Paola Poletto
Director of Research
Design Exchange
234 Bay Street
P.O. Box 18, T.D. Centre
Toronto Ontario
M5K 1B2 Canada
http://www.dx.org

Paola Poletto brings over ten years of arts administration in national and international organizations, including the Italian Cultural Institute, Toronto, The Canadian Medical Hall of Fame, London, and the Design Exchange, Toronto, to her role as founding coordinator and curator of Digifest. To date, she has managed two successful editions of this international festival of new media that has showcased over eighty emerging and established new media developers and creators with the support of industry, funders and associations in the fields of new media and design. She has led content development and management for print, with past associations to Exile Editions, Incontro Series, Broken Pencil Magazine and presently, Kiss Machine Magazine (founding co-publisher/co-editor). Paola has been responsible for concept development and project management of on-line educational products including Design Traveller (2003), Electronic Cities (2003), and the award-winning Medi-Centre (2002). She is currently developing an educational website that celebrates Canadian design in the health sciences slated for production in 2004. Paola is also a mixed media artist and curator. Recent exhibitions include Rose Architecture (Toronto-New York, 1999), Moonscapes (London, ON-Toronto-Berlin, 2000), Rockit Girl (London, ON -Toronto, 2000) Language Hotel (Winnipeg, 2000), Inflatable Museum (on-line 2001), Girls and Guns (London,ON 2003 and Budapest and Milan 2004), and Robot Landscape (Toronto, 2004). She is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario with a Master in Fine Arts and is a member of the University Art Association.

Paola will present Virtual vs. Physical: Creating online educational experiences through design.