What does a rubber chicken have in common with a Bio-Degradable Cell phone? What does a koosh-ball have in common with recycling electronics?

Lots if you are ideating in a Do Tank. Forced Connection is only one of several techniques we used over the three days of intense brain activity at the 21C Do Tanks. Working with the Hero’s of the What’s Your Big Idea challenge, Agents of Geek Squad got the chance to put their creative brain power through an mental obstacle course.

Led by two wacky, off the wall and horribly talented ( as in simply awsome!) facilitators, Russ and Doug, the Do Tanks were mini pressure cookers designed to rapidly prepare the winning ideas for canning and preserving. Using the ideas as the meat of the stew, the Do Tanks added the creative equivalent of potatoes, carrots and veggies to the mix to complete the dish.

Watching the Agents and passing Citizens working with the Contest Winners to take their core vision and help it to it’s logical potential was awesome. The energy, the excitement was infectious. And it was work. By the end of the day my brain felt like it had been used as a door mat on a Customer Appreciation day.

But it was worth it. It was worth the Saturday spent in the lower levels of Louisville’s 21C, Hotel andArt
Gallery combination. The chance to get to participate in this event, to get to support our Green Idea thinking Contest Winners was something I will remember and be grateful for- for a long time to come.

The last speaker, Ray Bradbury, has just been “beamed” back up and was a pleasure to see tonight. Ray focused in on one main point, love. He is a very passionate man and only does what he loves. He never let a publicist, director or teacher tell him what to do; he only did what he loved. The early years for Ray were tough in California but he eventually found success. This came in the form of The Martian Chronicles, allowing him to take care of his wife and soon coming first born daughter. This closely resembles the Woz event the night before. Steve Wozniak didn’t speak of his love or passions directly but he illustrated them for us. Hesitant to leave HP, because of his passion for engineering was only one of the many examples that he gave of his love. This theme was carried throughout the entire 2007 Idea Festival; great thinkers that are passionate about their industries passionate about new idea’s.

Steve Wozniak was the headlining speaker for day two’s events.  Check out Agent Ryan Butkowski’s post below for details.  Here is a link to some video featuring “Woz”.

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IdeaFestival introduced me to the concept of a “do tank.”  Essentially, these are creative thinking sessions for ideas that have already been though up.  Thus the “do” means that we’re trying to figure out how to actually implement and expand on the existing idea.

 The winners of the IdeaFestival contest for ideas on how to reduce e-waste, conserve power, and tap untapped resources were invited to participate in the do tanks to refine their ideas.  The tanks were facilitated by members of the Creative Education Foundation.

Check out the video below to get a peek inside the do tanks and hear from one of the winners.

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Craig Nevill-Manning is Google’s New York Engineering Director.  His presentation was on topics such as how Google works, how to create a Google Maps mashup in a few minutes, the amazing infrastructure of off-the-shelf PCs that Google uses to process its inumerable searches, as well as what the future holds for Google and search technology.

We caught up with Craig after the presentation to ask him a couple questions.  Check out the video link below.

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Check out this video taken on day 3 of IdeaFestival.  We interview one of the agents at the “portable” Precinct we set up in the lobby and there’s some bonus coverage of James McLurkin’s robot swarms.

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This is a glimpse into the “Do Tanks” at 21C Hotel and Museum. The winner’s ideas were broken down into different parts, analyzed, scrutinized, and then conceptualized. This was all done with the guidance of idea facilitators. They were able to invite us to think differently through a variety of techniques. Thus further developing the idea into something that is tangible, producible, or even profitable.

Check out this picture http://www.flickr.com/photos/13607242@N04/1388321842/

Robot Swarms 

During day two at IdeaFestival, we got to see a great presentation by James McLurkin. James has previously worked for iRobot® - the same company that makes the famous Roomba® robot vacuum cleaner for the home - and now has been doing some great research into “robot swarms.” 

James first explained why we are pretty far away from robots taking over the earth as we have seen in many sci-fi films. According to him, the understanding we have of how to emulate intelligence and how to even really define what intelligence is are problems that have to be solved before we have robots that can take over the planet. James pointed out that most robots would have a tough time even escaping from the room we were in. Getting down off the stage, figuring out where the doors were along the wall, and navigating through a room full of people would be beyond the capabilities of what robots can do today (for the most part). 

So what James has been working on goes about advancing robot technology in a different way. Instead of trying to increase the complexity and intelligence of a single large robot, he is developing “swarms” of small, relatively dumb robots to accomplish complex tasks. He has taken much of his inspiration from nature - such as how the simple behaviors of insects can give the illusion of intelligence when viewed at a distance. 

We were given a fantastic demonstration of James’s robot swarm. His small swarm of about 15 robots (normally he works with swarms of over a hundred) were given commands to perform different tasks such as to spread out across the area. With only very simple communications and commands between the nearest robots, the whole swarm was able to accomplish the tasks assigned. The robots also played some easily recognized computer game theme songs through their on-board sound system to give auditory feedback to the users. This warmed the hearts of all the geeks in the room. 

The future for this technology can be visualized in search and rescue, cleaning tasks, repair work and anything else that is too repetitive or dangerous for humans to do. As a geek, if I could just have my own personal robot swarm to bring me a steady supply of caffeinated beverages, I would say James’ research had been a mission accomplished!

I enjoyed seeing Steve Wozniak speak tonight about the life long career he envisioned at HP, then pleading with HP to build his computer, but only to be disappointed by their rejection. The event was beautifully put together with the mayor of Louisville speaking about the advancements he has seen locally and even technically, then there was dinner and a brief award presentation after, but when Mr. Wozniak hit the stage, there was a passionate narrative being illustrated before our eyes. The pace was fast, the detail was profound, and the story was his. The pace at which he told his adventure was blazing; there was no room for your imagination to wonder, for you had to pay attention as the pace began to increase. The story being told was one that started the revolution of the personal computer; the invention of the personal computer.

After reflecting on what Steve Wozniak had spoken about, I was reminded of my own beginnings with my first personal computer; it was a Wang 386SX20, 1 Megabyte of Ram, 40 Megabyte of hard drive and a SVGA 14” monitor. I was hard pressed to get this machine to do what I wanted, but with the help of four one megabyte RAM SIMMS, that I purchased at Best Buy #12, I was able to get Chuck Yeager’s Flight Trainer 2.0 to run, but the greater influence that I had in my life was better than any gaming experience in my life and it was very similar to Steve’s, my father.  My father is also an amateur radio fanatic and was an electrical engineer for his own personal items and enjoyment, and still is today, much like Steve’s. As much as Steve associated his success with electronics and education to his parents, I too relate my success with computers and technical information to my father. That one Wang computer has forever changed my life, my wife’s life, and most importantly my son’s life; for I too will instill into him what my father has onto me, and continues to instill into me, for it has brought me here today to enjoy great thinkers and to be a part of Idea Festival.

This will be day two for the Do Tanks for myself. Yesterday, we had a great run with the winners with further developing their ideas. This morning we have one of the winners with the recycling idea. The buzz today is around Steve Wozniak, and I will be attending this three hour event. I will post more about the event afterwards.