This weekend Summer of Solutions enmeshed i in the festivities of Corvallis’s da Vinci Days, self-proclaimed “Oregon’s premier art and science festival.”  Under the umbrella of the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition, we snagged two slots—on Friday and Sunday—to table about our project this summer.  The Coalition’s table was the intersection of many very involved people around town; it was cool to see everyone in their element out tabling.  Although foot traffic was slow during our sessions, everyone had good conversations with people about our project.  Aside from tabling, da Vinci days is just pretty cool.  It seems like most of Corvallis comes at some point to see the bizarre contraptions, listen to the various musicians, or to delight in the playful atmosphere of kids and adults reveling at the countless inventions humans have made, and are making.  What ideas at the table today will become the next light bulb?  With the rapid and exponential pace of new technologies, can there be a singular invention as revolutionary as something like a bulb of glass and a wire filament?  Photovoltaic solar panels, wave powered generators?  The problems we face today seem far more complex, the world incomprehensibly more interconnected; it seems no invention will be the revolutionary one, only a whole swath of them.  What’s more, projects like ours—engaging communities, asking what they need, and teaching them how to organize—seem much more promising than any new technology that can come out ever.  People are and will be the greatest invention ever, and the changes we ardently desire can only come from us.