Maker Faire 2010

Sadly Maker Faire is over for another year, but we had an awesome time and I think this is our best showing to date. We had 8 builders in attendance with their droids (and family), and we presented a builders panel for the first time at the faire.

Group Shot (Steve, Gerard, Johnathan, Chris, Matt, Grant)

Between Tammy and I we took over 500 photos/videos, so it was hard to pair it down to a handful to post here, but here goes.

As usual there are many more photos in the gallery.

Saturday started off hectic with booth setup, we had a nice big space with some new banners I had made, parts, plans and a slide show on the table.

Saturday Setup

For the faire open in earnest, I had big surprise for the builders. I’ve always liked the award tradition that Mike Senna started for R2LA, so I decided to start our tradition. Our first recipient of the Bay Area Builder of the Year went to Matt McCormick who has done an excellent job of helping fellow builders, hosting events and completing his droid. It’ll be up to him to make next year’s award and pick the recipient.

Matt - Bay Area Builder of the Year

Bay Area Builder of the Year Award

Not to leave everyone else out, I had Dana Powers make special medals say thank you to everyone else for being there this year. Thanks Dana!

Everyone got a commemorative medal

Everyone got a commemorative medal - include R2

One of the children from Friday’s Young Maker Day dropped of this thank you note.

Thank you letter from Friday's Young Maker Day

We jacked some of the sign posts with our own addition, and it even made some of the blogs and local papers.

R2 trying to find his way

There were a number of Star Wars related craft events, including Bonnie Burton and her friend Terri Hodges, who are there every year with a fun SW project. Matt, John and I took our droids over to say hi and to give Bonnie one of our commemorative medals. Here’s a link to some of Bonnie’s photos from Saturday.

Bonnie and Captain Akbar

Bonnie got a Builders Award too

Jackie Nuag also presented a workshop on how to make your own felt R2d2, and we were there to support the effort

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There were a lot of cool things to see and were able to stop by some of them

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One of the funniest things was that the Maker folks put up signs around Expo Hall to keep the droids out (they think our 2.4GHz radios kills their WiFi). Only a true web geek will get the joke I think

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/robots.txt sign

Throughout the weekend we were inundated with people at the booth, it was pretty much like this the entire weekend.

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I’m so glad we had stanchions again this year to keep the crowd at bay.

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Some people were more obviously SW fans than others. The lights even worked on this home made beanie hat.

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This guy had a little R2 he wanted to share

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Most children who came by and asked all sorts of great questions, and some took notes

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Matt did a great job of getting up close and explaining things

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It was very dark in the room, which was a concern at first during Friday’s Young Maker Day, but on Saturday Gerard brought in an awesome lighting rig and the mood created was perfect

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We were so busy people were taking photos in parallel at times

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Our panel was at the end of Sunday afternoon, but the faire was still going strong and we had a good showing. Matt did a great job of leading the discussion again.

Buildes Panel

Buildes Panel

After the panel was done, we hung out to chat further with some future builders

Buildes Panel

So that’s it for another year – each time we do the faire we get at least one new builder, so next year I can see we could have an even bigger presence.

Johnathan took some awesome pictures of the event too, here’s his blog post and I’ve copied them to my gallery here.

I’ll try and post some additional photos and video in the next week.

Related:

Posted by Chris on May 28th, 2010 in General | 4 Comments

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Maker Faire 2010 – Young Makers Day

Steve and I did our annual appearance at Maker Faire’s Education Day. This year it was called Young Makers Day and we had an awesome turn out as usual with lots of curious children in attendance.

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One of the teachers was wearing the famous Haynes R2 Repair Manual t-shirt

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After about 4 hours of being bombarded with questions, the official event was over and we went to explore some of the other exhibits being setup – including this awesome retro rocket ship.

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This was one of many art exhibits being setup, very 3PO but made mostly of old typewritters

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Our setup was right next to the Tesla Coils, and they added the Imperial March to the routine :)

Related:

Posted by Chris on May 21st, 2010 in Events | No Comments

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Discovery Day – Washington Elementary School

As a warm up for Maker Faire, the Dad’s Club at Washington Elementary School in Burlingame put on a Discovery Day for the children, hopefully  inspiring  them about science and engineering. I was asked by the folks at Make: to bring along my Artoo to be part of the fun this year.

Here’s some photos from the afternoon, and as always there’s more photos in the gallery.

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Posted by Chris on May 20th, 2010 in Events | No Comments

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Maker Faire Bay Area 2010

The Bay Area Maker Faire is almost upon us, and we’ll be there in force with more droids and builders than ever before. Look for us in the Fiesta Hall. We’ll also be participating in Young Makers Day on the Friday, and hosting a builders panel at 4PM on Sunday on the main stage in the Expo Hall.

Posted by Chris on May 14th, 2010 in Events, General | No Comments

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Maker Faire 2009

Some photos from this years Maker Faire

Education Day

Maker Party

Saturday/Sunday

Chris E’s droid with mine next to a Tesla electric sports car.

Chris E fixing his drive train

Lego R2!

SW Craft with Bonnie Burton

Maker Awards – I think we got 4 or 5 this year.

Other random robots, the first was a wearable Robbie – guy does amazing work and is local – alas I lost his card.

Related:

Posted by Chris on October 7th, 2009 in Events | No Comments

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Maker Faire Coming Soon

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The fourth annual Maker Faire is just around the corner (May 30th), it will showcase individual creativity and grassroots innovation in the largest festival devoted to DIY culture and technology in the country. We’re hoping to be there again with our droids, if you’re interested in joinng us drop me an email.

It’s kind of hard to describe the event, but PC Magazine put it pretty well “Maker Faire is an improbable mixture of spectacle and practicality–a combination of engineering, crafts, science, and art that seemed to sufficiently blur the lines between all four.”

[more info]

Related:

Posted by Chris on March 9th, 2009 in Events, General | No Comments

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My Artoo in Bantha Tracks

I almost forgot to post this, my Artoo is in the September 2008 edition of Star Wars Insider / Bantha Tracks.

The photo was taken at the Maker Faire back in May.

Posted by Chris on August 29th, 2008 in Events | 1 Comment

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Maker Faire : Intel Developer Forum

Last Thursday Steve and I where at a the Mini Maker Faire at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.  There were probably close to 30 makers in attendance, ranging from robots and electronics projects to Steampunk musicians.

It was the last night of the show and the party was packed. We got to mingle with some cool people and show off Artoo and a bunch of parts and explain what goes into making your very own droid.

I’m in the computer industry so it was strange to be there as an outsider providing entertainment for the evening. It did allow me to make some obscure jokes about Intel chips that nobody would normally get.

This guy was upset because I didn’t have my transmitter in a bag to hide it from onlookers :)

We did a couple of interviews and TV spots, including this one with Wil Harris from ChannelFlip. I’ve been listening to him for years on Twit and it was fun to finally meet him.

Big thanks to the Make team for inviting us to this event – they really do know how to organize a great show.

More photos in the gallery.

Posted by Chris on August 28th, 2008 in Events | No Comments

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