Featured Project: Ideum Provides Exhibit to Coincide with Annual Balloon Festival

Corrales, New Mexico-based Ideum, which makes multi-touch tables and walls, interactive exhibits and custom hardware, recently teamed up again with Albuquerque, New Mexico’s Anderson Abruzzo International Balloon Museum to create an interactive exhibit for the Comité International d’Aérostation International Balloon & Airship Hall of Fame.

The annual balloon festival in Albuquerque started in 1972 and attracts hundreds of balloons, pilots and spectators to New Mexico every October for two weeks.

Ideum and the Hall of Fame teamed up to recognize those who have made significant contributions to lighter-than-air flight, including those who have excelled in business, history, design, and engineering, as well as those better known for their contributions in flying balloons or airships of all kinds.

The Hall of Fame interactive exhibit showcases biographies, images, and achievements of more than 50 inductees across three large screens, all controlled by visitors using a Microsoft Surface Pro. The exhibit fuses web technology with C++ to feature both a kiosk at the museum and a web-based interactive function. Several smaller interactive displays were also featured.

2018 was the second year Ideum had created an interactive exhibit for the museum but it has worked with the balloon festival, which takes place about 15 miles from company headquarters, before. In 2016, Ideum and the festival  created a “Hot Air Balloon Target Competition,” in which guests learned about the Albuquerque Box-the region’s unique patterns of air currents, and flew virtual balloons across the city to a designated landing area.