Monday, September 19, 2011

The FREE IBM Think Exhibit in New York City

IBM is opening the FREE IBM Think Exhibit to the public in New York City on Sept. 23 and it will run through October 23, 2011.

This exhibit is tied into IBM's 100 year birthday this year.

We went to a preview of the exhibit the other day. It was fun, well done, and informative. Here are my photos on flickr.

Someone asked me what it was like, so I thought I'd post something for all to see.

This Exhibit is FREE to the public, however you have to obtain tickets for a scheduled entry (I think plans are that you can walk up and get tickets for the next showing depending on how busy it is, or you can get them in advance on the thinkexhibit.com)

The exhibit is explained on the website at thinkexhibit.com

The exhibit is placed on a ramp near Avery Fisher hall (Lincoln Center) in Manhattan (New York City). Here's a Satellite view from Google maps. Zoom out to see the surroundings.

The Exhibit has four parts:
1. Waiting Outside at the "Data Wall"
Outside waiting area on the ramp where you can sit 0r stand and watch the 123 foot long "data wall" which is a constantly moving digital display of information presented in a very attractive media experience. People were stopping by the street and very interested in it. You can get your tickets at the end of this ramp and watch the data wall while waiting. There are also bits of information written on the opposing wall that help you to think about possibilities of what can be done to help our communities (locally and globally). The Data Wall was a real attention getter and very interesting!

2. Movie 12 Minutes
When you enter with your group, you go into a "room" at the bottom of the ramp that has 40 display screens, each one 7 feet high. Once everyone is in the room, the doors are closed and you watch a 12 minute media rich film that spans several of these screens. This was a great film to watch, well done. I liked the part when the showed people and sort of visually showed data within them.

3. Interactive Touch Screens: as long as you want, up to about 30 or 40 minutes
When the film ends, the display screens all turn into interactive touch screens. Each screen covers one of the five main topics of the movie (seeing, believing, mapping, Understanding, Acting). You can move to other screens to see the other topics. We saw adults and children of all ages interacting with these.

4. Exit walk: IBM's 100 Icon's of progress
After you leave the exit, there is a long white glass wall with all of the 100 IBM Icon's of Progress on it. You can read them all, or only the ones you are interested in, or you can just bypass the whole thing and exit. You can also see these icons of progress on the IBM100 website: IBM100.com

Here are some of my photos on Flickr that I took of the Lincoln Center area after seeing the exhibit. It was a bit dark, so I'm sorry for the darkness of the photos.

IBM has also posted photos on Flickr of the exhibit.

There is more about IBM Think on this website: http://www.ibm.com/ibm/think/

Coverage of the Think Exhibit in Media:

1 comment:

Henry Will said...

I added links (at the end of the post) to the Scientific American Article on the IBM THINK Exhibit and links to the Flickr gallery of photos that has been put together. Take a look.