IRLXD • In Real Life Experience Design in Austin, Texas

The Museum of Stuff Nobody Enjoys Talking About

September 13, 2021

Note: This post is part of my “Museums Project“, a collection of 200+ high-concept ideas for museums.

One of the inspirations for this was The Museum of Broken Relationships in Zagreb, Croatia (there’s also a second museum in Los Angeles). There was something very captivating about the stories in the MoBR. I’ve never been to a museum and read more than 5% of the placards. But I read ALL of them in the MoBR.

I think the personal sharing and vulnerability and shared humanity exuded by the MoBR was what made it work well. Sure, there were objects associated with each writeup. But for me, they were more like chapter titles to the personal stories on the placard.

What sort of things come to mind for The Museum of Stuff Nobody Enjoys Talking About? Difficult conversations. Asking for a raise. Firing someone. The birds and the bees. Death. Regrets. Unspoken feelings. Delivering bad news. Asking for help. There might be infinite things we don’t like to talk about, depending on the person.

I think each piece in the museum needs to be from a person. It’s not about the concept of “firing someone”. It’s about hearing a specific personal story of firing someone. It’s about seeing another person struggling with (and not enjoying) the conversation.

The wish of the museum is that when you see that others don’t enjoy these conversations, it can soften you up to be able to have these conversations on your own. Some of the exhibits might even be more positive and act like models of how you might lessen the dread of talking about the stuff you don’t want to talk about.

The name of this museum might need some work, because I think once people are IN the conservation they often enjoy it. It’s the dread of conversations that no one enjoys. You might think “the museum of difficult conversations” would fit but I think that is too distant and doesn’t offer much emotional oomph. Using the word “nobody” puts us all together in the same boat and offers the comfort of “nobody enjoys this sh*t”.

The McBoatfaced Museum

September 12, 2021

Note: This post is part of my “Museums Project“, a collection of 200+ high-concept ideas for museums.

You might have heard that some years ago the British government polled the internet to name a new military submarine. The internet, being filled with people with not much to do other than mess with people, got together and all voted for “Boaty McBoatface”. The name won. The British now have a official naval vessel named Boaty McBoatface.

Along with the christening of a submarine, this fine episode in British history christened the term “McBoatfaced”. When you leave things up to the internet to decide and people mess with you, you’ve been “McBoatfaced”.

The McBoatfaced Museum would be created and curated by the internet. I think there would need to be some ground rules so that they don’t “mess with” the idea so much as to kill it or make it unworkable or dangerous or offensive. Veto power should not be allowed except for those suggestions going against the ground rules.

However, to ensure that the museum is interesting enough to keep it financially afloat, generous interpretation of the internet’s suggestions will be granted to those actually doing the creating and maintaining of the museum.

The Museum of Telescopic Art

September 11, 2021

Note: This post is part of my “Museums Project“, a collection of 200+ high-concept ideas for museums.

This was inspired by my visit to the Micro Wonder Museum, an interesting little place 30 minutes outside of Budapest, Hungary. In that tiny museum you look at art through microscope-type lenses. The art is typically very small carvings made of materials like gold and rice grains. The art doesn’t blow you away but the fact that it was made by hand at such small scale is impressive and it makes for a unique experience. It’s also fascinating to think that only one person can look at the art at a time. It’s just you and the art for a few moments in time.

So the telescopic art museum goes in the other direction: what if instead you had to view art through a telescope? The museum is over here and the art is way way over there, across a valley or a river or something. A few hundred yards or more.

What if there were viewing areas on both sides of this valley and art on both sides, but set up in such a way that you couldn’t see the art on your side, just the art on the other side? Compassion and understanding other people or cultures is one obvious subject that comes to mind for this museum.

I’m imagining a valley like the one between Tajikistan and Pakistan or North and South Korea. Something that gives insight from a place you really can’t visit and shows you what the art and life is like “over there”.

Suppose the border of a wealth and poverty. The viewing area and telescopes from the wealth side could be plush and comfortable and the viewing area from the poverty area could reflect the conditions there. To sit in a broken chair and have to use a rusty cracked telescope to view wealth might create a powerful moment of insight.

Eureka Room Update

September 11, 2021

This post was written on 9/6/2021 and finalized today.

My plan for the Eureka Room keeps changing. (I feel like that statement sums up the entire 8-10 year saga of The Eureka Room.)

The June Plan

In June, when covid looked like it was on the outs, the plan was to run the ER in my house. Once I had 2-3 bookings a week for a month out and a waiting list, I would feel confident about renting a place to run it. Then, once that was doing 20-30 showings a week, I would consider that a pretty winning idea that I could take to investors or get a loan to get it to the next level.

I hustled and got the whole end to end experience made and had my first paying customers at the end of July.

The August Plan (#1)

Then covid came back and we quickly went from stage 1 to stage 5. I also had some family stuff come up and needed to go to Ohio for a while. I paused the bookings.

