At our February meeting, two entrepreneurs from NIIC’s Student Venture Lab, Scott BonAmi and Graham Bredemeyer of Roaring Mouse Innovation, presented their concept for a new online venture that would connect people who have interesting problems (i.e. ideas for a new product)  to solve with inventors and others who could help build a solution.

Of course, Dave brought pizza

Here are some more pics of the meeting.

During January we got to meet with a very cool inventor.  Tony Lytle of Larwill is the inventor of the Doggie Fountain (http://www.doggiefountain.com/), a clever and unique way for your pets to give themselves a drink!  Tony brought a few iterations of his prototypes and walked us through their evolution.

Here’s January’s smiling crowd.  Come join us next month!

At today’s meeting, Casey Drudge showed off his creation – a Rube Goldberg device that demonstrates what someone could make for TekVenture’s Chain Reaction Challenge.

When you pull the string to trigger Casey’s device, that starts a 28-step process.  Of course, preparing the device to be triggered takes some time – those are a lot of steps to reset.  And since this is the Inventors Club, Casey spent even more time explaining how each of the 28 steps works.

Once it is set up physics and mechanics take over to produce a device that runs anywhere from 1 to 1/12 minutes (depending on how long it takes one particular pendulum in the system to trigger the next event).

TekVenture Chain Reaction Challenge 4 is Saturday April 30, 2011 at the Allen County Public Library.  Each participant will build a device that can be triggered by and provide the energy needed to raise a golf ball an inch.  As the name implies, they will all be strung together to form one ginormous chain reaction.  Be a participant!  For details, see TekVenture.  If you don’t participate, at least come and watch the fun!