OMGHOLYCRAPWOW Maker Faire

Post date: May 22, 2012 6:7:48 AM

Wow, I just got back from Maker Faire. The fam went up for the weekend. It was one of the best weekends of my life for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, as you may have guessed. I'm sort of into the whole maker/DIY thing. Secondly because I went with both of my kids and they had a blast. I got there with a list of a whole bunch of crap I wanted to see. A few talks I wanted to catch, some interesting sounding shows I wanted to see. We got through the main gate and found the bathrooms, obviously the most important step. Then I turned to my 8 and 10 year old and said "O.K. let's check the schedule and see where we're going." Then it hit me. I'm going to be dragging these kids around a hot fairegrounds for two days with no rides to distract them. If I wanted to get through this without the days ending in tears I had to make it fun for them.

So I put my phone back in my pocket led us into the main building and said "I want to see two or three people while we're here. Other than that just keep your eyes open and you tell me what we're going to do." Watching them get excited about making was WAY better than seeing any of the talks. Apologies to anyone who gave a talk but I'm sure most of you would agree with me.

My 8 year old daughter asked me to make a robot with her.

WIN!

I mean come on! How much better can it get for a maker dad am I right?

So I missed eepybird, Arcattack and Adam Savage yet again this year. I was even too distracted making stuffed robots with my kids to stalk^H^H^Htalk to Jeri Ellsworth for very long. ^_^

Also it was a great event for me personally. Like I said I'm sort of into the maker thing. For a while now I've had a goal of becoming one of those people who do projects that make you want to replicate them. With TVKP I did which, is kinda neat. Well the next step of that is to start hanging out with some of my maker heroes. Well instead of walking around maker faire and just staring at people like the otaku fanboy I am I was actually having discussions about projects. It felt like I was attending Maker Faire as a Maker.

As Robotgrrl put it Achievement unlocked!