Maker's Fair

Last Sunday, on a wonderfully overcast day, I shoved my phone and wallet in my cargo pants, and went to my first Maker's Fair, to the mother of all Maker's Fairs in San Mateo.

Maker's Fair, if you are not familiar with it, is like county fair for the DIY crowd. Except the musical shows are powered by bicycles and the "rides" are a life-sized mousetrap, trilobytes, and a child-powered, uh... whatever this thing is at 2:32. And, damn, the kids were *lining up* to do that thing.

And by "DIY" I mean everything from converting old t-shirts into a purse/child's dress/hat to woodworking projects to home robotics and build-your-own-3d-printers.

I arrived early afternoon to San Mateo, and went through 3 of the 7 parking lots before I could park. The line to the shuttle was long, and I considered walking, but it was over a freeway and I didn't know the area well enough to find a non-freeway backroad. I think I finally got to the event at 2 p.m., but there were interesting people in line to talk to, so I was good.

Since I didn't check the program and didn't get there early enough, I missed both Mike Rowe and Adam Savage, and thus, missed Adam Savage doing a cage dance to Doctor Who in a faraday cage. Thank goodness for YouTube.

In fact, I missed all of the talks and live demonstrations, and yet ONLY going to the booths and outdoor exhibits for four hours, I still felt like I'd missed some of those. There is a lot going on at Maker's Fair. A lot. Next year, I will go early, go on Saturday, and come back Sunday if there are any awesome speakers.

I'd meant to go Saturday, mostly because Saturday runs longer and Sunday is family pass day, which generally means overrun with children, but life got busy and it just wasn't possible to go Saturday. The children were quite well behaved, if a little underfoot, and all in all it was kind of awesome to see kids so engrossed in all the play equipment and demonstrations and activities, and to see how many science-y toys and activities are out now for kids.

One thing I'm going to recommend to all parents (and librarians) is 50 Dangerous Thing You Should Encourage Your Children To Do. It's kind of an interactive applied science and how not to be afraid of everything and have fun book.

I almost got it for myself (and might later), but decided this was more immediately applicable - Absinthe and Flamethrowers is part insane backyard science projects, part applied philosophy of intelligent risk-taking.

Other things I almost picked up was Gurstelle's first book, Backyard Ballistics, which is all insane backyard science, a hundred other project-centered books whose titles I forget (on cheesemaking, creative recycling of dead computers... ), and an Arduino ADX starter kit, as I may have been bitten by the robotics bug. (Ok, I was bitten in high school; I just didn't have time for the acid etching processors we had back then. Now that there are programmable microprocessors for $35 and open source software? The hobby is totally accessible)

Highlights: Fire-breathing scrap-metal dragons. 20 foot, 3-seater penny-farthing. Being chased by an electric shark. The robotic descendent of the spirograph. Very small, strange vehicles. Robots of all sorts. Finding out that the Utilikilt people still do mini-kilts. Talking to a guy who does printing press art. Discovering arduino.