The Secret Projects At The RedBull Creation Challenge

You’ve all already seen that there are 6 teams making some kind of a musical instrument. However, there are two more projects that have materialized out of nowhere and are looking like a lot of fun.

In the shop, there are “Shop Monitors”, artists and hackers who are here to help the teams get stuff built. There are also the judges. Since all of us have some experience and craving for making things, you can imagine that no one is just twiddling their thumbs.

[Greg] the lead judge has taken this opportunity to play with the plasma cutter and various metal working tools and is making a voting system so that the public can walk up and hit a button to vote on their favorite. Yup, those are easy buttons you see there. This thing is shaping up to be pretty nice looking thanks to that cutting machine and [Greg’s] hard work.

[JoeJoe], the guy who built the turbull incabulator is building “piss bot”, an inside joke turning to reality. Pissbot  will literally just freak out and urinate all over. Don’t ask why, ask why not.

15 thoughts on “The Secret Projects At The RedBull Creation Challenge

    1. That reminds me of super delicious – like red bull m(
      Also i am so glad that finally hacking is commercialised – we are officially part of the Red Bull fueled mainstream…

      1. I’ve said over and over, any business that wants to put their money behind building communities and encouraging creativity gets bonus points in my book. These guys could be making commercials instead. One of these groups is going to go home with $10k for their hackerspace, that’s pretty damn cool.

        I mean, I know it is cool to be completely anti commercial, but that isn’t sustainable. You end up just like a hipster who liked everything before everyone else.

        1. They are just making commercials. The red bull name appears several times on your front page. Except unlike normal ads, adblock doesn’t seem to remove them. The idea that hackers couldn’t survive without corporate sponsership is just bizarre.

          1. I’m pretty sure the point wasn’t that hackers & hacking need corporate sponsorship to survive. Just that corporate sponsorship ha value added, that helps improves DIY in general. Chances are slim that anything like the Red Bull Creation challenge would exist if if it where left to hackers to create it out of pocket. AFAIK there’s no national organization to help get the ball rolling.

          2. I don’t want to hate to hard (and i know that marketing in the US works different from Europe), but it might be a good idea to pool the coverage somehow (hackaday.com/redbull-creation-challenge)
            Then you make one kickoff and one final posting on the mainpage and the other stuff is in there – win/win?

  1. Caleb wrote:
    There are also the judges. Since all of us have some experience and craving for making things, you can imagine that no one is just twiddling their thumbs.

    I asks:
    So, as a judge, it must be hard NOT helping out while walking around the working wrenches?

    1. I took it that the judges where working on independent projects not helping the contestants with theirs, helping the contestants could create a bias at judging time. However it sounded like there was other read bull staff that where assisting.

    2. Judges could help, but that seemed a little unfair. [Greg] is making the voting system that will allow the public to vote.

      There is other staff, the “shop monitors” that are there just to assist the teams in getting stuff done. Like if they need 20 brackets welded together, the shop monitor will run and do that. Each shop monitor also has some expertise so if a team runs into a problem, hopefully the shop monitors can bail them out… or making urinating robots.

    1. Respectfully I think you have it wrong Marketing pays the bills so the contest can take place. The those who pays the bills get to set the rules and create the theme, however it’s the contestants who decide how to go about designing & constructing their entry. That’s how it looks from my desk chair anyway.

  2. I doubt I’m the only HaD reader in the area, but I actually made a point of going to this event. I could care less about the Northside Festival or RedBull, but seeing the things that people were building and the tools they were using was very inspiring! Of course Lincoln made videos promoting themselves and RedBull is paying for advertising but really that was not the focus.

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