of CA$ 395.00.

 

 

 

Graduation of Social Intrapreneur Fellows

Saturday, March 11th, 2017

The School for Social Entrepreneurs Ontario (SSE-O) in collaboration with the League of Intrapreneurs Canada (of which we are proudly a co-founder) co-designed the Social  Intrapreneurs Fellowship to provide social intrapreneurs with the tools, network, and confidence to make social change at their workplaces in government, non-profits, and companies. 

Last month, the 2016-2017 cohort of Social Intrapreneur Fellows completed their fellowships. To celebrate this great accomplishment as these fellows embark on a new adventure SSE-O is organizing “Fellow-bration”, a celebration of the graduates 6-9 pm on Tuesday March 28th at the Centre for Social Innovation Annex.

You can register here.

The gathering will be an opportunity to learn more about the League of Intrapreneurs Canada’s ambitious plans for the future, and find out how you can get involved.

Open Government Partnership Workshop

Monday, February 27th, 2017

The government of Ontario is inviting stakeholders in the Open Government movement from the public and civil society to the Implementation Phase of the Open Government Partnership Commitments. These are:

  • Strengthen Ontario’s commitment to making government data open by default by adopting the International Open Data Charter.
  • Increase opportunities for young people across Ontario to share ideas for government programs and services by developing a digital engagement tool
  • Create an open government training program for staff across the Ontario Public Service to help government continue to find new ways to boost openness and transparency

The purpose of the event, which is in a workshop format, is to engage in dialogue on Ontario’s Open Government Partnership commitments and to contribute to a pan-Canadian conversation on Open Dialogue and Open Data.

The workshop will also be a space to set the stage for the co-creation of our deliverables.

The first workshop took place on February 21, 2017 from 9:00 am to 12:30 pm in the Ontario Trade & Investment Centre at 250 Yonge Street. It was attended by about 30 participants from civil society, business, academia, and government.

 

2nd Global Social Intrapreneurship Summit

Saturday, September 19th, 2015

An invitation-only event, The Global Social Intrapreneurship Summit convenes changemakers from around the world to identify ways to strengthen the social intrapreneurship field and movement. This year’s Summit is being held October 1st in Valle de Bravo, Mexico – tapping into the incredible energy and momentum for intrapreneurship in Latin America. Chryssa Koulis from the School of Social Entrepreneurs – Ontario will be representing the nascent League of Intrapreneurs Canada. A number of local Canadian launch events are planned to take place coinciding with the Mexico event.

OCAD’s Yogya Team Competing in Hult $1M Prize

Thursday, April 9th, 2015

The Yogya team of students of the Strategic Foresight & Innovation (SFI) program at OCAD University is still competing to reach the finals of the $1Million Hult Prize. They are determined to help bring Early Childhood Education to 10 Million children in urban slums. Yogya means worthy as in “every child is worthy”. The team has engaged in the Hult on-line challenge and have put their project up for crowdfunding on Indiegogo. They need this seed money to prototype their solution and field test it. Now it’s a race against time. If they reach their goals in number of funders and in amount funded, they will get into the finals of the Hult Prize competition. Indeed, it is a project worthy of support. Please contribute what you can!

Hult 2015 – $1M Prize Competition

Friday, March 13th, 2015

This global competition is organized by the Hult Prize Foundation, a not-for-profit organization aiming at solving the planet’s biggest challenges with innovative ideas implemented through sustainable start-up social enterprises. Annual Hult Prize winners get USD1 million in seed funding to make their ideas reality. Although it was originally conceived to attract “the world’s brightest business minds”, it is seeing increasing numbers of multidisciplinary teams participating, including from many design schools.

This year’s challenge is about early childhood education in urban slums for children aged 0-6 years. The objective is to reach 10 Million children within 5 years. The competition is staged first at local and regional levels around the world. The six regional finalist teams attend in July and August a six-week program at the Hult Accelerator at the Hult Business School in Boston. They then compete in the global finals in an event attended by President Clinton where the winning team will be selected.

This year two teams from OCAD University’s Strategic Foresight & Innovation (SFI) masters program participated in the local competition with about 22,000 submissions globally. The two teams moved to the regional finals.

Team Msana to Shanghai

 

 

 

 

Team YOGYA to San Francisco

 

Two OCADU teams at the Regional Finals

 

 

 

 

 

One team from the part-time SFI program team is currently in Shanghai while the other team from the SFI full-time program is currently in San Francisco. Each of them will be competing with about 250 regional candidates. We wish them both the best of luck!

TRIEC Connector Program – Pilot

Monday, January 26th, 2015

TRIEC, the Toronto Regional Immigrants Employment Council, is launching an interesting new program called Connector. The program creates networking opportunities for skilled internationally trained professionals, and their established GTA counterparts. The idea behind the program is simple enough: business needs talent; talent needs opportunities. Connect offers to provide such opportunities through the network effect. We are thrilled to join the Advisory Board of this interesting project.  Its first meeting will be held on Thursday January 29, 9-11 AM at the offices of TRIEC in Toronto.

Connecting Citizens to Future Governance

Thursday, January 15th, 2015

The Design with Dialogue group in collaboration with Strategic Innovation Lab of OCAD University is dedicating its January session to discuss the convergence of governance and digital technologies. The session’s agenda is to use dialogic techniques to discuss the co-evolution of connected citizens in Canadian governance. DwD events usually attract 20-30 participants of diverse backgrounds. Discussions are usually rich and nuanced and participants leave often with surprising new insights.

The event takes place on Wednesday January 14th from 6:00 to 9:00 PM in the Lambert Lounge (Room 187) at OCAD’s flagship building, the Sharp Design Center (100 McCaul st., Toronto).