Back in Austin mid-August I was frustrated that this project continues to take long. I wanted to get multiple rooms up faster and just make this happen more quickly. I also have been thinking the “2.0” version should be all projectors, not LEDs. That was going to be no small challenge.

Going with the “faster” plan, required me to solve a few big issues I had been sidestepping thus far:

Soundproofing. How do I keep the loud music and screaming from one room from going to the next?
Making ER 2.0 with projectors and keeping it safe. I want an all-rear-projector solution. How on earth do you build something like that?
City regulations. Dealing with the city. I don’t want to set it up and then get shut down for some code issue. What are the issues I might have to face, and how will that effect things like soundproofing and the all-projector design?
Finding a space.
Finding employees. I don’t want to have to run it 30 hours a week by myself.

The last two items are challenging, but not ones I’m super concerned about. The other ones are the ones filled with dread-inducing ambiguity.

When you don’t know the answer fear can slink in and paralyze you. I recently read this quote of Isaac Lindsky:

“Fear is familiarity’s imposter. It passes off what you dread for what you know. Offers the worst in place of the ambiguous. Serves up anxiety in the absence of comfort. Substitutes assumption for reason. Under the warped logic of fear, anything is better than the uncertain.”

Working on Dreaded Tasks

Instead of focusing on the feelings of fear and anxiety, I asked this:

Who or what can make the ambiguousness go away?

Ambiguity is the oxygen fear lives on. If you can remove the ambiguity you can kill off the fear.

The questions above are very specific to the Eureka Room so I can’t get the specific answers I need from a google search. (Example: I google soundproofing and see that I could insulate the walls… will the city let me do that? Even if they do, is that the best option? What is a good enough option? A good enough price?)

I need to reach out to people who know and can help.

For soundproofing I can talk to sellers of the material (they’re motivated to help me) and maybe owners of rehearsal studios (less motivated probably) and also the city to find out what is involved time/money for each option.

For ER 2.0 I also need to talk to the city. I need to talk to myself and decide what my design constraints are (are gaps and standoffs permissible in the walls? If so, how much?). I also need to talk to sellers of the parts (acrylic, glass, etc)

I also need to talk to the city to minimize surprises. If they show up and see a big box with LEDs all over it – is that OK or will they freak out? Etc.

The August Plan (#2)

So I started making drawings of how we might construct this “2.0” version. I talked to plastics companies and glass companies trying to understand how to make a rear projection screen that was essentially free-floating so that no supports in the back would block the image. I researched sound proofing materials. I made drawings. I chart of the high-level ideas I had:

The list was big and daunting.

I was trying to go faster on the ER but this was going to slow me down. I wished I had someone that could just design it and figure these things out. But I was already wondering how I would pay to build it and it was hard to imagine hiring someone to design it as well. The income from my one and only customer was not going to stretch that far.

The Soundproofing Question

Of all the challenges to be overcome, the sound was the trickiest one. Sound is like water. If you want to keep it in a room you need to make sure it is completely sealed. Oh.. sound is actually worse than water because it can magically transmit through the walls of a sealed room.

How was I going to have more than one room not bleed sound into the second room? Without actually building two rooms and experimenting, this was going to be a hard problem to solve.

The challenges that came to mind were:

I needed three soundproofed rooms, at minimum: 2 ER’s and the waiting room (I didn’t want people in the waiting room to hear the people experiencing what they would experience. ) If I couldn’t find a space that have 3 rooms that could nicely fit 2 Eureka Rooms and a waiting room and could be soundproofed, it would mean having to build walls or barriers that the city would almost certainly have to inspect.
The cost of building the barriers was unknown but likely not too cheap.
I don’t know anything about building barriers.
Finding a rental that would be a fit for 3 rooms like I needed would be very challenging.
Many of the options out there share walls with neighbors. This likely meant soundproofing or finding neighbors that ran on a opposite schedule than the Eureka Room.

Getting There Faster

ER “2.0” R&D and build was going to be expensive and soundproofing was likely expensive and possibly very time-consuming. Somehow my “speed up” plan was slowing me down.

Then I looked at the 1-year plan. Suppose I find the capital to build ER 2.0 and I solve the soundproofing question. What do I do when I want to add a third room? Do I cut lease and move? Do I build out an even bigger space to prepare for the future? That seems like getting ahead of myself.

I really couldn’t find a path I liked that was *faster* and not way more expensive or carried a risk of being way slower.

So I took a nap.

Or more accurately, I laid down in an attempt to take a nap, but it was more of a semi-conscious haze wherein I my challenges and my brain met while I sat on the sidelines. And then the idea came to me that could potentially solve all these challanges.

First, as much as I wanted to build “2.0”, I don’t. Instead I just build a second “1.0” which is identical. I know that one works and people will pay for it and people enjoy it. If I can get those both making money, then that would be enough to hire someone to make the “2.0” design.

