Places of Invention project wrap up

 Places of Invention project wrap up

The Places of Invention project (http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/places-of-invention) with The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the National Museum of American History (http://invention.smithsonian.org) wrapped up today, with feedback from Amanda Murray who is the coordinator of the project from the Lemelson side. 

Over the course of this project there were 20 projects created (http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/places-of-invention/places-of-invention-projects) around the three design challenge sub-topics.  The topics included "Design and Interactive Space" which could be deployed in a museum, "Design a Collaborative Activity" which could also be done in a museum,  and "Model Your Place of Invention" which invited developers to describe their own idea of what a  place of invention could be comprised of.

"Design an Interactive Space"
Amanda relayed that projects “Make It Your Own” and “House of Inventions" in paricular stood out as being promising for implementation in a real museum environment.

Make it Your own

House of Inventions

In this challenge the most relevant, promising submission was Luke Hohmann’s “Problem Solving Through Collaborative Play.”    Other proposals for this challenge had useful elements such as  “Sketch n Scroll” and  “Inventor’s Park” in terms of the tools and technologies they present.

Problem Solving Through Collaborative Play

Sketch n Scroll

Inventor's Garden

“Model Your Place of Invention”
Submissions in this category were not designed as installed museum content but rather sought to use the virtual world tools to explore the concepts behind Places of Invention.  These entries may  be featured in the Places of Invention exhibition as enlarged screenshots or other images, with credit info and the big idea they included on The Tech Virtual.

Overall there is a consensus that this exercise brought out a lot of interesting issues around the topic and provided insight into how people might approach it, from many angles. 

Congratulations are in order.  It takes a lot of confidence and initiative to present an idea, model it, and make it into something. When or where else would you be able to work on such a topic with an institution like Smithsonian, on such a compelling topic?

Look forward to a recap and followup meeting during August.

 Here's the chatlog: http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/meeting-transcripts/2010-07-22-places-of-invention-reviews-12-wrapup

You can view the Second Life meeting and prototyping space for this project at:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/The%20Tech%202/177/214/34