The contest was basically to take a gift bag full of Hallmark’s products (you know, those irritating song-cards, dancing snowman snow globes, glitter, and so forth) and add/subtract anything to make a cool new product that answered one of four core questions. I lost my list of questions, but they were all pretty vague and fit within the “making moments matter” sort of mindframe one would expect.

The middle idea was the winner, although I had way, way more fun making the bone-conduction headband and dancing around to my old Mousercise LP…

FAMILY DANCE TROUPE
A customizable set of characters that fit into the “Dancing Santas” snowglobes. Customization can be cartoon-like (think the Mii characters of Nintendo’s Wii game system) and configured by the consumer via a web or in-store interface; alternately, new 3-d technology like Microsoft’s Project Natal could be used to accurately scan a person’s face and be printed out as an accurate likeness.

CHRISTMAS CONSTELLATIONS
A system for extended families to share memories. Each star in the constellation is a special Christmas ornament that has both a camera and a display. When Grandma sends you a picture or message (through an easy web interface like blogger or flickr), your ornament will glow gently to indicate that Grandma has sent you a new photo. As you’re seeing it, you can turn the ornament around, snap a picture, and send it right back to her via a local wireless link.

SECRET DANCE PARTY
Silly cartoon “ears” that children can wear at a birthday party or other special event. It’s a great party favor because it gives the kids an activity: they all put the ears on and magically can all dance in unison, even though the parents don’t hear any music! The secret is the bone-conduction speaker in the headband, which plays music inside the child’s head that is inaudible to others. The headbands will be pre-loaded with 8-10 full-length songs (the kids’ songs can have instructions, a la Mousercise, that allow them to do dance moves in sync), and the headbands can easily keep sync by only transmitting/receiving cues (ie, “play track 1″) instead of streaming audio.

I was determined not to use Powerpoint and not to have too much text in my presentation, as I find both to be deadly boring and inelegant. As a result, showing you the images I prepared for my presentation will be of limited utility without my spiel going on over it. That is, I think, how it should be: images should reinforce my talk, and depend on it, rather than the other way around. I hope to refine this presentation style/approach more, as it is one of the few things I think I might actually be able to teach/help other Labbers with…as a whole, we’re not so good at presenting our work. This is sad, because so many awesome ideas come out of the Lab, and only a few result in equally awesome prototypes; of those few, it is sad to see visitor/sponsor enthusiasm lag in the face of a bad presentation of an awesome concept-and-demo…

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