Sep

We need your bright ideas

We need your ideas! To help develop proposals to address the activities and projects outlined in the Smithsonian Strategic plan, an idea fair will be held Sept. 13-14. This idea fair, the third in a series, will focus on projects that fall under the auspices of the Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe Consortium. Idea fairs offer the opportunity to start fleshing out proposal ideas, to gauge staff interest and perhaps most importantly, to identify the people who will carry these ideas forward. While the time until the first Grand Challenges proposal submission is now short, participating in this idea fair also should help people prepare for the second proposal submission, which will occur in spring 2011.

The Unlocking the Mysteries of the Universe Consortium idea fair will be held on the afternoons of Monday, Sept. 13 from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. and Tuesday, Sept. 14 from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. in two locations: the Smithsonian Castle Library, 1000 Jefferson Dr., Washington, D.C., and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, M-340 3rd floor Conference Room, 160 Concord Street, Cambridge, Mass. The two locations will be linked via video conference.

Please e-mail both Joanne Flores (floresjo@si.edu) and Christine Jones (cjones@cfa.harvard.edu) a short, five-to-six-sentence paragraph summarizing your idea by noon on Sept. 9. Please include the names, affiliations and e-mail addresses of all collaborators. The submissions will be reivewed on Sept. 10 and all proposers and staff will be e-mailed the list of ideas selected for presentation at the idea fair. The presentations themselves will be short, approximately 10 minutes, with additional time for a brief discussion.

A good idea is one that identifies a research question as well as a public education or dissemination program, builds on the Smithsonian’s strengths, and brings together individuals or groups from different SI departments or units or includes outside collaboration.

All staff are strongly encouraged to submit an idea and, even if you do not submit an idea, please attend the idea fair to hear about and possibly join other projects and help develop full proposals for these projects. If you cannot attend the idea fair, please view the ideas and presentations online.

All idea descriptions will be posted on an internal Smithsonian SharePoint site to help share and generate proposal ideas and promote collaboration. (You can log into the site from a computer on the Smithsonian or SAO network using your webTA user name and password). All presentation slides also will be posted on this site, so that Smithsonian employees at other locations will be able to view these. We welcome broad participation.

Two idea fairs have already been held, one for Understanding the American Experience Consortium and the second for Valuing World Cultures Consortium. The short descriptions of the ideas submitted for these two areas can be viewed here and here.

To give us an idea of the number of participants we should expect to personally attend the idea fair at either location, please RSVP to Christine Jones (cjones@cfa.harvard.edu).