[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39xX4xi0Uh8&w=470]
It may be a week after the fact, but former Hackaday alum and inventor of the Bus Pirate [Ian Lesnet] made a great guide to the Bay Area Maker Faire.
The San Francisco-area Maker Faire attracts 100,000 makers, tinkerers, hackers, and general geeks to a bazaar of DIY and generally cool stuff. All the regulars were there, including [Jeri Ellsworth] and her Commodore 64 bass keytar along with a huge assortment of cosplayers including a steampunk Boba Fett and a couple space marines. Outside the building there was a 40-foot steamship and the amazing DeLorean hovercraft of [Matthew Riese].
During his interviews with fellow makers, [Ian]’s most received advice is, “take it slow.” There are thousands of builders in the bay area during Maker Faire, and it’s very easy to get very overwhelmed.
In case you’re wondering, [Ian] also picked up a ton of awesome schwag from all the vendors at the Maker Faire. Radio Shack had a box filled with random components,and [Kenneth] from Texas Instruments gave [Ian] a TI Launchpad, a capacitive test booster pack, and the king of all freebies, a Chronos watch.
After the break you can check out a few of the video project interviews [Ian] put up. Very awesome work from literally thousands of makers.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qkT9hLQPy0&w=470]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39xX4xi0Uh8&w=470]
Awesome! I saw all the cool new stuff at DP’s desk including the power supply breakout. Got a sticker too. There are some more pics over at 43oh, if anyone is interested.
http://www.43oh.com/2012/05/maker-faire-bay-area-2012-in-and-around/
Pretty cool. I’m going to have to start on the largest, brightest, steampunk codpiece to ever grace Makerfaire and combat the many steampunk boobies that seem to dominate cosplay ;) Maybe even give “the captain” a nice handlebar mustache and monocle to finish the look. A depressurization release with pneumatic steam would complete the look for after hours romance.
“Chuk CHIsshhh.” ready for action lol.
I wish I knew about that afterparty. Maybe. I went straight home and to bed after sunday!
There were parties and meetups to be at all the way from Thursday to the Monday after MF. Get on Twitter and follow as many of us in the video as you can find; we put that type of thing together all the time.
The only after-schmoozing I did was the happy hour on friday. I only heard of the hack a dinner monday from my fellow maker twits :P
Is it possible to do a listserv? I don’t use twitter, but do read email. As a funny aside, you could even monochrome the listserv email colors to fill out the kitschy appeal for even the most disillusioned hipster ;)
You just need to be a bit more plugged in, more interactive, talk to people IRL and online, be involved in stuff. I think Jeri’s hack dinner was the only one that was open to completely unknown people to walk in all “hey, I follow you on Twitter.”
And damn, I heard about the freebie bins (Radioshack, Intel) but AFAIK they did not visit the fiesta hall, and I couldn’t get to the main hall that early :(
A listserv would be too organized. We just tweet “hey, everyone meet here at this time for tacos” or “Meet at Halted at 1030 for a Bay Area Salvage crawl.” Networking, this is how it’s done.
@Kenneth go have fun then. It is amazing a bunch of smart, connected people don’t know how to use listserv without colorful icons and links that all look like some tinyurl shortened .ru phishing servers lol. It seems like I have found my niche of like-minded folks in the 8bit community and not at MF as I suspected.
Why exactly should we all migrate to a listserv when it’s working perfectly as it is? Who goes on this listserv? Who maintains this listserv? Will you set up and maintain this listserv? I only want to have to see texts from my close friends, where they only want theirs. I don’t want to be subscribed to another email list.
For what we use it for, Twitter is a much better system than anything with email. I don’t really appreciate your superior air without understanding the issue.
hah, the food isn’t that bad