Core77

This morning is like the college humor portion of the conference, except for John Maeda, who was sandwiched in here but he deserved his own post. Late-add Douglas Campbell is nowhere on the schedule and hits the stage like a Sinatra impersonator doing the 3am shift at Circus Circus. Even after two days of magicians, jump ropers and jugglers, his jovial frat-guy demeanor is probably the most unsettling one coffee into the morning. What's a bit more disturbing is that he's wearing a tux. As one-half of Tuxedo Travels he and a friend traveled from Asia to London wearing only tuxedos. On April 1 (of course) they embarked on their epic journey to have fun, but they ended up donating money to organizations and doing goodwill deeds along the way to create a "trail of happiness" in their wake. Of course the trip also included plenty of rice wine binges, amnesia-inducing herbal baths and nudity, with the photos to prove it. Now Campbell wants to expand the flock, if you will, and he's calling on designers to help him design a broader audience participation experience. But he doesn't need any help with the tux, however: Apparently it's made from some superfabric that you can wash in the shower--while wearing it. Which doesn't make too much sense since Campbell seemed to be plenty comfortable with the tux off.

And now it's time for another Serious Play Surprise! It's the Mentos and Coke guys! After chatting about their sudden brush with fame--they even got contacted by the Bellagio fountain guys, sweet!--a kiddie pool comes out and they drop six Mentos into a Diet Coke liter for a small on-stage geyser. For you nerds out there, the reaction is not chemical, it's physical, and it's called 'nucleation.' In fact, it's not Mentos-specific, anything small with the same surface area will do the trick. Now the guys are headed back home to work on another experiment--using 46,000 pads of Post-It notes.

>>Read all Serious Play 2008 posts