Make: Online: Events Archives

Events Archive: Events

February 8, 2010

Maker Birthdays: Jules Verne

French author Jules Verne was born on this day in 1828. His father wanted him to be a lawyer and circumstances forced him to work as a stock broker, but eventually he shook off these humdrum vocations and became the world's first professional science fiction author.

Verne quickly gained a reputation for combining ultramodern technology (of the time) with clever guesswork and an affinity for adventure writing. His most celebrated works are found in a 54-piece canon of science fiction and adventure novels called Les Voyages Extraordinaires.

While most of these stories were rousing adventure yarns, what is most remarkable about them was Verne's ability visualize futuristic devices. He wrote about submarines when the technology was merely a curiosity. In his lost work Paris in the 20th Century he predicted that air conditioning, the Internet, television and electricity would become everyday conveniences. In From the Earth to the Moon he imagined a space program that would launch three astronauts from Florida, who were recovered after an ocean splash-down. In The Steam House he created one of the first visions of mecha,

He did it by imagining the possible, and defining it in terms his contemporaries could understand, a mission many of us undertake when we visualize a new project. And so, Jules Verne, happy birthday!

February 7, 2010

NYCR 48-hour hackathon

Brooklyn-based hacker collective NYC Resistor is holding its first 48-hour hackathon this Friday starting at 6pm and ending Sunday, February 14th at the same time.

You can work by yourself or with a team, and if you don't have a team/project we'll assign you to one.
The format is open, you're welcome to come and go as you please. We'll keep the Club Mate flowing and follow a loose schedule of demos and workshops to help spark your imagination.

Interested in participating? Find out more information or register on Eventbrite.

February 4, 2010

This week in Maker Events

Looking to take a break from tinkering on your latest project this weekend? Here are some fine maker events to check out, from The Maker Events Calendar. Wish your event was on the list? Add it to the calendar!

Coming up this week:

DorkbotDC
Washington, DC
Thursday, Feb 4, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

Documentation Lighting @HackPGH
Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, Feb 5, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

Los Angeles Microcontroller club
Topanga, CA
Saturday, Feb 6, 2010, 11am +

Hack-A-Thon @Workshop 88
Mokena, IL
Saturday, Feb 6, 2010 - Sunday, Feb 7, 2010, 2pm - 12pm

Freeside Builds Robots!
Atlanta, GA
Saturday, Feb 6, 2010, 11am - 6pm

Arduino Night @ theTransistor
Provo, UT
Saturday, February 6, 2010, 5pm - 8pm

Hacking the Chumby® Device @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, Feb 7, 2010, 2pm - 4pm

Introduction to Electronics @Metrix Create Space
Seattle, WA
Sunday, Feb 7, 2010, 2pm - 4:30pm

Dorkbot: Seattle @FabLab
Seattle, WA
Sunday, Feb 7, 2010, 7pm - 10pm

Make:SF @reMake Lounge
San Francisco, CA
Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010, 6:30pm - 8pm

Project Lab with Expert Included
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010, 3pm - 6pm

Drop-in Arduino and Electronics classes
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

GO-Tech (Ann Arbor) February Meeting
Ann Arbor, MI
Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

Make:PGH Meeting 1!
Pittsburgh, PA
Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

Start planning for:

Techno-Swap-Fest
Linthicum, MD
Saturday, Feb 13, 2010, 9am - 2pm

Audio Fun with Coils @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Feb 13, 2010, 4pm - 6pm

Minne-Faire @Hack Factory
Minneapolis, MN
Saturday, Feb 13, 2pm - 11pm

Free Culture 20X0
Washington, DC
Saturday, Feb 13, 2010 - Sunday, Feb 14, 2010, 8am - 5:30pm

NEMES 14th Annual Model Engineering Show
Waltham, MA
Saturday, February 20, 2010, 10am - 4pm

Using Transistors @Metrix Create Space
Seattle, WA
Sunday, Feb 21, 2010, 2pm - 4:30pm

Friday Night at The Crucible
Oakland, CA
Friday, Feb 26, 2010, 6:30pm - 9:30pm

Maker Faire Newcastle
Newcastle, UK
Saturday, Mar 13, 2010 - Sunday, Mar 14, 2010

February 2, 2010

The Buckminster Fuller Institute study center

Studycenter1
In the NYC area? Like Bucky?come Celebrate with BFI, Feb. 3rd!...

