Tuesday, November 18th, 2008
Networking and snacks: 5:30pm to 6pm
Seminar: 6pm to 7:30pm
The doors will be locked after 6pm!

RSVP

Positive RSVPs only please: rsvp@vanue.com

Session abstract

Founded in 1991, IDEO is an innovation and design firm that uses a human-centered, design-based approach to help organizations in the business, government, education, healthcare, and social sectors innovate and grow.

Over the past 18 months, IDEO has explored ways to collaborate at scale through a project called Knowledge Sharing @ IDEO (KS@IDEO). IDEO’s professionals are renowned for their cross disciplinary collaboration methods, but how does an organization extend its primarily in-person model across 600 people in 8 locations around the world?

IDEO ran dozens of experiments in offices around the globe, testing everything from multitouch displays and always-on videoconferencing to blogs, wikis, and other social networking tools. Their early iterations have led to the design of an intranet system that uses personal portfolio-building as the basis for knowledge sharing.

Gentry Underwood is delighted to share their design process and the solutions it has produced. Take a tour of what they’ve built, why they’ve built it, and how it’s working.

Gentry will share some of IDEO’s lessons learned about how to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing in large, distributed organizations, as well as showing some of the prototypes developed to do just that at IDEO.

Our speaker

Gentry is leading the Knowledge Sharing project at IDEO. Gentry is a human factors specialist with a background in visual ethnography, psychology, and interaction design. Trained at Stanford, Santa Clara University, and the Peabody School at Vanderbilt, Gentry brings a diverse body of knowledge and experience to his field work.

Prior to IDEO, Gentry had worked as an interaction designer for Reactivity, Inc, London Road Design, and as a private contractor. He worked as an adult, family, child, and school counselor in the San Francisco Bay area, and has made two short documentary films, one of which aired on the nationally syndicated show Democracy Now.

Gentry relies on his counseling experience when in the field to get to the heart of the “why” behind people’s experiences. He is a glutton for the power of visual imagery to capture and communicate aspects of others’ worlds, and he brings his design background into the IDEO process to help move from observation to synthesis.

Location: VFS (Vancouver Film School)

The VFS Digital Design campus is located at 420 Homer Street between Pender and W. Hastings. Enter through the side door on the east side of Homer Street. The event will take place in Theatre 1 accessible from the main foyer.

Our Sponsors

Event Sponsor: Open Road Communications
A huge thank you to Open Road for sponsoring this event!

Networking Snack Sponsor: Analytic Design Group
Join us for snacks during our networking time provided by the Analytic Design Group

Location Sponsor: VFS
VFS has been supported VanUE since our inception and we would like to thank them for their continued generosity!!