This is an image of scientific collaborations across different disciplines. Notice how just one connector means that an entire field has access to the knowledge and collaborative power of all the others.
The Blender is designed to make that first connection, and nurture it as more reinforce it.
from the Gallery of network images

So during some brainstorming yesterday we discussed how to make sure people in the Blender interacted with each other. Various ideas were put forward including forced cooperation (in order to open doors/get to the bathroom/etc.) and “serious play” (1, 2).

But one option that could be crucial is simply minimizing the effort required to initiate a […]

The SwitchSessions model of music creation sounded like the old activity of writing a story one line at a time, while passing it around the room, but leveraging all the new digital music technologies. Might be fun to set up a station in the Blender…
Switch Sessions are a new form of musical collaboration. They allow […]

Print it out, post it in your bathrooms, tape it to your friends’ backs…. but download it here.

How about some of these for breakout sessions, or some casual seating. These links are from a fun site to spur the imagination, iwantoneofthose.com.

If you remember the Lego Master Builder Competition that I mentioned here before, you’ll enjoy this article on the Lego Master Builder contest winners.
On Thursday, the finalists were walked through LegoLand and told that on Friday, they’d be given a tub of 4,000 Legos with which to craft something they’d see on their tour. But […]

All those at the retreat in Monterey surely remember the toys we played with that, though often indirectly, aided our creativity. Looking through an old WIRED today, I noticed a list of several toys under their “WIRED Tools” category. We should consider stocking the Blender with an assortment of these in the common rooms. I […]

Blender Website is up…comments? More photos and polished text to come shortly.

Ok, so here’s one variation suggested by Mojan: put the Blender colors in a disc (a la Apple OS ‘busy’ mouse cursor). You can see the prototype here. I made a double-curved border between each color, but perhaps a single curve would look better? Thoughts?