Throughout the past six months BFI volunteers have worked to redesign our office space in Brooklyn, NY and install a BFI Study Center, open to the public. The center includes rare and out of print books, articles, magazines, photographs, posters, videos, and various artifacts by and about Buckminster Fuller’s life, work, and ideas.

The center also contains the installation of the Dymaxion Timeline, a curated collection of images from the Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller, and the Department of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, M1090 R. Buckminster Fuller Collection. Organized by Bonnie DeVarco, Shoji Sadao and Beth Stryker, graphic design by Project Projects. The Timeline was presented previously at the Center for Architecture NY (2008) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2009) in the context of the Dymaxion Study Center (curated by Beth Stryker, organized by the AIA New York Chapter and the Center for Architecture Foundation in association with the Buckminster Fuller Institute).

The Study Center will be open to the public during set hours and by appointment following the official opening party:

February 3rd, 6-8 p.m.
The Buckminster Fuller Institute
181 N 11th Street, #402
Brooklyn, NY 11211

Obscura Day, March 20, 2010

In the early 90s, I ran an art/science/tech "salon" here in DC, called Cafe Gaga. One of the more fun things we did was dérive, or the act of purposeful drifting through a city to discover forgotten, interesting, strange places. There as so many weird, wonderful, unique locales in every city that we overlook in our day-to-day.

Obscura Atlas is organizing a global day to celebrate "wondrous, curious, and esoteric places" in cities around the world. See if your city is included, and if not, how you can set up your own Obscura Day event.

Obscura Day, March 20, 2010

More:
O'Reilly donates £1000 to Bletchley Park
Coding your own urban renewal

February 1, 2010

Dorkbot DC meeting, this Thursday, Feb 4 at HacDC

If you're in DC this Thursday, Feb 4th, please stop by HacDC and catch this month's Dorkbot DC gathering. We have two amazing presenters this month, Andy Holtin and Atau Tanka. Those involved with Maker Faire Austin may remember Andy's involvement there (and my recent piece about his work here on the site). Atau is a well-known, pioneering artist in the fields of high-tech interactive art and music. Hope to see you there!

About this month's presenters:

Glance from Andy Holtin on Vimeo.

ANDY HOLTIN : "How to Fit as Many Steps as Possible Into Ideas that Started Out Really Simple"

Working on his new project "Glance" allowed Andy to explore and employ a surprisingly wide variety of processes, both artistical and technical. He'll be sharing his obstacles and the solutions they generated.

Andy Holtin is a master builder, professor of art, and a sculptor working with computer and microcontroller-based sculpture. His work was recently featured on Make: Online. He received his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University's Sculpture and Extended Media program. His work uses technology to create perfomative objects and interactive installations, incorporating a range of materials and processes. Holtin currently works as half of the collaborative duo CausalityLabs.

ATAU TANAKA: "Current research"

Atau will talk about his current research in Mobile and Locative Media Art, Interactive Performance, and Creative practice on Public Displays.

Atau Tanaka bridges the fields of media art, experimental music, and research. He worked at IRCAM, was Artistic Ambassador for Apple France, and was researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratory Paris, and was an Artistic Co-Director of STEIM in Amsterdam. Atau creates sensor-based musical instruments for performance, and is known for his work with biosignal interfaces. He seeks to harness collective musical creativity in mobile environments, seeking out the continued place of the artist in democratized digital forms. His work has been presented at Ars Electronica, SFMOMA, Eyebeam, V2, ICC, and ZKM and has been mentor at NESTA.

Note: Atau's colleague from Sensorband, Zbigniew Karkovski, will be performing on February 27th for DC's premier new music presenter, Sonic Circuits.

As usual, we'll also have Interdork, an opportunity for announcements and ad hoc show and tell, and Afterdork, where the coversation continues over food and drink at a nearby eatery.

February 2010 Dorkbot DC meeting
Thursday, February 4th, 7:00PM (ET)
HacDC (St. Stephen's Church, in the church's sanctuary)
1525 Newton St NW
Washington DC 20010
Google map
ALWAYS FREE!
A co-presentation with HacDC

January 29, 2010

Make:PGH first meeting is Feb. 9th, 2010

We're excited to announce the first meeting of Make:PGH, a new Make city group based in Pittsburgh. In the area? You should definitely stop by!

Action! Excitement! Danger!

