Industry Tours
RR Donnelley Tour 2019 Winter semester
Ryerson Xplor wanted to see what a modern, digital printer in the CCM [Client Communication Industry] was about. Ryerson GCM now has courses in Variable Data, so careers in the CCM Industry are of interest to Ryerson graduates.
This tour was hosted by Bob Gallant, a senior director with RRD Inc. at the Vipond Rd. facility in Mississauga on November 14th, 2018. Ten students from the Ryerson Chapter attended. Michael Sutton Xplor Canada President and Ryerson Lecturer also attended.
We organized transport to and from the Dundas campus to the site. All participants had to sign non-disclosures, as RRD is a world-leader in digital CCM solutions. Tour was from 10:00 am to noon, and RRD provided lunch and refreshments afterwards in their boardroom.
Students were given a detailed tour of the RRD opertions, including high-speed, roll-feed inkjet solutions, server complexes, inserting and pre- and post-processing stations. RRD has thousands of clients on both sides of the border. One of the highlights of the tour was seeing a high-speed MICR operation, which remains important for invoice return processing with a number of clients. Students realized this is considered highly reliable by the financial instutions, and is still in heavy use around the world.
Bob also had testimonials from some of his other staff, including a Ryerson student that was interning at the facility. We learned that customer experience is a key component of what RRD do. Every transaction that goes out the door can and will generate a transaction coming back, wether a bar-code, website visit or a returned mail piece. Handling those transactions quickly, effectively and to customer sastification is key. Their operations are far more than a piece of paper or PDF.
Student feedback on this event was very favourable. Not only did they see the CCM Industry as complex and challenging, it was also extremely interesting. Many expressed an interest in a CCM career.
One of the interesting follow-ups from the tour was Bob and his digital costing person paid a visit on campus with Ryerson GCM faculty a few weeks later. From that discussion came a proposal for a new Introduction to CCM Course for the CGM curriculum.
Xplor wishes to thank Bob and his entire menagement team at RRD for not only putting together an amazing tour, but using that opportunity to propose new CCM curriculum at Ryerson. This is the leadership role and level of engagement from industry that is badly needed.
CNIB Accessibility Lab visit in February 2019
On February 24th, 2019 the CNIB management team invited the Ryerson Xplor Chapter to visit their Accessibility Lab on Bayview Avenue in Toronto.
Accessiblity for Graphic Design was a new course introduced to the Ryerson GCM curriculum to bring inclusive design principles to graphic and electronic communications created by Ryerson graduates.
We brought six students from the Ryerson downtown campus. Also in attendance was Michael Sutton, President Xplor Canada and one of the co-authors of the new Ryerson GCM Accessibility curriculum.
Students were met by Robert Gordon who is the manager of the Lab, and by Roger Beatty who is one of the senior directors at the facility.
Robert gave the students a fascinating tour of the basement labs, inluding high-speed braille printing, the automated CD replication and mailing lab, the library and archive facility, and the sound studios used for creating audio works from written material. It was moving to discover braille insert storybooks converted by the CNIB, so blind children or parents can enjoy stories together.
Students learned about the important ClearText standards. They discovered that for every blind person, there are far more visually impaired people in the Canadian populace. There is huge importance in simple, clean designs, colour contrast and font selection. Beyond this, there is also a need for strong metadata and tagging in designs for easily converting material to audio formats.
Robert and Roger followed up by the students meeting the CNIB management team in their boardroom with light refreshments. They were asked about their impressions on the lab, and what they learned about it. Many of the students were impressed, and talked about the importance of Accessibility in our society, and playing a leadership role in this after graduation.
Students learned that old cell phones are great accessibile devices that can help blind and visually impaired persons, especially among the disadvantaged. If you have an old or disused cell phone, please consider donating it to the CNIB Phone it Forward program:
As follow up to this, Roger Beatty is very close to having two Ryerson GCM internships available for the Ryerson Job Fair. This is an exciting opportunity. Roger could use industry support for this program. Please contact him through the CNIB contact page for further information:
