Day 2 of 5 in 5 brought to life a periodic tote, tickets to a sunset, a year in pictures, balls of light. In an impromptu celebration of old-time computing we got earrings compatible with your PC, AsteriskFTP, and thank goodness there’s finally BASIC for Twitter. Clink your glasses for a laser photo trigger, trip the family crest fantastic, snap a jacket, work some flash, and with today’s guest star, compare the Olympic to the merely average.
The group is now 14 strong and with today’s Guest Star Dennis Crowley, they did each project in a single day. Three more days to go! Check out the Etsy Video published yesterday by Guest Star Bre Pettis that includes FrankenFace.
Days: 1 2 3 4 5
Working on a prototype for a future version of the Botanicalls Kit, we’ve started toying with a leafy motif….
It’s the first day of 5 in 5 and there’s a parade of projects. See the gang free themselves from Positioning Systems, choose their food decisively, sash a speaker, stick socks to a tee, mate software circles, print Mega Man, enliven their claw prizes, greet with robots, calm a TV, root for poops, Eco-nomize a billfold, season some mittens, dramatize their voicemail, cut their own coins and Franken their Faces. This motivated group of ITP students and their Guest Star, Bre Pettis did each project in a single day and they’ll do another four each this week for a total of around 50 different projects in five days!
Days: 1 2 3 4 5
Ten ITP students are doing 5 Projects in 5 Days:
“5-in-5 is a group event based on the New York University ITP resident researchers’ project “7 in Seven” that took place the second week of June 2008. The premise goes something like this: Do a creative project every day for five straight days, starting Monday, July 28th 2008 Projects must be completed in a day, so they need to be as compact as they are creative. Each project needs a name and documentation posted by the end of the day. It should be a stand-alone accomplishment.”
The original event has been enhanced with Guest Stars, daily meetings and snacks. I’ll be blogging about each day on the Make Magazine site.
From Left to Right: Armanda, Vikram, Andy, Adam, Corey, Josh, Christian, Kristin and Rob. Rob Ryan is in the background setting things up, and my head is poking up behind Corey’s shoulder.
Days: 1 2 3 4 5
We’re experimenting with a LilyPad-style wearable coin cell to supply 3.6 Volts to the XBee LilyPad from a 2450 Lithium Ion rechargeable cell. The voltage is nominally out of spec for the XBee, but seems to work just fine in our tests. First draft is at the board house right now.
The first prototype of the XBee LilyPad open-source wearable radio has arrived and is working properly. All the lights turn on, the connections are just great and getting a proto in hand has spawned all kinds of new ideas. The push for the next version is to move all the components out from under the XBee so that it can sit flush to the board, making the LilyPad thinner if it is soldered directly on. We’re also going to add a voltage regulator so the board can be used with a 5 Volt supply if desired. Headers for programming the XBee and a single jumper to control the debugging LEDs will add useful flexibility. Thanks to Tom Igoe and Zach Eveland for their helpful suggestions.
The prototype with female headers:
Zach performs a wearability test with the help of scotch tape:
7 in 7 is now a fond memory, so the participants got together and did a little post-mortem evaluation on the scheme. The week was clearly an overall success. Everyone felt that 7 in 7 got their creative juices moving and provided motivation to attack projects that in some cases had sat on the to-do list for months or even years. Things got done.
Even so, there’s room for improvement. The universal feeling was that seven days is an unwieldy length of time. It was impractical to put everything else in our lives on hold for that long. Five days, or as little as three would be much easier to manage, and improve our ability to focus on the creative tasks at hand. A shorter timeframe would also create a more cohesive group, so that everyone could attend kick-off meetings, sanity breaks and a celebratory completion party. Managing the pressure to produce came up several times. Several people commented that while the social motivation was excellent, they sometimes felt intimidated by the visibility. Keeping things inspirational and stimulating while maintaining a supportive and informal environment is clearly the balance to strike for success.
Other advice was to avoid embarking on a big project or doing too many things you didn’t know how to do already. Reserving some minimal time each day for attending to other tasks, remembering that documentation can take a significant chunk of time at the end and making sure that you’re comfortable making the project public were all suggested.
Some great ideas came out of our wrap-up meeting including:
- doing a swap where everyone works on someone else’s project for an hour or two
- having a common creative warm-up exercise each day
- planning for documentation, and having extra help around to accomplish it
- having help running the event from people who aren’t currently busy participating
- keeping fresh by repeating this event on a regular basis
We’ll definitely keep these ideas in mind for next time, which might be a 3 in 3 sometime in August or September. In the meantime, several of the one-day projects have inspired interesting larger ventures. I’m personally excited about trying this all again, with fresh new faces added to the mix.
Blog: 7 in 7 Days: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
