Friday, August 21, 2020

Pandemic creates uncertainty - and a more level playing field

By Chris Wilson-Smith. This article originally appeared on Waterloo Stories.

The global pandemic is accelerating the pace of social and technological change, a dynamic that is serving as a “great equalizer” for innovators and entrepreneurs.

Among many of the technological disruptions advanced by the outbreak, working and conducting business remotely is knocking down traditional barriers, leaders from the worlds of entrepreneurship and academia say.

Randall Lane, Forbes CCO and editor, facilitated the panel discussion on how talent and innovation collide in the race to reset today's workforce and rebuild economies.

Companies can hire from a pool of talent as large as the world, gain access to capital and audiences across regional borders, and connect more directly with customers.

Speaking to an audience of business and government leaders at a Waterloo summit exploring innovation and entrepreneurship in the face of a pandemic, Eric Migicovsky, founder of smartwatch pioneer Pebble, said the expedited move to digital working environments will eliminate the geographic constraints that investors once faced.

“It’s much more about the idea, the founders, and the traction that they have.”

Migicovsky, a University of Waterloo graduate and partner at the Y-Combinator accelerator in High View, California, said he has invested in about 70 companies in the last three months, and doesn’t know where a lot of them are based.

“This moment is somewhat of a great equalizer,” he said. “Everyone is the same when they’re in a tiny box on the screen.”

Read the rest of the article on Waterloo Stories.

W Store SLC location reopening; operations going cashless

A message from W Store.

In close consultation with the University’s Safety Office, we are happy to announce the reopening of W Store Essentials, SLC on Monday, August 24. This comes as the next step of our phased re-opening plan after the successful re-opening of W Store | Gifts + Apparel (South Campus Hall) and W Print SCH on August 4.

In a continued effort to keep our campus community safe from the spread of COVID-19, we will no longer be accepting cash payments effective August 24, 2020 at any of our locations – including W Store, W Store Essentials and W Print. Students, faculty and staff may choose to pay by debit, credit, gift card, WatCard or department charge.

If you would like to add funds to your WatCard, please visit the WatCard office. You can choose to add funds electronically via WatCard’s "Add Funds" page, or in-person at the WatCard office in the lower level of the Student Life Centre.

Some of the other safety measures we've put in place to keep our campus community safe while shopping in-store, include:

• Ensuring customers and staff wear face masks at all times.
• Physical distancing markers and using a one-way path through the store.
• Limiting the number of customers allowed in the store at one time.
• Regular sanitizing of high-touch surfaces (like fitting rooms, baskets and pin pads).
• Providing hand sanitizer at the store entrance and checkout for customer use.
• Using plexiglass protective shields at cash registers

Our staff are always ready to help you with anything you need. We hope to see you again soon. Thank you for your continued support, and stay safe.

Q and A with the experts: how will COVID-19 change architecture?

The University of Waterloo has a number of experts available for comment on various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Will COVID-19 change how we build our homes and offices? Will architects use different materials? Will they design with a pandemic in mind?

We spoke to the Director of the architecture program at the University of Waterloo, Anne Bordeleau, to hear her thoughts.

How will the pandemic affect the future of building design?

Under the magnifying glass of the pandemic, the failures of our systems are more than ever manifest. The climate actions and anti-racism protests are throbbing and urgent reminders that have incredible power to truly mobilize us to act and implement meaningful change. As we all more or less continue to function as best as we can, students studying, professors teaching, builders building and businesses reopening, what should worry us most is: what if nothing changes? The question is: could the pandemic really affect the future of building design? But this does not mean responding to the necessity to maintain social distance, rethinking how we move through buildings or minimizing surface contact and hence the need to sanitize. It means addressing what the pandemic really points to, the social inequities and systemic flaws that have been revealed as different countries put measures in place to protects these very systems and the populations they serve. How could the realization of this deep intersectionality and interconnectedness truly change the way we approach the design of our homes and cities?

Will the pandemic encourage a change in the types of materials that architects use in their designs?

The question is not so much whether there would be a change in the types of materials that architects use in their designs, but whether we will revisit what we consider to be disposable and available in terms of materials. Should our building materials continue to be brought from across the globe or should they not be sourced locally – in the rubbles of a demolition site or in renewable resources? Clearly, the changes we are looking at are not specific to material types, building components or touchless technologies, but rather, like the problems that we truly need to face, the changes should be systemic and involve a rethinking of networks and cycles of demolitions and construction. Every design decision should be informed by a thorough consideration of the domino effects that any material selection could engender, with all the complexities that this implies if one is truly to consider the social, cultural but also technological and environmental impacts of integrating one material versus another. 

How much did public health factor into the process of designing a space before the pandemic, and do you think that will change now?

The response here also imply a broader look. Are public health factors touching on the isolation of our retirees in what are often poorly designed senior homes? Will the benefit temporarily gained from making a number of streets pedestrian to encourage walking be quickly shadowed by the desire to move back to uninterrupted and fluid traffic flows? Will the perfectly manicured lawns reappear at the expense of the vegetable garden planters that have been popping up everywhere? Within the School of Architecture, we find ourselves in a moment when inherited practices in architectural education are questioned more urgently than ever, when the discipline of architecture itself is still looking for ways in which it might re-invent itself, to be less elitist perhaps, closer to the people certainly, more accessible to all, hopefully. Conversations about public health should range from the microscopic composition of the materials we use but also to questions of environmental justice. Change will not just happen. We need to actively bring about a post-pandemic shift within the profession to foster more collaborations with vulnerable populations within our societies while prioritizing holistic and responsible approaches to design.

Professor Anne Bordeleau is the O'Donovan Director of the School of Architecture. Professor Bordeleau’s research interests include the epistemology of the architectural project, as well as the historiographical and practical bearing of investigating the relations between architecture and time.

Presidential Nominating Committee provides update

The Presidential Nominating Committee has issued a progress report on its recent activities. The committee engaged in community consultations in late winter and early spring, and the feedback and comments have helped to inform the development of a candidate brief and advertisement that has been published in a variety of venues. Additionally, representatives from Human Rights, Equity and Inclusion (HREI) provided resources to the committee on equity, diversity, inclusion, and Indigeneity (EDII) issues.

“Over the summer, the committee has met several times to review candidates’ applications with a view to creating a short-list by late August,” writes Board of Governors Chair Cindy Forbes (who serves as the Chair of the Presidential Nominating Committee). “With respect to coming work, following selection of the short-list in August, interviews are scheduled to occur in September and October, with the committee mindful of the need likely to undertake its interviews virtually.”

To stay updated on the committee’s progress, visit the Presidential Nominating Committee’s website.

Elevators and websites have their ups and downs; other notes

It is elevator maintenance season, and Plant Operations has announced a number of elevator service shutdowns for next week and beyond, including:

• School of Pharmacy, Monday, August 24, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.;
• Environment 3, Tuesday, August 25, 8:00 a.m. to 12 noon;
• Optometry, Tuesday, August 25, 12:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.;

• Engineering 5, Wednesday, August 26, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.;  

• Dana Porter Library, Thursday, August 27, 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.;

• East Campus 5, Tuesday, September 1, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.   

Elevators will be out of commission for approximately 4 hours during the maintenance. In buildings with multiple elevators, each elevator will be down for approximately 4 hours at separate times.

The library website and online resources will experience downtime starting at 5:00 p.m. today for approximately 12 hours. The outage is required to perform infrastructure maintenance and will improve the Library's ability to support and maintain its resources. Visit the Library website today (while you still can!) to get details on what services will be unavailable until Saturday, August 22.