Inventor Night

[cjsmith]

Geek party idea: get a bunch of wacky creative people together, hand them a lot of scratch paper, and give them an inventor challenge. Instead of having a games night, you have an Inventor Night. At the end of it you wind up with six or seven designs for Self-Ironing Shirts, or a sturdy Homemade Pogo Stick Shoe, or an Inexpensive One-Use Emergency Insulin Refrigerator.

If you can snag some people with specialized domain knowledge that'd be handy. Otherwise keep a computer with a 'net connection nearby. Just saying "Oh, there would be some electronics to take care of that part" is nowhere near as effective as sketching the circuit or writing pseudo-microcode. Even better if, for the simpler challenges, there are some materials and guests can try some things. (Reality TV rights optional.)

Staying on-topic isn't strictly necessary. It's fun to start out with one challenge, but maybe everyone will get off-topic and you'll wind up with a Solar-Powered Hovercraft and an Automated Dice Roller. Who knows? :-)

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Junkyard Wars came to mind as I was writing the post. If this were a show, the host's team of helpers might scramble for materials while the inventors focused on how to make the whatsits work right.