Pop Labs Idea Marathon 2009

We held our first Idea Marathon today at Pop Labs, which was partially inspired by Hack Days. Hack Days are events that were first done by Yahoo in which the participants are supposed to develop applications or mashups in 24 hours, usually using one or more of the available Yahoo APIs. Generally they consist of a talk about the ideas or APIs and time for ‘hacking’ together the application.

When I first sat down to think through the details of the Idea Marathon I knew that I wanted to accomplish two things 1) Generate ideas for clients 2) Teach the staff a reusable brainstorming toolset that could be used in other situations. I used brain writing and a post-up session as the primary tools for gather ideas. All in all I think it went pretty well, although the next time I think I will limit it to a half day.