Connecting and Seeding New Ideas

Posted in events by Sarai Fernandez on November 25th, 2009

Don’t you think it would be wonderful to have an intelligent duvet that converted your regular bed into a self-making bed? Well, these are the kind of brilliant ideas that the Science Gallery was looking for when they organised a seed-dating event called “What if…”, based in the exhibit under the same title. The idea was simple: get a group of people from different backgrounds together and give them 3 minutes to do a brainstorming exercise. They were asked to come up with a new idea, that can be just be just for fun or even the base of a new business or investigation.

What at first sight looked like a geek party, turned out to be a very cool meeting that I really enjoyed. Besides the self-making beds, there were ideas such as an amazing bacteria that cleans your teeth during the night and gives you fresh breath in the morning, and a system that could tell if two people are compatible using neurobiology and neurochemistry.

A free lunch at the Science Gallery Café was waiting for the couple who came up with the best idea. We, the participants, were our own judges. The winner, believe it or not, was this one: What if I could convert the friction of my cat’s tongue to power my PDA using a fish-flavoured USB?. Close to it was the one which definetely got my vote: Floating shopping bags!!!!!!! I not only want the shopping bag, but the handbag, and the laptop bag and the suitcase. Everything floating. I just have one question: will my stuff be safe from thieves up there?