Celebrate Burdock Day: Tuesday May 19, 2009

This coming Tuesday is a very special day at our work place. It marks the last weekday that our museum is closed before the “open seven days a week” summer schedule kicks in. For some Team Members, it is a time to take one last deep breath before diving into our busy summer. For other Team Members, it is a time of reflection. For me, it’s all about Burdock Day.

Burdock Day celebrates the Burdock in all of us. What is Burdock? For some, it’s an unending drive towards near perfection. For others, it’s the 11th hour (and 59th minute) last ditch, 110% effort that goes into making experiences in our building top notch. A small few might suggest it’s the “Get The Crane”, grab ‘um by the horns attitude. And lastly, Burdock is any of a group of biennial thistles in the genus Arctium or a leather bag, used by sheep headers, to carry wine.

No matter what you consider to be “Burdock”, we request that you help us celebrate this year on May 19th. How can you participate? Here are the Ten Ways to Celebrate Burdock Day:

1. Buy a T-shirt at skreened.com : http://skreened.com/holyjuan/burdock-day Choose your favorite color and wear your shirt with pride.
2. Buy the larger frozen meal to fill up and not be hungry later in the afternoon.
3. Shave your head and claim that the ladies dig it.
4. Embrace the message and stay true to the Big Idea.
5. Write your name overtop other peoples on their tape measure, ruler and stapler.
6. Outsource It!!
7. Clean your desk (actually, clean his desk).
8. Dream about the computer game “Lemonade Stand” coming back
9. Paint it orange.
10. Use “making coffee” as a legitimate excuse to be late to a meeting.

**Due to lack of participation, the 2009 Burdock Day 250K Run/Walk has been canceled. Sorry, no refunds.**

Photos from Burdock Day 2008

It's all worth it - Build A Duck

I was a chaperone for Greg's class trip to COSI. Seeing as I work there, my little group of three kids got a very detailed visit, as I seem to know all the cool things that six year olds like to do.

Right near the end of the trip, I took them into the Innovation Showcase. This area highlights Ohio people and companies that use science, technology and creativity to make the world a better place. One of the interactives I worked on was a Flash based computer game in which guests try to innovate upon the standard rubber duck. The game is called, "Build A Duck." By talking with your career team, you can make decisions on what different items you can add to the base duck. After you design the duck, it goes into production and a sales report is generated about how well you did. (Spoiler: if a guest designs a truly horrible duck, they can actually blow up the factory.)

The project team tested the game out on the Friends of COSI and during limited openings of the exhibit. We think we did a pretty good job.

Greg and his friends stopped at the build a duck and I gave them an overview of how to play. They spent the next twenty minutes trying out different duck combinations and were very excited when their duck did well. I was very pleased to see them having fun and repeating the program that our team developed.

I was even happier to learn that it had a lasting impression on him as you can see in his drawing from kindergarten.



This makes it all worth it.

PS The cave/man/purple dots drawing is the "Black Hole" which is located in the Space exhibit. The kids ran through that about 18 times.