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Great job Jonah:

I'm curious about the general reaction to Richard Florida.  For me,  
his talk boiled down to a kind of smug: "the world would be better  
off if there were more people like us."  I had an allergic reaction.   
OTOH, he does seem to be generating data, so lies, damned lies, and  
statistics...at least he's in there somewhere. For a taste of his  
spiel:  http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2005/11/ 
fastcities_florida.html

The highlight for me was the 2 hour Playful Invention and Exploration  
folks on Tuesday, during which we actually made things.   
www.pienetwork.org.

Actually, the real highlight was seeing you all (used in the southern  
vernacular sense, which WW, our host used so masterfully...you could  
spread his accent with a spoon.)

Curmudgeonly---

Eric Siegel
Executive VP
    Programs and Planning
NY Hall of Science
47-01 111th Street
Queens, NY 11368
www.nyscience.org

On Oct 24, 2005, at 10:54 AM, Jonah Cohen wrote:
>

> CHEERS to the Science Museum of Virginia. Hosting this affair has  
> got to be
> a pain in the butt, but they did it very well. All of the staffers  
> I met
> were great, and many of them bent over backwards to help us out of  
> towners.
> (A personal thanks to Summer, David and Bee.) Among the keenest  
> stuff at
> their center was the "kugel" (a huge marble globe that  
> hydroplaned), the
> aparatsaurus bone the staff were cleaning, the Newton in Space  
> exhibit...
> and the painting pig.
>
> CHEERS to the SMV parking lot. Seriously, this is the best smelling  
> parking
> lot ever. SMV is located right next to a cookie + cracker factory.
>
> JEERS to canceling stuff. The Friday pre-conference tours all got  
> axed, and
> they looked interesting. Also deep sixed was a Tuesday session  
> about one of
> the most intriguing partnerships we'd heard of: between SMV and the  
> Richmond
> Ballet. The head of the Minds in Motion program, they're the ones who
> brought the really great dancing kids to Saturday morning's  
> opening, was
> supposed to present on art + science, but it was scratched.
>
> CHEERS to a big international attendance. I met/talked with people  
> from
> Canada, Trinidad, Finland, Belgium, Denmark, Argentina, Israel,  
> England,
> Ireland, New Zealand and Malaysia.
>
> JEERS to a blitz of meaningless buzzwords. If you want to get people
> together to brainstorm some ideas, just say so. Don't say you're  
> going to
> "collaborate as a thinking partner with senior leaders across the  
> globe to
> create innovative forums for constructive dialogue on critical  
> business and
> societal issues". Vague jargon is the friend of no one, except the  
> overpaid
> marketing consultant.
>
> CHEERS to getting real. At the TV partnership session, I was  
> worried at
> first that the session might drown in the jargon blitz mentioned  
> above. But
> both the television and science center attendees came right out and  
> said
> what we wanted from the other side in a partnership - and why we often
> weren't getting it or couldn't provide what the other side wanted.  
> I won't
> say this let us solve all potential problems, but airing our  
> differences up
> front at least let us get a start on it by getting a handle on the  
> true
> problems. Call me nuts, but I see an honest, contentious debate as
> preferable to a conciliatory blast of nothing. I needed to know  
> what the TV
> folks were seeking/offering, not to hear vague promises of "potential
> partnership synergies".
>
> JEERS to Saturday morning speaker Andy Stefanovich. I'll try to not  
> get too
> acidic, and just say I thought he was bad.
>
> CHEERS to Sunday morning speaker Mike Melvill, the first privately  
> funded
> astronaut to make it into space. You could hear jaws dropping  
> during his
> stories of taking Spaceship One into space. I especially loved his  
> first
> action upon reaching space: whipping out a camera to snap some  
> pictures.
>
> CHEERS to the second most macho presenter, after Melvill, William  
> Katzman of
> the Catawba Science Center. At the Best in Show session, he  
> performed a demo
> where he walked barefoot on glass shards. And now I want to rent  
> "Die Hard".
>
> JEERS to the shuttle schedule. It was good to have hotel shuttles  
> to the
> conference center, but often they seemed to be running on a  
> schedule that
> had no correlation with when the session were running.
>
> CHEERS to long running sessions that still pack a punch. Eddie  
> Goldstein's
> Live Demo Hour is always great. I've seen a lot of demonstrations,  
> but this
> year I saw several that were new to me. Highlight: Nina Simon of  
> the Spy
> Museum, who used an honest-to-Le Carre polygraphy on a volunteer.
>
> Similarly, Linda Organ + Cathy Fudurich continue to bring it with  
> The Best
> Damn Things We've Ever Done. Presented at a pace that suggests  
> someone was
> on the Tina, this far reaching session once again showed amazing  
> ideas. From
> how to organize a huge engineering event to an innovative way to teach
> genetics to a program where students raised and released endangered  
> turtles.
>
>
> JEERS to the coffee served at the convention center.
>
> CHEERS to SMV director Walter Witschey. I nearly died of surprise  
> when I saw
> that he was actually >presenting< floor programming to museum  
> guests with a
> Segway. And numerous Virginia staffers assured me "he does that all  
> the
> time." Now that's cool.
>
> CHEERS to some of the best partnerships discussed at this
> partnership-centric conference. And wouldn't you know, outreach  
> folks got to
> see 'em.
>
> At the NEON session, Chris Burda of the Science Museum of Minnesota  
> told us
> about how SMM works with small community science groups, from rocketry
> clubs, to professional medical associations to the daffodil  
> association.
> This was one swell idea.
>
> At outreach live, we got to see part of SMV's programming designed
> specifically to help schools with the Standards of Learning (SOL -  
> ha!)
> tests. We in the science center field may bitch n moan about  
> standardized
> testing (and it's all justified!) but SMV has moved on to the next  
> step:
> adapting, and doing something about it. I wish everyone could have  
> heard a
> Richmond school principal talk about the museum's SOL programming, how
> schools eagerly vie to get funding for it, and how much she thought  
> it had
> helped her students. "Five years ago, we did very poorly on the state
> science tests," the principal said, "last year, 90% of our fifth  
> graders
> passed."
>
> And if that doesn't inspire you with thoughts of what's possible  
> for us to
> achieve, what will?
>
> Louisville is on the clock,
> Jonah Cohen
> Outreach & Public Programs Manager
> Science Center of Connecticut
>
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