But what about sound bleeding from room to room and to the waiting room? How do I soundproof?

Answer? I don’t soundproof. I don’t have to. Why not? Because both rooms will play the same program at the exact same time.

The waiting room won’t have bleed because I’ll combine both groups in the welcome and training, then they go off to their respective rooms.

The biggest remaining question is how do I keep from annoying the neighbors with the sound. I could get neighbors that work complimentary hours. Or I could get a standalone building or one with no shared walls. I’ll be looking for that.

Other Bonuses

If I got up to two rooms running frequently, that would provide me the capital to hire someone to do all that design work on ER “2.0” that is better left to someone who knows more than me.

Waiting room operational cost is cut in half. I won’t be tempted to create more programs for “2.0”. I can even set the two rooms up to face each other, potentially paving the way for a “big room”.

The September-October Plan

In terms of capital investment, I’m looking at this plan:

Run it in my house until I have booked 2-3 showings a week for a month out + have a waiting list. That triggers:
Rent a space for ~3000/month that could potentially hold the waiting room and 2-3 Eureka Rooms. Move the one from my house to this space. Run it until I have 25 showings/ week for 4 weeks out + waiting list. When that is triggered:
Build a second “1.0” model. Run it until they are both at 25 showings/week for 4 weeks out + waiting list. That triggers:
TBD, but probably a new bigger, custom space, “2.0”, investment.

*It might be the case that most people do not book out four weeks because they like to be spontaneous, etc. I might need a better way to determine high demand. One option might be discounted presale tickets. That way people can commit to going but have the flexibility to go in more of a last minute situation.

This also depends a lot on covid. I think I will start having masked people over here in a week or so but will be keeping an eye on the numbers.

Curious Dinners Seasons #3&4 – Behind The Scenes

September 10, 2021

There are too many details of the dinners to write out in one post. These seasons were a monster of a masterpiece and was far and away the most work we had done for a show – even though we reused a lot of the skits and ideas from previous seasons. There were many witty lines, clever timing of lights and sound effects, and great background sounds and music. We had ten different people creating this one – for just 12 lucky guests. It was monumentous in so many ways.

This show was super high energy from front to back and it was great that we worked out so many smaller issues we’d have over the course of the other dinners. The food was great and timed well, we didn’t run out of alcohol, we had some awesome guests, too.

Hosts: Mike, Vianca, Matt, Kate, Iain, Dan, Rebecca, Emily, Mark, and Kevin.

Planning and Logistics

There were lots of meetings for this one. Some people were tired of them but I thought they were necessary. The dinners had evolved from a “wing it” to a much bigger production. Not everyone liked the new bigger awesomer monster we were creating but fortunately everyone stuck with it.

At one point, Vianca and I made a timeline to show what happens when. Instead of bringing clarity to the team, many people started thinking it was all “too much”. (Note to self: some people don’t like looking at the big picture and prefer to look only at their part.)

The videos were well received. Fun fact: I was not supposed to be the newscaster. It was supposed to be Kate (thus the KATE news channel) but she no-showed on the film date so I had to hustle up an outfit and fill in. Now I live in infamy.

Here’s the “quick view” of the evening we had posted in the kitchen. It was posted in two other places in the house so that we could always see what was supposed to happen next:

Tech

Here’s a list of the tech equipment that was involved.

Candle remote
Strobe lights ready to go
Spotlight clamped to bookshelf
TV cabled to control room
Sound on videos set to go through TV, not laptop
Computer 1 – (Note must have libre office installed)
Computer 1 has slideshow queded up on Mikes Mac in correct order
Computer 1 has been set to “”no screensaver”” and “”never sleep””
Computer 2 (Rebecca’s)
Computer 3 logged into youtube Red in incognito window
Computer 4 with sound links up
Disco light in clamp light
Wavy light
Color strobe
TV remote
Big disco ball set to white/blue
Small disco ball in clamplight
LED lights under table and remote
LED crystal ball and remote
Motion-activated dolphin
Piano floor mat
Living room lights wired together
On/Off power strip for faster changes

The Curious Skits

The ghosts were extremely tricky to put on and take off because they were just sheets with holes cut in them. We had to hide sheets to “turn” people into ghosts in the dark and finding our way around them was near impossible. Hopefully charming.

The logic of the show was a bit janky but no one seemed to care much.

One of the show nights, people didn’t know they were supposed to come out of the desert dungeon so just hung out in there eating their desert with their hands. We were so busy in the front of house that we didn’t notice they hadn’t come out yet. That was kind of funny. Overall the dungeon was a big success because no one was expecting such a ridiculous thing in a whole other room.

Blocking

Blocking was super tricky and required a lot of changes and practice so that everything and everyone was where it needed to be at the right time. Putting on ghost outfits quickly in the dark was a constant challenge. Finding the eye holes before the lights came back on was near impossible and often we just left them wherever they lay and walked around blindly.