Projects: Communication

Annie Harper
Annie Harper has a multidisciplinary background- education, design, marketing and IT. Annie is a sessional lecturer and is also director of Idea Nation founded on the principles of using designed thinking to generate ideas for people and organisations to create their futures.In 1995, Annie was a key initiator and sessional lecturer of new communication and peak performance subjects at RMIT University. Annie is an allied member and former committee member of the Institute of Store Planners, an international organisation representing professional retail designers and architects; is a former member of the Industry Steering Committee Executive ('86-2004) and Chairperson of the committee ('96-2000) working on Federal Government accreditation of RMIT's Diploma of Arts (Visual Merchandising) throughout the strategy & implementation phases. The RMIT course is now not only the national educational standard, it is also recognised throughout the world as a leading course for Visual Merchandisers. Throughout Annie's career she has been a powerful champion and lobbyist for retail design and visual merchandising to be given professional credence as specialised fields requiring tertiary qualifications. In 2002 she completed a Master of Business (Marketing) focussing on two streams of study – organisational development and transformation and consumer behaviour. Her research thesis subject was an investigation into colour, how it relates to purchase decisions and whether it could be found to impact consumer behaviour. Annie is a regular speaker at conferences and frequently contributes articles to industry publications. She is also a passionate advocate of programs to inspire and empower people, businesses and authorities to think and action potentially new and different ways of thinking.
Tatjana Chorney
Assistant Professor of English at Saint Mary's University; researching 16th and 17th century English commonplace books in manuscript, the phenomenology of reading and the impact of hypertext on contemporary reading and learning habits; written essays on Donne and satire, Milton, multiculturalism and globalization, Shakespeare, Textual Criticsm and Reader-Response Theory.
Anne Balsamo
ANNE BALSAMO serves as the Director of Academic Programs of the Institute for Multimedia Literacy at the University of Southern California. She is also a Full Professor of Interactive Media and Gender Studies. In addition to her academic positions, Anne has been a technologist and new media designer for more than a decade. In 2002, she co-founded, Onomy Labs, Inc. a Silicon Valley technology design and fabrication company that builds cultural technologies. Previously she was a member of RED (Research on Experimental Documents), a collaborative research group at Xerox PARC who created experimental reading devices and new media genres. She held the rank of Principle Scientist, and served as project manager and new media designer for the development of RED's interactive museum exhibit, XFR: Experiments in the Future of Reading. Prior to joining the research staff at PARC, Balsamo was an associate professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology where she directed the graduate program in "Information Design and Technology.� Her first book, Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women (Duke UP, 1996) investigated the social and cultural implications of emergent bio-technologies. Her new book project, Designing Culture: A Work of the Technological Imagination examines the relationship between cultural theory, the design of new media, and the ethics of technology development.
Thomas Pitre
Retired professor of business and education, City University, National University, et. al. Former Master Instructor, City University, Santa Clara office, Silicon Valley. Adult Education Instructor in San Francisco Bay Area, 1975-1995. Subjects included: electronics, statistics, fiber optics installation and troubleshooting, communications, design, programming, etc.