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Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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Hi, Wayne:

Cool, it is a great idea and I will jump on the site now and then to  
see whats happening.  By trying different approaches, we can all see  
what works in fostering collaboration and opening up the  
brainstorming process, which has the potential to introduce new ideas  
into our exhibitions.

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

On Oct 13, 2005, at 9:27 AM, WAYNE LABAR wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology  
> Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related  
> institutions.
> ********************************************************************** 
> *******
>
> Eric,
>
> First, I think our incentive is that you can go to the museum/ 
> science center and see an exhibit you did.  We may have contests  
> and as I mention somewhere on the site, special hours.  If we get  
> nothing then that's ok too, I am just offering people the  
> opportunity. I have been in discussion with Dave Gilbert and we  
> both believe there are people who want to hack with stuff.   
> Remember this open to anyone.  I do think there are people out  
> there who are interested in messing around with digital stuff.
>
> Second, the code from producers is not open source, the exhibit is  
> open source.  IN other words we are working to make "plug ins" or  
> sections easily taken out and replaced with different parts.  I  
> think the difference here is we are trying to organize the number  
> and have a large number.
>
> Third, as we develop the exhibits further I do thing what you can  
> do and make will be a more defined challenge. But we launched this  
> at this stage so participants might actually shape the original  
> exhibit development and production as well.
>
> Wayne
>
>
>
> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology  
> Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related  
> institutions.
> ********************************************************************** 
> *******
>
> Hey Wayne:  Remember our experiment with doing this four years ago
> with Connections?  It was pretty fruitful, yielded some good ideas. I
> think you participated some, maybe not.  We had 20 or 30 folks from
> all around the world for a little while. We also thought the idea of
> open source exhibition development would be useful, but there are a
> few caveats:
>
> 1) There is so much stuff out there for people to do that you need to
> create some sort of incentive.  We offered ipods, as I recall, for
> the most substantive poster and the most frequent poster (they turned
> out to be the same person).
> 2) Is the stuff you are creating really open source?  Is Onomy going
> to create something under the "copyleft" license ( http://www.gnu.org/
> copyleft/copyleft.html )? I know that several of the most innovative
> pieces we commissioned for connections we licensed from the artist
> under traditional copyright rules. They certainly don't allow for the
> pieces to be given away and for the source code to be modified/added
> to, as is required by the open source movement.  From the artists
> point of view, the R&D they did for a piece in Connections was part
> of their stock in trade for the next piece that they might do.
> 3) We gave specific challenges.  For example, we wanted to create an
> "analog analogy" of emergent systems.  Some cool ideas came up (we
> tried building a series of pole magnets mounted in an array).
>
> The best thing about this approach is that we were introduced to some
> good creative minds who were willing to share ideas, but it fell far
> short of the "open source" model that has had a few runaway
> successes.  There is a whole fascinating dynamic to those successes
> that has been explored in some of the literature on emergent systems
> and "tipping points."  I could dig up some references about the
> social dynamics of open source development if you are interested.
>
> See you in a couple of days!
>
>
> Eric Siegel
> Executive VP
>     Programs and Planning
> NY Hall of Science
> 47-01 111th Street
> Queens, NY 11368
> www.nyscience.org
>
> On Oct 12, 2005, at 4:03 PM, WAYNE LABAR wrote:
>
>
>> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology
>> Centers
>> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related
>> institutions.
>> ********************************************************************* 
>> *
>> *******
>>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> As I hope to see many of you at the upcoming conference, I am able
>> to provide a link to a new project that has been initiated.  This
>> project is called the Exhibit Commons
>>
>> Information can be found at our new site (some bugs still being
>> worked on) which is:
>>
>> www.exhibitcommons.org
>>
>> The idea, taken from the phenomena that is occurring across the
>> world, is to open up some of the exhibits we are developing and
>> allow the general public to develop, design, create an imagine new
>> ways of operating, new content, whole new directions. In other
>> words allow the public to play with our toys. Rather than run from
>> the power that the general public now has at their fingertips we
>> hope to embrace the fact that we live in a world that has the power
>> to interpret what we do. Through the Exhibit Commons we hope to
>> offer a chance to work with This new energy.
>>
>>
>> Although the exhibits in the Commons are Liberty Science Center
>> exhibits now, we are looking for other science centers and museums
>> who would like to experiment with This concept. We hope to make the
>> site a nexus of links to things such as This. Since many of our
>> exhibits are part of our expansion it will be a couple of years
>> till This really sees the exhibition floor, but we hope to engage
>> the public and field in making it work from the very get go - i.e.
>> right now.
>>
>> I look forward to your comments which can be emailed to me
>> directly. Be aware I get the ASTC Listserv in digest form so I
>> don't see entries very quickly.
>>
>> Wayne
>>
>>
>>
>> Wayne J LaBar
>> Vice President, Exhibitions and Theaters
>> Liberty Science Center
>> 251 Phillip Street
>> Liberty State Park
>> Jersey City, NJ 07305
>>
>> voice: 201.451.0006 x-347
>> fax: 201.451.7046
>>
>> ********************************************************************* 
>> *
>> *
>> More information about the Informal Science Education Network and the
>> Association of Science-Technology Centers may be found at http://
>> www.astc.org.
>> To remove your e-mail address from the ISEN-ASTC-L list, send the
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>>
>
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> More information about the Informal Science Education Network and the
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> More information about the Informal Science Education Network and the
> Association of Science-Technology Centers may be found at http:// 
> www.astc.org.
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