We had a terrific time at MakerFaire 2011 in San Francisco last weekend -- I'm just now getting around to posting pictures and videos (all of which you can find here).
We've been talking about going to MakerFaire for a while, and this one (the 10th Anniversary Bay Area Maker Faire) was our first. What a treat! It's kind of a family-friendly, geek-centric Burning Man Festival, a little heavier on the robotics hackers and engineering types perhaps, but still an interesting mix of steampunks, R/C hackers, robotics afficionados, alt-energy fans as well as artists who create large and interesting things with steel, fire and high-voltage electricity.
The glue that ties it all together is that it is about making things rather than just consuming things: It's a celebration and a hands-on demonstration of the creator and tinkerer's way of life, and it runs the gamut from candles and crafts to ginormous sculptures and 1/2 million watt musical tesla coils... here's Malcolm's hero and keynote speaker Adam Savage from Mythbusters dancing in the Faraday Cage to the Doctor Who theme
We started off at a 'learning tent' by soldering up blinky LED badges together as a family... Malcolm got his right in the first go and Susan did too!
"Dangerous Things for Boys", indeed -- what could be better than a hot soldering iron to an eight-year old? "It's like welding without a license!" he said with no small amount of delight.
Besides that he made a simple working motor (at an Exploratorium hands-on booth), a cardboard 'Halo' costume (and got to meet a group with awesome homemade Halo outfits), engaged a Google guy about his Android-controlled R/C car and created a building from CNC routered parts... not back for a weekend, and it whet his appetite (and ours!) to create more things. I brought home an Arduino experiments kit (thereby scratching a long-standing itch) and Malcolm brought home some easy-to-assemble and test robot insects that use motion detection.
That's a lot of stuff listed above, and there really is a great deal of things to see and do there. As a cherry on top, we (along with a large contingent of German tourists) stayed in the Hotel Del Sol in the Marina District which had a heated pool and was within walking distance of the Palace of Fine Arts/ Exploratorium, Fort Mason and the waterfront, and on the bus line to CalTrain (down to San Mateo/MakerFaire) and easy bus ride to/from Chinatown. I hadn't been to San Francisco in over eight years and I'd forgotten what a fun and interesting city it is...
So we came back with the urge to create more things -- mission accomplished, there -- and we'll definitely go back next year I think.