We're excited to announce the inaugural meeting of Make:PGH, the Steel City Makers! Interested in making stuff? Like the stuff that you see in MAKE magazine? Got cool projects to show off, or grand ideas that are soon to be realized? Want to hang out with other like-minded people? Then you should definitely come out to the meeting on Tuesday, February 9th, at 7pm!

We've got some good things lined up: presentations on the Makerbot, a laser harp, and an awesome activity, so be sure come out!

Marty McGuire: Makerbot

Marty McGuire is a research programmer at Carnegie Mellon and a council member for HackPittsburgh. He hopes one day to make "mad bank" thanks to open source hardware and the desktop fabbing revolution.

Marty will talk briefly about the MakerBot open source 3D printer, where it came from, and how it works. He'll also give a short printing demo, and answer your questions!

Matt Mets: Laser Harp

Engineer, Make: Online blogger, and aspiring inventor Matt Mets will share the secrets of his laser harp project, a MIDI-based instrument that you can play by waving your hands through the air. From designing and fabricating the thing in his apartment, to how it almost led to him running off with the freak show, he'll explain it all, and then even let you play with it!

Mystery Activity

Following the two fine presentations will be an activity of great interest and possible import!

Make:PGH Meeting 1
Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010, 7pm - 9pm
Hack Pittsburgh
1936 5th Ave. Pittsburgh, PA 15219
Cost: Freeeeeeeee

Want to see a Make: City group in your area? Gather some friends and some ideas, and make it happen! Be sure to let us know, and we can help you get started.

January 27, 2010

This week in Maker Events

Coming up this week:

PULSE: Art and Technology Festival
Savannah, GA
Wednesday, Jan 20 - Sunday, Jan 31, 2010, 10am - 8pm

Basics of GIMP and Inkscape @Makers Local
Huntsville, AL
Thursday, Jan 28, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

Dorkbot PGH
Pittsburgh, PA
Thursday, Jan 28, 2010, 8pm - 10pm

Synth Night @HackPGH
Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, Jan 29, 2010, 7pm+

Arch Reactor Open House
Saint Louis, MO
Saturday, Jan 30, 2010, 4pm - 10pm

Introduction to Electronics @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Jan 30, 2010, 1pm - 4pm

Sewing Lab 1: Machine Basics @Freeside Atlanta
Atlanta, GA
Saturday, Jan 30, 2010, 12pm - 2pm

Introduction to Electronics @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Jan 30, 2010, 1pm - 4pm

Public Arduino Night @theTransistor
Provo, UT
Saturday, Jan 30, 2010, 1:30pm - 4pm

Get with the Crochet Craze @knitonone
Berkeley, CA
Sunday, Jan 31, 2010 and Sunday, Feb 7, 2010, 2:30pm - 5pm

Intro to Welding (MIG) @Machine Project
Los Angeles, CA
Sunday, Jan 31, 2010, 10am - 3pm

DorkbotPDX Arduino Cult Induction
Portland, OR
Sunday, January 31, 2010, 1pm - 5pm

Project Lab with Expert Included
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Feb 2, 2010, 3pm - 6pm

Drop-in Arduino and Electronics classes
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Feb 2, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

Make:SF @Tech Liminal
Oakland, CA
Tuesday, Feb 2, 2010, 7:30pm - 9pm

Start planning for:

DorkbotDC
Washington, DC
Thursday, Feb 4, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

Los Angeles Microcontroller club
Topanga, CA
Saturday, Feb 6, 2010, 11am +

Hack-A-Thon @Workshop 88
Mokena, IL
Saturday, Feb 6, 2010 - Sunday, Feb 7, 2010, 2pm - 12pm

Hacking the Chumby® Device @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, Feb 7, 2010, 2pm - 4pm

Introduction to Electronics @Metrix Create Space
Seattle, WA
Sunday, Feb 7, 2010, 2pm - 4:30pm

Make:SF @reMake Lounge
San Francisco, CA
Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010, 6:30pm - 8pm

Techno-Swap-Fest
Linthicum, MD
Saturday, Feb 13, 2010, 9am - 2pm

Audio Fun with Coils @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Feb 13, 2010, 4pm - 6pm

Minne-Faire @Hack Factory
Minneapolis, MN
Saturday, Feb 13, 2pm - 11pm

Using Transistors @Metrix Create Space
Seattle, WA
Sunday, Feb 21, 2010, 2pm - 4:30pm

Maker Faire Newcastle
Newcastle, UK
Saturday, Mar 13, 2010 - Sunday, Mar 14, 2010

Make:NYC meeting February 4th

Stop by Make:NYC's 17th meeting for some balsa bridge building and maker show and tell. Ryan writes:

I don't know about everyone else, but I'm sick of this cold weather hampering my structure-building! Support us and give us your truss! Show up for Meeting 17!

