Events

A Conversation Studio panel on October 18, 2025, starting at 2:00pm ET.  The three viewpoints refer to research papers already having been presented online at RSDX Pacing Changes: Appreciating approaches to systems and designing, by David Ing

A Conversation Studio panel on October 17, 2025, starting at 1:00pm ET.  The four viewpoints refer to the research papers already having been presented online at RSDX. Humbling Systemic Design: Learning when not to intervene in complex social systems by Zaid Khan and Samah Kamalmaz

This online session on October 9, 2025, starting at 6:30pm ET, offers a reflection on the history of the sLab (Strategic Innovation Lab) at OCADU. We’ll discuss the potential for its renewal in the context of a vibrant systems thinking and design community, both locally and nationally.

Social innovation hubs: Where do we go from here?  The promise of social innovation hubs is to bring together diverse people and stakeholders to create new solutions for shared, complex social problems. Practitioners, industry leaders, government, and community organizations across the Greater Toronto Area are increasingly working towards a common outcome—a flourishing society where people and the planet are valued alongside economic development.

How can we enable smart citizens to co-design better services in cities?

How might we pursue policy design for systemic social change? A presentation and open discussion

Algoma and OCAD Universities join to foster entrepreneurship & social innovation through North-South dialogue in this special event co-organized with Generation Connection.

How can we mitigate the social and environmental impacts of a trillion dollar industry? [Video]

Can the study of innovation lead to universal principles that apply across fields as diverse as architecture, media & automotive design?

What do you bring to the table as an individual? Knowing yourself allows you to act with confidence as a contributor to your team, your workplace & to society. [Video]

Ever wondered how to think like a futurist? It can be learned. This full-day workshop introduces rigorous imagining to help entrepreneurs, designers & changemakers to thrive in the face of uncertainty. [Video]

How can we create and be part of business that is financially rewarding, socially responsive, and environmentally regenerative — flourishing business?

As government practices and stakeholder expectations evolve in the digital era, what kinds of change and transformation can we anticipate over the next fifteen years?

Celebrating and previewing SFI student & faculty presence in Oslo, Norway for the international conference, Relating Systems Thinking to Design Symposium, October 2014.

How can we better understand paradigm shifts in order to lead strategic innovation and transformation? 

Selected work from the Strategic Foresight & Innovation graduate program at OCAD University

How can foresight, visualization & new forms of digital practice inform debate, design & reform of public policy? [Video]

Ideas are endless, but how do we transform an idea into a profitable business? What does it take to execute an idea and build it into something meaningful? 

Ultimately, if we become more machine-like, and machines more like us, will we sacrifice our humanity to gain something greater? Or will we engineer our own demise? 

What can design teach the world of business? And what might business bring to design? [Video]

How might we undertake to "redesign" systems, institutions, markets, and even the social contract, in the face of constraining legacies, limited finances and other extreme challenges in the public sector? When good ideas abound, but don’t always come to fruition, what approach might bring success? [Video]

How is it possible that McLuhan’s description of the electronic mass media and computers of the 1960s and 70s seemed to accurately describe today’s digital media?

How can design facilitate better encounters and outcomes for those navigating healthcare systems?

What might our media be like by 2020? How can McLuhan's rich legacy illuminate this question today?

What is it about all technologies that eludes us?

What is it that makes ideas so effortless?

How can we let everyone be heard and enable a magical "community" to appear around our talks, businesses and web sites? The reality is that most group formation fails and most presentations bore or drive people away to their phones.

Systems/Layers is a half-day “walkshop,” held in two parts. The first portion of the activity is dedicated to a slow and considered walk, during which we'll be looking for appearances of the networked digital in the physical, and vice versa: apertures through which the things that happen in the real world drive the “network weather,” and contexts in which that weather affects what people see, confront and are able to do.

Veteran technology writer Howard Rheingold (Smart Mobs; The Virtual Community) will outline five social media literacies identified in his latest work: attention; participation; collaboration; critical consumption (or ‘crap detection’) and network awareness; and their impact on organizations.

How can 'strategic foresight' – the imaginative and disciplined exploration of possible futures – bring criticality and success to creative media entrepreneurs? This special sLab Explorations event draws together leading voices from several OCAD-led research communities to engage an audience of young innovators.

Can communities use design to change the way business is done? In his talk Alex will tell the story of how he and his team broke every rule in the publishing industry to create a bestselling management book. 

The group will continue our exploration of media ecology, design, innovation and strategic foresight.  

What happened at Copenhagen, what worked, what didn’t, and most importantly – what now? 

What do NASA engineers, the 911 emergency service and Facebook all have in common? According to David Eaves, they each offer a window into the way public service and policy development will be organized and delivered in the future: more participatory, adaptive and useful to an increasingly tech savvy public. In this talk David will explore what open source methodologies, technology and social shifts mean to the future of the one institution we all rely on: Government.

Is design ready to take its rightful place as an important component of innovation and cultural change? It’s no longer possible to develop successful solutions to cultural or climate problems without integrating people, ideas, and techniques from the Design, Business, and Sustainability domains. But first, we have some reckoning to do with our past...

In this time of unprecedented technological change, how can we leverage our perspective, as designers, researchers, and consumers? How can we enhance our ability to adapt, adopt, and remain receptive to changes in digital media and devices that deliver content into people's homes and lives? Are we evaluating and managing change with meaningful tools? Let's discuss how research methods, analysis, and product definition should adapt to inform product design and innovation in this new era.

The evening will engage participants in discussion of current applications of participatory dialogue as a practice for design thinking and social design action. Peter Jones will present and discuss two related models of "design for human-human interaction", Hugh Dubberly / Paul Pangaro’s Design for Conversation and Jones’ work on Dialogic Design (community site linked). The aim of Dialogic Design is to engage stakeholders of mixed interests and power (think healthcare, education) to formulate shared goals and attain authentic consensus on coordinated action for complex problem systems.

What is an interface? Can interfaces be ‘transparent’? What are the relationships between different interfaces? Do they form a network? Can we apply an ecological model to interface evolution? What are the roles of users and designers in the ecology of interfaces? Interfaces have multiplied, and it is possible to find them not only in the analogical objects (the interface of a TV remote) and digital devices (a videogame interface) that surround us, but also as company-client interfaces.

How can activism, philanthropy and filmmaking combine to create a platform for sustainable and constructive social innovation? Pray the Devil Back to Hell is the extraordinary story of a small band of Liberian women who came together in the midst of a bloody civil war, took on the violent warlords and corrupt Charles Taylor regime, and won a long-awaited peace for their shattered country in 2003. After a screening of this important film, producer Abigail Disney will talk about the work of the film, its challenges and the opportunities it has created.

How can we accelerate healthy organizational change? For renowned social network theorist and corporate anthropologist Karen Stephenson, the answer lies in how we define 'membership' in today’s globally connected culture.

Are there proven methods for creating the future? With high stakes and higher rates of failure, how do innovation efforts improve their odds? What are the core problems of innovation and who is most competent to solve them?