Alexa Mills of MIT’s CoLab, a center for planning and development within the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), came to NuVu during Genius Camp to talk about the center and its focus on community knowledge as a driver of powerful innovation. Alexa talked about the value of helping vocalize communities to deepen civic engagement, improve community practice, inform policy, mobilize community assets, and generate shared wealth. She then led a workshop in which students were tasked with creating food reviews for restaurants in the Kendall Square and Central Square area. Students began by first splitting into teams and researching their respective areas to find some good lunchtime places. They then collectively assembled a questionnaire that was used to conduct on-spot interviews with people in the two squares. Through the interviews, the teams would discern some potential lunch places to then sample for lunch. After the meal, the teams would provide a review of the selected restaurant as well as an overall review and recommendations based on their interviews of people in the two squares.

Here are 5 reviews from the teams’ findings of lunch food options in Kendall Square and Central Square:

Cosi (Kendall Square)

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Our last day of Genius Camp began with a quick introduction and talk by Dr. Ryan Wartena on the Nanotechnology Studio. In the studio, students will begin to understand the basic structures that compose life and will also begin the design of a “Seed Atlas.”

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Day 4 of Genius Camp was an intensive workshop on how to use Adobe Photoshop to collage and compose images. The students worked in teams to first learn the basic tools and functionality of the graphics editing program. Then they worked on creating Sci-Fi movie posters based on their photographs from the Photography Workshop earlier in the week. Throughout the day, the teams of students learned to work with the .PSD (Photoshop Document) format (Photoshop’s native format) that stores an image with many imaging options available to change and manipulate. These include layers with masks, color spaces, transparency, text, clipping paths, and duotone settings.

Here are some of the amazing Sci-Fi movie posters created by the teams!

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Day 3 of Genius Camp began with some deep discussion spurred by the TED Talks the students had selected to share with the studio. The conversations brought to light the diverse vantage points we have represented in the studio as well as how each topic discussed can be addressed in a variety of ways. We then moved onto the final round (for the week) of the Marshmallow Challenge. After having some time to discuss and plan out a strategy for constructing a spaghetti tower able to support a marshmallow at the top, the teams bolted to begin implementing their design-build strategies within the 18-minute time limit.

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Day 2 of Genius Camp was dedicated to a photography workshop where students learnt the basics of photography and composition and then put these skills to use in a design-build-photograph activity. Boston photographer Nate Tia (Simplynate Photography) joined us for the day and showed us how to use our cameras to their fullest potential as well as some techniques for composing content-engaging and visually-stunning photographs. Nate also shared his motivations as a photographer and his diverse and inspiring portfolio of work spanning from fashion and portraiture to structures, landscapes and global events.

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We started Day 1 of the NuVu Genius Camp with the “Marshmallow Challenge,” where students quickly planned and built a structure made of spaghetti, tape and string, topped off by a bright (and weighty) marshmallow. Timed at 18-minutes each, the three building sessions gave students a chance to prototype and test out their ideas and also improve their methods with each go-around, with the hope of building a higher structure each round.

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We are super excited to announce that our pilot project will be starting in a few days, on March 1st. Stay tuned for more updates.