At the beginning of the month I applied to the Museum of Science and Industry’s Month at the Museum competition.  Basically people from around the world were competing to live in the MSI for a full month and do everything the museum had to offer…oh, and did I mention you get a productin suite including a new laptop and camera plus $10,000!!

If you’re interested you can watch the video portion of my entry here.  Don’t worry, I lost, but I thought some people might get a kick out of reading the letter they sent me telling me I lost.  I thought it was a bit much, but still appreciated.

Read the letter after the jump:

Dan,

With more than 1,500 applications, coming from every state in the U.S. and distant points around the globe, your Month at the Museum entries have humbled, entertained, enlightened, intrigued and best of all, inspired us. Each application, essay and video was reviewed by a team of Museum judges, which included staff from marketing, public relations, exhibit development, guest experiences and human resources. We spent hundreds of hours narrowing down applicants from a very talented pool of candidates—a difficult task indeed!

So what were we looking for? During the judging process, we searched for a variety of skills and traits such as being an engaging storyteller, having a good sense of humor, and demonstrating an ability to write clearly and creatively. We also paid close attention to why someone wanted to win. The videos were very helpful in giving us a glimpse of who our future roommate might be—but many other factors influenced our decisions.

You captured us with your creativity, bowled us over with enthusiasm, and left us wondering how to add a few more glass boxes around here to make room in our experiment for more of you. But alas, there’s only room for one winner. Though it was far tougher than we expected, we’ve narrowed the candidates down to a small group of semi-finalists and have notified each of them. (Who or how many made this group isn’t yet public, but it’s smaller than the atomic number of calcium.) We’re sorry that you are not moving forward to the next round, but hope you will help us decide who the winner should be when we launch the public vote in late September.

As a small token of our awe and appreciation, we’d like to give you a pass good for you and three of your family members/friends to visit the Museum in the next year. Perhaps you might like to visit between October 20 and November 18, 2010 to check out the winner of the contest during the in-residence period, but we’d love to have you here at any time. To claim your pass, please email your name and mailing address to matm@msichicago.org by October 1, 2010.

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to share some of your videos online with the world to let everybody know just how funny, inventive, innovative and cool you all are, making this decision so tough for us. We’ll post the videos to our YouTube channel, announce them via Facebook and Twitter, and hand out a few special awards along the way. In the meantime, check out monthatthemuseum.org to see a short video featuring some of you and your 1,500+ new friends.

Please accept our sincerest and most heartfelt thanks for your time, curiosity, creativity, zest for life, and love of science. You made us laugh and you touched our hearts. It was truly a pleasure to meet you.

You rock!

Sincerely yours,

Your friends at MSIChicago

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(C) 2010 Museum of Science and Industry
57th Street and Lake Shore Drive
Chicago, IL 60637
(773) 684-1414
matm@msichicago.org