Karin Schmidlin

Projects

Everywhere

Jamii, the virtual incubation platform was funded by the GMAC foundation with 1.6 million. The project ran from 2012 - 2017.

The virtual coffee shops, or project rooms became an integral part of the Jamii platform. These virtual spaces are designed for friction-less online collaboration for dispersed teams.

Jamii is a virtual incubation platform developed by a small team at the University of Waterloo's Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business. Jamii is challenging current online education by providing an engaging, learner-focused experience specifically developed to support entrepreneurship education across the globe. The platform has been shown to impact entrepreneurs on a global scale by sharing knowledge with geographies that would not otherwise have access to focused entrepreneurship content and support. Unlike Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), Jamii is structured to provide participants with the opportunity to customize their learning within 'just-in-time’ learning modules, supporting networks of peers and vetted external mentors.

Jamii - a virtual incubator for entrepreneurs

Coffee shops inspired the Jamii project rooms

It's no secret that I love coffee & coffee shops. Like my visit to Laboratorio Espresso on my trip to present Jamii in Glasgow. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that this love of coffee had a significant influence on how I created the virtual Jamii project rooms. We tested a variety of options, but the casualty of meeting a business mentor over coffee stuck.

Jamii Walkthrough

Kenyan winners invited to visit Canada

The winners of our first Jamii startup competition we ran in Sub-Saharan Africa, Mburu Njunge and Norman Munge, were invited to travel to Waterloo, Ontario to meet with the Jamii team and get to know local entrepreneurs. After communicating virtually on the platform for over a year, it was wonderful to finally meet them in person.

Waterloo, July 2017

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University of Strathclyde students working through the Jamii modules

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Hanging out at the hotel before my session - coolest place I stayed thus far (citizenM Glasgow)

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University of Strathclyde students, one of our first international groups using the Jamii incubation platform

Good Bye #UWaterloo

After 9 wonderful years at the University of Waterloo, I will be moving back to Vancouver, BC to pursue my Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia. I'm interested in researching how artificial intelligence can support (rather than replace) teachers and improve the overall learning experience.

Digital Transformation Project

My company, Carbonlabs, was hired for a project with an Ontario educational institution to move their entire executive development program online, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We were lucky to be able to hire two recent graduates, former students of mine,  from the Global Business and Digital Arts program at the University of Waterloo's School of Interaction Design and Business.

#StayHome sticker contest

I wanted to start a sticker contest on the subject of Stay Home in the early days of the lockdown to help my students keep their spirits up. I let the crowd vote on the winner after receiving over 50 submissions, then had the stickers printed and mailed to everyone who wanted one. Rachel Xu, a second-year GBDA student, was the winner!

A virtual Design Community

Coffee + Design

I created this virtual design community after using the Circle.so platform in my Intro to UX class in the fall of 2020. It worked well as a class communication tool, so I thought I would extend it to any past and current students of mine.

Join us: Coffee + Design

"Helping you elevate your business or side hustle"

I founded Carbonlabs in 2018 with my friend and colleague, Nada Basir after we identified a lack of design support for startups and SMEs in Canada. Nada's expertise in business strategy and social entrepreneurship, as well as my design skills, are a match made in business heaven. . We bring a solid foundation in teaching and engaging an audience, combined with academic theory and research sprinkled in. Talk to us if you are interested in working with us.

carbonlabs.ca

Team: Jason Chang, Bryan Clarke, Mark Freeman, Ryan Nadel, Ken Pratt, Matt Schroeter and myself.

Fluxus - The Art of Conversation

Fluxus was developed with a small team of classmates during my graduate studies at the Centre for Digital Media. Fluxus is an exploration of the art of conversation. We developed a system that abstractly elevates standard text chat to a stimulating, organic, and emotive visual experience in a digital environment where emojis and acronyms predominate. Although the visualization method is abstract, it is intended to add a further layer of meaning to the conversation in a similar way that abstract visual art adds meaning to an experience. Stylistically, Fluxus draws inspiration from the Dutch artistic movement of De Stijl. The movement sought to distill objects through pure abstraction, using the most basic shapes and colours. The movement strives to ignore the natural form of colour of an object and focus on the abstraction. So too, Fluxus does not express the content of a conversation but rather the universality captured through abstraction.