Challenge: Balsa Bridge Construction

It's the classic physics-challenge you all know and love. Teams will construct balsa spans built to support the greatest possible weight. Teams will be supplied with balsa, glue and cutting utensils. We recommend everyone do their homework for this meeting. Spend some time researching good design techniques.

Show and Tell

Meet your fellow NYC Makers and show off your creations! Bring your gadgets, gizmos, sketches, ideas, anything you'd like to put in the spotlight. We encourage NYC Makers to collaborate on and discuss DIY projects. If you're planning to bring a project, drop us a note at meetings@makenyc.org.

Don't forget to RSVP!

Make:NYC Meeting 17
Thursday, February 4th, 6:30pm
Bug Labs 598 Broadway 4th floor
New York, NY 10012

Arch Reactor: St. Louis hackerspace grand opening

Bob Ward wrote in to let us know that the St. Louis hackerspace, Arch Reactor, has moved into a permanent location with nearly 30 members. They're having a grand opening/open house this Saturday, stop by and show 'em some love!

Arch Reactor grand opening/open house
January 30th, 4-10pm
904 Cherokee St.
St Louis, MO 63118

QuahogCon tickets on sale now!

No, it's not a joke from Family Guy (although it would be very cool if Seth MacFarlane showed up!) Rhode Island's first hacker con is shaping up to be an exciting event.

QuahogCon is a regional conference for the hacker culture in all forms. Hardware, Software, Security, Social, Eco Hacking, Zero Impact Living. Like most hacker cons, it will run Friday to Sunday. We'll have two tracks: one for InfoSec topics and the other track will be a mix of all the other topics with a bit of an emphasis on hardware hacking and DIY electronics. Besides our perennial InfoSec favorites, we want to hear from some new voices on a wider range of topics. If it's a good hack, we want to hear what you're doing.

Along with the two talk tracks, we'll have a hardware hacking lounge where you can work on the hackable badge or anything else you're inspired to do. While we all have the utmost respect for Joe Grand, his badges aren't as hackable as we'd like. We'll be going with an open source, open hardware platform for the QuahogCon badge.

The organizers are limiting registration to 150 attendees, which I expect to fill up quickly. A portion of the proceeds will be donated to a local hacker space, AS220 Labs.

When:
Fri, Apr 23, 2010, 05:00 PM Start
Sun, Apr 25, 2010, 05:00 PM End
Where
Hotel Providence
139 Mathewson Street
Providence, RI, 02903
USA

January 20, 2010

This week in Maker Events

Coming up this week:

PULSE: Art and Technology Festival
Savannah, GA
Wednesday, Jan 20 - Sunday, Jan 31, 2010, 10am - 8pm

Make: Denver January Meeting
Denver, CO
Thursday, Jan 21, 2010, 7pm+

Mechatronic Art, Design and Fabrication @Willoughby and Baltic
Somerville, MA
Thursday, Jan 21, 2010, 7pm - 9:30pm, then repeats

Rockland Robotics Club Meeting
Nanuet, NY
Friday, Jan 22, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

Powerpoint Karaoke @HackPGH
Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, Jan 22, 2010, 7pm+

Make: PDX January Meeting
Beaverton, OR
Saturday, Jan 23, 2010, 3pm+

Public Arduino Night @theTransistor
Provo, UT
Saturday, Jany 23, 2010, 1:30pm - 4pm

Fire the Lazzzor! Learn to rapid prototype using the 35 Watt Epilog Laser @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, Jan 24, 2010, 12pm - 4pm

Project Lab with Expert Included
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Jan 26, 2010, 3pm - 6pm

Drop-in Arduino and Electronics classes
Berkeley, CA
Tuesday, Jan 26, 2010, 7pm - 9pm

Start planning for:

Synth Night @HackPGH
Pittsburgh, PA
Friday, Jan 29, 2010, 7pm+

Introduction to Electronics @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Jan 30, 2010, 1pm - 4pm

Sewing Lab 1: Machine Basics @Freeside Atlanta
Atlanta, GA
Saturday, Jan 30, 2010, 12pm - 2pm

Intro to Welding (MIG) @Machine Project
Los Angeles, CA
Sunday, Jan 31, 2010, 10am - 3pm

Introduction to Electronics @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Saturday, Jan 30, 2010, 1pm - 4pm

Hacking the Chumby® Device @NYC Resistor
Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, Feb 07, 2010, 2pm - 4pm

Minne-Faire @Hack Factory
Minneapolis, MN
Saturday, Feb 13, 2pm - 11pm

Maker Faire Newcastle
Newcastle, UK
Saturday, Mar 13, 2010 - Sunday, Mar 14, 2010

January 19, 2010

MAKE staff at HQ this week!

