Maker Faire 2011
Maker Faire UK is huge, ridiculous, messy, and glorious. It’s almost the opposite of the corporate polish of the Big Bang Fair, with exhibitors from all walks of life showing off things they’ve made — which could be anything from knitted neurons to tiny rollercoasters for ball-bearings to radio-control daleks (one wearing a fez and a rather dapper bow tie) to bits of electronics to… films.
Yes, SciCast was there, showcasing the films you’ve made over the years and introducing the project to scores of families. We were mostly doing the spinning straws trick, and got through more than 2,000 straws over the weekend. That’s a lot of snipping, bending, and blowing.
Huge fun, and we hope to see lots of films from families in this year’s competition.
Just before the doors opened on Sunday morning we knocked up a quick jelly baby wave machine, which miraculously survived the day. Lots of teachers and home-schoolers seemed very taken with it — if you’d like to know more, see the old SciCast film about it, or this more recent film we made for teachers.
Thanks to everyone who dropped by the stand over the weekend, it was lovely to meet you all.
Hi, guys,
Great to meet you at the Faire!
My son grabbed one of your straws, very taken with it. Being 10, and officially part of a stall, I think he was the youngest Maker there.
Oh, and the Daleks - they weren't radio-controlled (that was the wheelie bins (search YouTube for "Attack of the Wheelie Bins" to see them in action)). The Daleks had actual drivers in them.
Cramped!
Great to see you at the faire. I will have to try and follow through your ideas about getting statistics at events like this. I'd love to think that having people wandering around talking about how statistics are used in other technology but I'm not sure it would be a big draw. Perhaps something like the bigbang would be easier to start off with than something so trendy and individual.
Tom