San Fransisco Trip

Hey guys,

Forgive the personal tone of this entry. If it sounds like I'm talking to myself, that's because I am. This is the journal entry I wrote on my flight back from San Fransisco earlier this week. I was so excited when I set up this blog last night that I had to get something out on the web.

Cabaret Mechanical Workshop: September 4 - 6, 2004

On the second day, Ken talked about when he first started teaching he would write everything down. This idea of keeping a daily journal will not go away. I should keep a web log of everything that happens in Design IT Studio, complete with photos from the day. Evaluation and tracking would be easy following this kind of diligence. Think Lewis and Clark, or Charles Darwin. They kept tremendously detailed logs of daily events and observations under extreme conditions. I should be able to keep at least a daily log with my laptop, automobile, and air conditioned buildings.

San Francisco is a magical place – the Palace of Fine Arts a beautiful building. Kim and I walked the streets around the Marina for three days, on the quiet streets of the East Bay area, the condos all lined and uniform. The afternoon we arrived, we went down to the beach and took photos around the Exploratorium. Mike and Karen’s studio was an astonishing place filled with projects by the cabaret artists, Kitundu, and many others. I wonder about the ratio of time they spend working with visitors and staff to the time they spend tinkering and playing. They must have oodles of time to create these magical learning environments. Marble machines, windmills and whirligigs, cabaret mechanical, film series, and sound automata are some of their most recent work. Now they are thinking about ways to explore papercraft and they want to find ways to collaborate with PIE/ExNet partners in creating this new theme (A development cycle for Design IT?)

Ken Finn is a really neat guy; a great story teller with a warm personality, humor, and sharp wit. He’s been working at the E. for 17 years now and his new role with ExNet is a lot different than his previous work with floor explainers and summer camps. I want to find out more about his staff-hiring experience; hiring 15 new people every season is a significant feat of recruitment and training. Our first day consisted almost entirely of Ken, Sam Dean, Kurt Gross, and me talking about our work, our institutions, tinkering and learning, and huge range of other things. We took our conversation and Kim to lunch at Café Marimba. There we talked about the culture of disposable stuff, how exponential growth of anything from cars to trash is hard to encompass with short term political and economic planning, the cost of living in San Francisco, the Monterey Bay Aquarium and kayaking in an extra special area there, the fashion industry.

Take Home thoughts

I must return to San Francisco – I want to spend a month out there working with one of the artists-in-residence, Mike, Karen, and Ken.

I need to get copies of their write-ups for marble machines and photos of their space

I need to set an agenda for the advisor meeting and start some initial conversations with 1) Mitch Resnick, 2) M & K 3) John Parris (is he coming to the advisor meeting?) 4) Ken, Sam, Kristen, and Kurt

Their Studio is the embodiment of a thriving creative center where people join art, technology, and wild imagination to explore novel ideas. I LOVED it. It was bracing to realize how much work it took for Mike and Karen and all the other people who circulate through the area to create that magical environment. And this is at an institution with a strong history of work in this vein. M and K have put a tremendous amount of inspired time into cultivating this stuff; if I am to accomplish anything approaching this level of creativity I will have to find a lot more time to play and it won’t happen in a weekend.

I must get track lights and places to hang artwork from, decent shelving, a toolbox, the power tools on a lock-downable cart. (How much more money do I have to work with at the satellite sites and what are we doing out at Northside?)

I should probably start small in my work with the teens and my focus should be on developing a robust program and finding the people and projects that are inspirational to me and to the kids.

Random Thoughts on September 7, 2004

I need to tinker more: Junkbots, Bugbots, and Bots on Wheels

We should keep our framework closer to home with a focus on interactions with visitors on the floor.