Maker’s Faire Recap

I had a great time at the Maker’s Faire–it was a lot of fun and very rewarding to teach anyone who cared to come by how to build simple circuits on a breadboard. I had people from ages 7 to 70 come by and learn the ropes. There’s nothing more rewarding than seeing the look of accomplishment on a kid’s face when they hear their acoustic oscillator working for the first time. I have to thank O’Reilly for putting on such a fun event, and for inviting me to contribute to the event. I also got to meet tons of fun, interesting people; thanks to everyone who stopped by my booth and said hi. It was also great fun and quite a pleasure to be sharing the booth area with Lady Ada. Thanks for the help!

It really made my day when Dale, the head of Make, told me that a small part of the inspiration for the magazine came out of a talk I gave at Etech a couple years ago about hardware hacking. My talk was about how hardware hacking is on the verge of a renaissance: barriers to entry have lowered and once again prime hardware technology is accessible to casual hobbyists. It really means a lot to me to see the message getting out there, and to see people living it, and to know I played some small but definite role in all of it. Feedback like this energizes me and motivates me to work harder to reach and teach more people. Thanks a bunch, Dale!

3 Responses to “Maker’s Faire Recap”

  1. grey says:

    Hey there,

    I wanted to thank you for the info about Maker’s Faire. I don’t subscribe to the zine (or any other paper publications anymore for that matter) but it was a treat to drive up to check it out. I took my kids, which didn’t quite work out for the best – my six year old came down with a stomach flu, so our stay was brief. I planned to return on my own Sunday, but then got his bug. :-/

    At any rate it was a cool event, what little of it I got to check out at least.

  2. Eric says:

    It was great meeting you in person! The parts we talked about are the MAX3420E & MAX3421E (in case you didn’t remember the numbers…) Let me know if you ever need submissions for a Name That Ware.

  3. harrygibus says:

    Hey Bunnie,

    Thanks for doing the workshop. I didn’t really get a chance to do any breadboarding while I was at your space, but I learned alot while I watched others. Mostly it was so amazing how quickly some of the young kids picked up on things, crazy. I wish I had had something like that at around 9-12 years, it would have made a huge impression on me (not that it didn’t at 34). Thanks again,

    Jay

    PS If you have some extra time (doubtful :-) have a look at that LED driver circuit I showed you http://superpositioned.com/articles/2006/03/02/a-low-power-led-flashlight-with-pvc. Maybe you can tell me how to dim it without much power loss.
    Thanks