Innovation Incubator launches in Ithaca

We had a fantastic launch of the Innovation Incubator project at Ithaca College in the rolling hills of upstate New York, June 7-10.

The Knight News Challenge project is to create ‘incubators’ at seven academic institutions to foster creative thinking about solutions to digital news problems. The schools are: Michigan State, University of Kansas, Kansas State, Western Kentucky University, Ithaca College, University of Nevada-Las Vegas and St. Michael’s College.

Six of the seven faculty mentors (one could not attend due to illness) arrived a day early for meetings and sessions to explain the project and the process. Students from around the country (36) in all from the seven schools came in through the afternoon and early evening on Thursday June 6.

The training started along immediately over dinner with students mingling and getting to know each other. Students and faculty had completed Myer-Briggs testing before their arrival to help in creating the mixed teams and learning about each of the participants. The ever smiling and energetic Mary Tomaselli, staff development manager in human resources at Ithaca College, led the group through a number of exercises intended to demonstrate the differences in the various personality types. We are loaded with ENTPs, and that should make the group dynamics very interesting as the project progresses.

Friday morning the full group headed off to the Hoffman Challenge Ropes Course run by Cornell University for a series of team building experiences. Students and a few of the more intrepid of the faculty, walked across cables, were launched skyward on ropes and harnesses and had to plot and figure their way literally through a web of ropes. It was a great team building experience for all—despite an overabundance of Gypsy Moth Caterpillars on the trees in the woods. (Yuck.)

Friday afternoon, the group settled into the real work with a lecture on the project by Ithaca College dean Dianne Lynch, and after dinner in their teams, began working on some practice exercises. Jane Briggs-Bunting, the J-School Director at Michigan State, put the individual teams through a Zig Zag exercise to demonstrate how different personality types reach a decision.

On Saturday, the students began the day working in the virtual world of Second Life in computer labs in the Park School. Several students had never ventured into this other life experience previously. They began learning how to navigate their avatars and teleport to different parts of the virtual world before returning to the Park School Island. Students were then given their first assignment—developing a travel related information product—and they had all of four hours to do it. The six faculty members, meanwhile, created an Innovation Incubator syllabus/calendar sto all the students could keep on track with the project.

Angela Powers, Kansas State director of the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications, lectured on the interpersonal tensions that would likely arise among team members over the next six weeks as they worked on their proposals.

Teams made their product presentations to two Ithaca College alumni who had completed the pilot project last year and developed proposals for AOL. The winning idea was a cell-phone, two-way translator for folks traveling to a foreign country with no knowledge of the language. The individual can ask a question, the cell phone repeats it in the appropriate language (like German) and either the caller can repeat it or in a speaker phone can communicate the question. The response is them translated back by the cell phone to the individual. The team of Jordan Barnes (MSU), Kyle Bosman (Ithaca), Christina Caraco (Ithaca), Andrea Gosselin (St. Michaels) and Micah McAllister (Western Ky) had the winning idea and were awarded a $100 certificate to be used for development of their incubator project.

The students were engaged, curious and motivated by the end, not only to settle down and work using virtual formats for discussions and to exchange ideas among their teams and with their faculty, and to do it from distances as far a way as Ecuador, Las Vegas and elsewhere. They also managed to have a great party (according to information from unnamed sources!) Saturday night before leaving campus for travel home very early Sunday morning. The exhausted faculty crawled back to our rooms!

Stay tuned for more updates.