Luigi
Canali De Rossi

Welcome, I am Luigi, the leader of this great band called IKONOS New Media.

I have been managing this company for the last 12 years, and I think I am just up to get the best of the party yet.

Professional skills:

My professional talents span a number of creative and technical disciplines. As yesterday captains-at-sea, I like to consider myself as an expert navigator in the vast oceans of information that surrounds us.

Contrary to what my family led me to believe and to what still most of us think today, gaining a "generalist" and wide open knowledge, in a wide and varied set of interconnected realms, is indeed a strategically valuable asset.

Therefore I have had, at least until 1998 or so, the unclear feeling of being a player at many sports but an expert at none.
Realisation of the importance of my role came with the sudden understanding that the communication skills required by an organisation wishing to communicate globally and across different media and tools, could only be orchestrated by those who, like me, had actually walked the communication paths under many, complementary roles.

To draw great online interaction from an expert Java programmer, or from a Photoshop wizard, is for me a far too ambitious and unfair task.

I like to explore and test new paths and approaches, with an innovative spirit and a desire to bring back something valuable to share.

Above all, there are four areas in which I have developed skills and experience:

a) Communication Design

b) Management

c) Technology

d) Instructional Design, training delivery, coaching

a) Communication Design

1. Interaction Designer
Creating effective learning communities and interactive marketplaces online is my mission for the next 18 months. For now I have simply helped design a few online interactive projects, and a number of great interactive learning tools on CD-ROM.
I also value my long and past experience as a DJ as the closest one to the ideal interaction designer I imagine to be.

Key projects:
isitQ knowledgevortal (ongoing)
CHM Toolkit

2. Information Designer
This is one aspect of my work, which I deeply enjoy and find most rewarding. Creating understanding out of design. Transforming raw data in tables, lists and diagrams into memorable and easy-to-understand visuals is the great challenge.
Best proofs of this work are the State of the World on Plant Genetic Resources book and CD-ROM published in 1998 by FAO of the UN, the DAD-IS online system (view it with a Netscape browser if possible), and the very recent IFAD-HFSG and FIGIS Showcase presentations (Flash technology), created for IFAD and the Fisheries department of FAO.

Key projects:
State of the World PGRFA - FAO
DAD-IS Stage 2 - FAO
IFAD-HFSG - International Fund for Agricultural Development

3. Identity Designer
Corporate and institutional identity have been part of my early years here at IKONOS, where we have successfully designed Alitalia's group identity, across its four key companies.
Much work executed for the European Space Agency, ING Group, and ILRI remains a memorable milestone for my people's and my own essential design skills.

Key projects:
Alitalia group corporate identity
ESA European Space Agency
ILRI online identity

4. Interface Designer
Navigation design, strong and subtle identity clues, and great usability are my key secrets in being a successful interface designer. I like refining and testing my work obsessively, and the best advisors and solution providers are my very best clients.

Key projects:
DAD-IS Stage 2 - FAO of the UN
CHM Toolkit - UNEP/CBD 2000
IFAD-HFSG Showcase - IFAD 2000
ILRI website - ILRI 1998-2000

b) Presentation

1. Lead Presenter
Providing my presentation and edutainment skills to workshop, conference and seminar audiences, makes my travelling spirit healthy, and my ethical conscience happy.

2. Facilitator - Coach - Resource
I have come to enjoy and profess the skills of the strategic mentor, adopting innovative learning methods, to make the experience of traditional lectures and boring professors, a soon to be forgotten one. I am a paladin of ingenious learning, or the science of making people self-learn through discovery, simulation, game and peer-learning approaches.

3. Presentation specialist
In my early years as a technology trainer I have developed special skills in the use of all kind of presentation tools and especially in the one of computer-managed presentation design and delivery. While I regularly lead advanced PowerPoint seminars and workshops, especially tailored to communicators and managers of international organisations. I have developed a "language of visual transitions" for Presentations and I preach "consistency" and "readability" as the two key factors in creating successful presentations.

I am now also involved as Editor-in-Chief with the publication of a monthly newsletter called "MasterView" which reports on practical techniques, tools and services that help communicators creating presentations for international audiences.

4. Music editor
Editing soundtracks, creating unique music compilations, mixing samples and dubs while adding my live percussions on an extra track, is one of my favourite part-time activities. Having learned of multi-track studio recording with the great John Barsotti at SFSU, when "digital" was still a buzzword, gave me the fundamental knowledge and "ear" I still use today to do my audio work.

5. Radio personality
Being a voice personality on-the-air has been a long time love and interest. I miss the long working hours and the pioneering approach we took in the early years of private radio broadcasting here in Italy.

For the ones of you who read Italian there is a nice recount of it online at an historical radio site.

Much of the skills learned in this field are related to create a memorable and unique customer experience, one where the listener feels he is somehow part of the product as well.

Radio is a fantastic medium, and still much underutilized for its potential of being a prompt and flexible spectator, reporter to unique, remote live events.

The era of the radio as juke-box playing your favourite tunes is over. But there is ample space for growth of valuable service, community and live-events radio programming in many markets around us.

c) Management

1. Project Manager
I am fixed on orderly work, planning, monitoring, tracking. I have learned that only through great and quality organisation creative work can succeed.

