OCADU E-LEO Symposium

An interactive gallery showcase of OCAD U student, alumni and faculty work alongside some of the world’s top designers
An academic symposium of invited guests from academic institutions in Canada and the United States. The symposium will be hosted by President Dr. Sara Diamond and Tom Barker and will include a workshop, panel discussion and keynote addresses by Steve Mann, Edward Gajdel, Tom Barker and Sara Diamond.

OCAD University’s, e-Leo exhibit is an interactive gallery showcase of student, alumni and faculty work alongside some of the world’s top designers. OCAD University’s influential and world class Digital Futures undergraduate program combines art, design, technology and enterprise along with core skills. Graduates have a multidisciplinary toolkit to work from that helps them innovate and sets them apart from other designers.

The e-Leo exhibit includes pieces previously exhibited in MOMA and the Smithsonian but seen for the first time in Canada in this exhibit.
Student and Faculty exhibit:
On display: New and experimental smart products, Augmented reality games, wearable technology, digital and hybrid games, cities of the future, video and sound installations.

A collaborative project between OCAD University’s DFI program and artist Marina Abramović.

Featured works by world renowned design thinkers:
Steve Mann
Edward Gajdel
Tom Barker
Nathan Phillips
Jason Mrdeza
Maryam Nabavi

As part of Project e-Leo the exhibit includes a modern-day recreation of Leonardo da Vinci created by some of Canada’s top design thinkers.
Project e-Leo Academic Research:
Project e-Leo is an academic research study that aims to answer two questions:

• Are the best design universities in the world accepting the most talented multi-disciplinary candidates or is the application process getting in the way?

• Would truly genius multi-disciplinary candidates be accepted to design programs in the world’s top universities if they didn’t fit the usual mold?

KMDI Member Steve Mann, will be making the key note addresses at the e-Leo Symposium, discussing “Tree Shaped designers”.

In engineering and design, employers often look for people who have a so-called “T-shaped” skill set: breadth plus depth in one area. Such people are often called “T-shaped designers”, or “T-shaped thinkers”, “having skills and knowledge that are both deep and broad” [The hunt is on for the Renaissance Man of computing, D. Guest, The Independent, Sept. 17, 1991]
as shown leftmost in the figure below:

Such people can be assembled into interdisciplinary teams in a manner analogous to the way plumbers join together tee-fittings with pipes. The result is a team in which each member provides depth to the team in their individual area of expertise.

I strive for something different — — something I call “Tree-Shaped Skills” as illustrated, rightmost in the figure above. The goal is to advance research after attaining a broad rhizomic skill set that is also deeply rooted in many disciplines — — to become a “master of many trades” (skills) and then focus these together to make major research breakthroughs.

This is because I believe that some unique kinds of true research breakthroughs can better be achieved when the whole idea can reside in the mind of one person.  Imagine, for example, a musical symphony composed by a team or a committee!  This and many other creative endeavours just can’t happen in a “groupthink” environment.
See http://wearcam.org/TreeShaped.htm