About
Ramona Pringle is creator, educator, journalist and researcher focused on the intersection of technology, creativity and the human experience.
Currently, she is Director of the Creative Innovation Studio at Ryerson University, which is home to three incubators, the Transmedia Zone, the Fashion Zone, and the Design Fabrication Zone, as well at HQ, a venue for immersive experiences and presentations, and the Global Campus Studio, a virtual hub that fosters international collaborations and co-creations.
She is an associate professor in the RTA School of Media, named by The Hollywood Reporter as one of the world’s top film schools, within the esteemed Faculty of Communication and Design.
Ramona is a technology columnist for CBC News and CBC Radio, with a weekly syndicated column on the social side of tech, examining the ways in which digital culture is changing every aspect of our lives, cities, and work.
Creator, Storyteller & journalist
As a producer and director, Ramona specializes in digital multi-platform production and has developed and produced work for CBC, TVO, CTV and PBS where she worked as interactive producer on Frontline’s Digital Nation.
Ramona is a partner in “Winter Projects,” a digital studio that creates documentary and immersive media projects. Previously she was the founder of her own boutique production studio, Ramona Pringle Productions, specializing in interactive and multi-platform media. In addition to creating original content, the studio worked with partners to create innovative and compelling creative digital media content and narrative companion pieces, and consulted on innovation in media and storytelling.
Innovation, and the creative application of new technologies, is at the core of Ramona’s practice, both in terms of the content and the methodology of her work. She has over 15 years of experience in exploring new models of publishing and knowledge dissemination, working with advanced technology and digital platforms for communication: her graduate thesis was on emotional perception in immersive interactive experiences, examining the interplay between viewers and dynamic, responsive narratives. From there she went on to develop one of the first large scale crowdsourcing initiatives as the interactive producer for PBS Frontline’s acclaimed flagship interactive project, http://thebeginningfarmer.com/117/ Digital Nation, with media scholar Douglas Rushkoff.
She is the writer and director of Avatar Secrets, a feature-length POV documentary developed for the iPad and featured in Mashable and The New York Times. Produced for TVO, Avatar Secrets launched in Canada with a transmedia campaign including broadcast promotion through TVO, a national editorial campaign in Metro News with print coverage and a limited run webseries, large screen outdoor video signage in downtown Toronto, and banner placement as a “Best New App” in the App Store for over 10 weeks. The project was selected to represent Canada as part of the Telefilm delegation to MIPDOC in Cannes, and was the first interactive project to be featured in the official programme of Hot Docs, North America’s largest documentary film festival. The project was featured at festivals around the world for cutting edge media and narrative works, including TFI Tribeca Interactive, Sheffield Doc fest, and NXNE.
Named one of Playback Magazine’s 10 to Watch for her “Screen friendly persona and her intellectual prowess,” Ramona is a national technology contributor to CBC. She writes a regular column for CBC news in which she explores the impact of technology and social media on all aspects of people’s lives, from work, politics and the economy, to relationships, parenting and wellbeing. She is also the technology columnist for CBC radio programs across the country, including Toronto’s Here and Now, Ottawa’s All in a Day, Vancouver’s On the Coast, Edmonton’s Radio Active, St. John’s On the Go, and several others.
She is frequent analyst and contributor to news media, with regular guest appearances on TVO, Global and CTV talking about the intersection of digital media and the human experience, as an analyst of of technology, digital culture, and creative innovation.
Educator & Researcher
Ramona is a faculty member in Ryerson University’s RTA School of Media, Canada’s preeminent school of media. She teaches at the graduate and undergraduate level in Media Production, New Media, and Digital Media, in which she acts as the Concentration Coordinator for Narrative Media.
She has over a decade of experience developing and delivering new curriculum designed to prepare students to excel in a rapidly changing media landscape.
In her role, she is deeply involved in the development of new courses, “supercourses” and master classes, academic streams, and new degrees, focused on the dissemination of 21st century skills, the integration of media, technology and creativity, interaction design and interactivity storytelling, transmedia practice and research, international collaboration and co-creation, creative problem solving, and strategic ideation.
She is the Director of the Creative Innovation Studio, and the Global Campus Studio, and has hosted and mediated think tanks, forums and salons on issues related to innovation, technology, media, AI, big data, and the creative class, for clients and industry partners ranging from media outlets and broadcasters to publishers, government, granting bodies and policy makers, educational institutions and more.
She was founder and editor-in-chief of Rdigitalife, a journalistic transmedia publication on the intersection of technology and humanity, featuring the likes of Clay Shirky, Rosalind Picard, Sherry Turkle, Ray Kurzweil, and many others. She is the founding editor of Rough Draft, an incubator-based Medium publication which seeks to advance discussion and knowledge dissemination around the research related to the start-ups and creative ventures working in the diverse fields represented in The Innovation Studio.
Ramona Pringle has a Master’s Degree from NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and a BFA Honours Degree in Film & Video from York University.
Speaker
As a keynote speaker, Ramona addresses international audiences on issues related to media, creativity, technology and social shifts. To date, she has advised diverse industries including various sectors in media, journalism, gaming, manufacturing, agriculture, insurance, social media and technology on understanding the new power structures of a data-driven economy, and surviving and thriving in an age of automation.
Ramona has spoken at events including Social Media Week, SXSW, NXNE, TEDx, Ignite, the World Future Society, the Toronto International Film Festival, Idea City, and Tribeca Interactive. Her work has been featured at i-docs in Bristol, UK, Power to the Pixel in London, UK, Sheffield Doc Fest, Hot Docs, and at TFI Interactive, part of the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
Photo credit Dama PR.
Media Installations
As a video artist, Ramona has produced several installations including her master’s thesis Paranoia, exploring emotional perception in the interactive cinematic experience, and rdigitaLIVE, a live documentary remix presented at Nuit Blanche Toronto. Installations produced in collaboration with the PeakMedia Collective have been exhibited at the New York Hall of Science, Sherway Gardens and Casino Niagara.
Actor
Ramona has also appeared alongside some of Hollywood’s top stars on such films as Shoot’em Up and Cinderella Man. Her hosting work includes CBC’s daily pop culture show The X, Rdigitalife, a digital series exploring the evolving relationship between people and technology, and the webcast of Idea City.