I require my team members to utilize project management tools, and to submit to me accurate time plans and estimates for each project they follow.

I have been project manager and team coordinators for over 90% of all IKONOS multimedia projects.

I am the dutiful and systematic reporter, who can synthesise critical and weak points, and simplify a complex scenario into a clear and understandable report.

I have also been a strong promoter of online collaboration and group-working tools, to enhance and complement the work that could be executed at one's own desktop.

d) Technology

1) New media and ICT expert
Since 1996 I have been researching systematically the new media and ICT arenas, while for many years before I travelled the world to attend the key Siggraphs, Imagina, NABs and other major media technology conventions taking place around the world.

In 1998 I have launched a set of New Media Workshops targeted at communication managers and professionals looking for strategic and practical solutions to their needs.
The same year I developed a Master in New Media Awareness for the Istituto Superiore di Comunicazione of Rome.

I am presently chief editor of MasterMind a periodical ezine reporting on new technologies that can extend the reach and effectiveness of communicators around the world.

2) Electronic publishing
Creating electronic publications has been the key activity to fully understand the potential and reach of electronic media today.

In 1993 I created the first ebook, SEC Strategic Extension Campaign, on floppy disks that run on all computer systems (Mac, DOS, Win 3.1, Win95). While these soon evolved into electronic book CD-ROMs, I have had to carry several other difficult projects from paper into the electronic world. Databases, journals, global reports and information systems have challenged me into finding simple and effective ways to make them easily accessible on new media.

3) Distance learning technologies
This is clearly the wave of the future, and as much of what is to come, I am doing my very best to be part of it.
I have been studying and testing the more popular distance learning systems and have participated in much online activity to develop my online learning strategy and approach. I will be challenged in full this fall, when I will coordinate, direct and manage the online learning infrastructure created to support the ITQ-4 International Workshop on Improving Training Quality through Interactive Learning Technologies and Distance Mentoring.
I have also been a distance-learning consultant to the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand and to the Arab Planning Institute in Kuwait.

4) Computer graphics simulation
For many years, here at IKONOS, we have challenged many high technology houses, tools and high cost image synthesis systems.

From 1990 through 1993 we have repetitively demonstrated how low-cost computer technology and clever design techniques could create images indistinguishable in quality and detail from the ones obtained through very high cost systems (Quantel Paintbox, Kodak Premiere, and other costly proprietary systems).

The results of my efforts have been truly memorable. We have designed railroads, highway passes, bridges and tunnels, printed as normal high quality photographs, on large panels and it is truly impossible, even for the trained eye to detect the computer simulated elements from the natural or pre-existing scenery.

5) Computer graphics animation
This is a difficult art, to which I came very early. As early as 1983 I was authoring my first computer graphics animations, by exploring the virtual worlds available on low cost 3D computer graphics systems as the Cubicomp. I was lucky enough to be exposed to the early experimental and prototyping work done with the Bosch FGS-4000 at Videotime, as well as through access to other production houses technologies like the Dubner, and Evans and Sutherland workstations at Eidos in Milan.

I was good friend with the late Italian pioneer of computer graphics Guido Vanzetti, with whom I still remember discussing graphics boards requirements and solutions as early as 1984. With him and with designer Piero Gratton I have also authored three editions of the Italian Political Tribune opening titles, which remains in my memory a true little jewel of animation design.

N.B.: If you want to get a quick rundown on my professional qualifications and credentials look at my CV highlights in the left column of this page.

Interests

My main interest areas include training and consulting on the application of new media technologies to improve effectiveness and sustainability of non-commercial enterprises. These include international organizations in the fields of research, education and development, as well as individual educators, trainers, instructional designers and knowledge champions approaching new media technologies from a communication, marketing or educational standpoint.

My background and interests lay in the fields of communication, in which I have had the opportunity to grow and nurture my questing mind.

Goals

My goal is to be a "change agent", a "knowledge champion multiplier" empowering others to extend their communication reach and to be able to make lifelong learning a truly enjoyable and rewarding experience.

Ideas

The ideas I am working on are several:

Utilize a grass roots approach, by testing and selecting tools that produce great results at low cost.

Consider Open Source, freeware, licensing and refinement of existing applications without markets. Clone and refine existing technologies and unsuccessful ideas, integrate and improve existing upon individual services and tools.

Develop a large body of knowledge online, to provide free guidance, reference for the most as well as expert and advanced paid advice for key niche problem-solving needs.

"Virtualize" is my motto. Get all that you have into your brain out there on the Net, and let others learn from it.

Other professional engagements

I am President of Master New Media, a non-profit organization serving the global community of non-commercial communication managers utilizing the new digital communication media.

Until we get some international funding and this non-profit project off the ground, I fulfil my duty mostly as chief editor of a unique periodical newsletter providing new media reviews and insight to all communicators working with ICT. You can subscribe to it for free, by clicking here.

I am also one of the key founders and Executive Board members of isitQ, the International Society for the Improvement of Training Quality with over 500 members from over 35 different countries.
For the society we are about to launch a knowledge hub, focussing on Training Quality, that will be online by July 2001.