Our final day in Florida (for now!) was spent volunteering at Give Kids the World. We were put to work in all areas of the resort:
We fixed software, cleaned machines, blew up balloons, hung decorations and even tried our hand at placing stars in the Castle of Miracles.
A number of stars had to be moved with the addition of the Pillow Tree into the Castle several years ago. Unfortunately, the same stars are being displaced once more, this time due to Star Tower construction.
We discovered first-hand just how hard the stars are to read. Age, handwriting and the reflective surface all add to the difficulties. The addition of barcodes to the back of the stars in 2006 has made cataloging the subsequent stars far easier, but the ones we were handling were from 1999 and had no unique markings other than the Wish Child’s name or message. The Village hopes to one day properly catalog every star in a database, but it’s slow, tedious work and is dependent entirely on volunteers. Even now, with the barcodes, it is still reliant on imprecise location assignments: section 4, line 7, star 14 — and hope that the lines are relatively even so that you can find it easily!
Part of our goal in designing the experience of the Star Tower is to be able to precisely pin-point the location of each star, using a simple, clear placement method and an exact positioning system.
We had such an amazing weekend, between our client visits and the trip to Universal. Our entire team is even more excited to work together towards such a meaningful end product. So far, so good…
Except we probably shouldn’t have let Dani get a wand. Ever since Saturday she’s been getting a little power hungry…anyone seen Tom?