Last year when I was trying to come up with ideas for installations I struck upon a pretty good way to kick start the process. If you start with a question and work backwards your ideas tend to be inherently inviting. So to kick off this year's brainstorming here are some questions I didn't use last year. Try them on for size. Do they inspire anything for you?

What whispers do you save for the dark?
What about the dark makes you hopeful?
Who was the last person you call? What did you talk about?
Who is your hero?
Who was your hero as a child?
How has money hurt you?
What do you sing about in the shower?
What's your worst habit?

These questions have not been filtered for quality but they should get the discussion started. Fire away.

The question about "whispers in the dark" makes me think AUDIO. Anyway to set up a device to capture "whispers" from contributors at the event, then post them on the net?

lots and lots of scrabble pieces. . some of those poetry magnets. brightly colored refrigerator magnets. maybe some lego pieces for characters, etc.let people spell out messages, thoughts, whatever. maybe have a webcam pointing at the table broadcasting what people are up to.

Here in SF, there are these huge mirrors up in Cellspace. I want to bring in some Dry Ease markers and invite people to write/draw on it and then photograph themselves....

Check out the Cincinnati link for our soapbox idea. Tommy had another great idea, too: Everyone who enters is given a slip of paper, asked to write down a good thought, and then deposits that thought in a box. Everyone who leaves takes a good thought (written down by someone else) with him or her.

To enforce whispering have a some kind of feedback loop where the sound coming out of a speaker would begin distorting in a painful way to the listener. If someone were to whisper into the device below a certain threshold some pleasing and beautiful sound wound be the feedback. The precise nature of the pleasing feedback would have to be determined but as a suggestion perhaps all of the whispers could be collected into a great loop. This loop would be the backdrop for the "whisperer" when using the device. Ideally this loop could be available live over the net during the event.

taking on thing but only in exchange for another. set in a small room (which you would possibly go in alone). maybe writing why you chose to leave and take what you did in a book, so you could see the histroy of the piece and have something left at the end. it would rely on certain objects being left in there at the start, maybe chosen for specific reasons by the creators.