The Story of Natural History
This challenge was selected by the Brown Scholars team, but no professional technologists chose to pursue this open ended challenge. It may be worth considering why it wasn't chosen by other hackathon participants. Some speculations for lack of interest include:
- Perhaps too open ended, or possible solutions not described well enough
- Maybe not a technical enough challenge for a hackathon; very design and storytelling focused
If more design/storytelling focused challenges of this type are considered valuable to experiment with it may be that another type of innovation event should be pursued - perhaps an "artathon" or "designathon" style event where more traditionally creative professionals could be recruited (video editors, writers, transmedia specialists, graphic designers, subject matter experts).
- Climate Change Choose Your Own Adventure
People often wonder at all the things they can learn about at natural history museums, but don't necessarily have an understanding of what the study of natural history is all about. What can you make that will communicate to others what natural history is, and include all of the scientific, research, and educational disciplines that relate to it?
Images from the BHL Flickr collection
Tell the world about natural history through the creation of compelling narratives and visualizations of stories, imagery, and data from AMNH. This is an open-ended design challenge. The only requirement is that your project must come in the form of an app, a visualization, a video, an infographic, or some other interactive media, and is not to exceed 3 minutes if it has a fixed playback length.
Here is an example of a similar storytelling challenge posed by NASA - "Why We Explore":
- Space Apps Challenge - "Why We Explore"
- Challenge Solutions
- NASA's Statements on Areas of Exploration
One particularly great recent example of a narrative that highlights the study of the natural sciences at the museum is the Shelf Life series of videos: http://www.amnh.org/shelf-life
We'd like to go broader in scope for this challenge, and explore the "why" and the "what" more than the "how" (as Shelf Life is more about "how"). This challenge can cover any topic related to natural history but some particularly useful questions to answer would be:
* What do we gain from studying natural history?
* What disciplines and studies relate to natural history?
* AMNH Expeditions - A historical overview
* AMNH Expeditions – What do we learn from exploring and collecting?
* The importance of conservation
* The breadth of recent research at AMNH
Some possible solutions might be:
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An interactive, visualization, or series of infographics that depicts relationships between the various aspects of natural history. What's the best way to explain natural science to the broadest audience?
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Develop a microsite which highlights one or more areas of impact on society that arise from the study of natural history. What does the study of natural science contribute back to your life?
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Anything else you can think of!
- AMNH Research: Every area of study at the museum is listed here in the "Our Research" section of amnh.org, and you can explore each of those sections in depth to learn more.
- AMNH Press Center: Our Press Center publishes all the latest discoveries and learnings from our studies.
- AMNH.tv: Videos of latest discoveries and learnings.
- Biodiversity Heritage Library Flickr: Tens of thousands of images from BHL, all linked back to their site (possibly accessible via BHL's API?)
- The Encyclopedia of Life: An incredible online resource all about life on Earth, which also links back to BHL in many instances
- Any other publicly available, unrestricted by license content!