This week a bunch of us are visiting MAKE HQ in Sebastopol, CA for exciting meetings and planning. Many of us work remotely, so visiting the physical office is a big treat! I've been taking a bunch of pictures so you can get a sneak peek behind the scenes at MAKE/CRAFT, I even went into the Maker Shed warehouse, so exciting! Check out pictures in my Flickr set. Pictured above is Ed Troxell, MAKE's photo intern and John Park acting sassy in the Shed.

January 17, 2010

Maker Birthdays: Benjamin Franklin

Today marks the birthday of Benjamin Franklin, a true Renaissance man. After beginning a career in printing, he went on to become a revered scientist, inventor, statesman, author, politician and more. He tried his hand at everything from founding a country to designing a new glass armonica, including the invention of bifocals, and the lightning rod. Happy birthday, Ben!

Everything I need to know I learned from D&D

Last night I gave a talk at IgniteOKC, Oklahoma City's part of the Ignite series of talking events, called 'All I Need to Know About Life I Learned from Dungeons and Dragons.' I had a ton of fun with it and I think it will be of interest to any fans of roleplaying games in general and D&D specifically. I am especially proud of my slides, which are all hand drawn by me :)

[via boing boing]

January 15, 2010

Massimo Banzi's Tinker Toolkit workshop at Interaction10

Tinker Toolkit

Massimo Banzi, author of Getting Started with Arduino and co-founder of the Arduino Project, is presenting a workshop at the upcoming Interaction10 conference in Savannah, GA on February 4, 2010:

The Tinker Tookit is a modular system of sensors and actuators being developed at Tinker.it! in London for the past couple of years. It allows designers to prototype and test tangible user interfaces with Arduino very quickly and without any knowledge of electronics. During this workshop we'll explore the basics of Arduino and get to build cool stuff within the first hour. You'll experience first hand accelerometers, touch sensors, colour sensors, and a lot more technology without having to spend a month talking about atoms and electrons.

Bring your laptop (Mac, Windows or even Linux) and your energy.

As a bonus, he'll be joined by Making Things Talk author (and fellow Arduino Project team member) Tom Igoe. It's two Make: Authors for the price of one!

Tangible Interface Prototyping with the Tinker Toolkit
Interaction10 Registration

I'll be covering the Interaction10 conference for Make: Online, so keep an eye out for dispatches from the event.

In the Maker Shed:

Getting Started with Arduino
Our Price: $12.99
This valuable little book offers a thorough introduction to the open source electronics prototyping platform that's taking the design and hobbyist world by storm. Getting Started with Arduino gives you lots of ideas for projects and helps you get going on them right away. To use the introductory examples in this book, all you need is a USB Arduino, USB A-B cable, and an LED. By Massimo Banzi, co-founder of the Arduino Project.

Making Things Talk
Our Price: $29.99
Programming microcontrollers used to require an expensive development environment costing thousands of dollars and requiring professional electrical engineering expertise. Open-source physical computing platforms with simple i/o boards and development environments have led to new options for hobbyists, hackers, and makers. This book contains a series of projects that teach you what you need to know to get your creations talking to each other, connecting to the web, and forming networks of smart devices.

SparkFun Free Day... behind the scenes

We got 104 comments on our SparkFun Free Day aftermath post, several of which were rather... lively. This video shows what went on at SparkFun HQ during Free Day.

World's biggest disco ball

Seven-and-a-half metres across, with 1,000 mirrors, suspended 50 metres in the air from a crane, and illuminated by spotlights from all over the city of Paris during this year's annual Nuit Blanche arts festival. The work is La Maîtresse de la Tour Eiffel by French conceptual artist Michel de Broin. [via Dude Craft]

Natalie Jeremijenko - Interactive Architecture: Reinventing Social Spaces @ EXIT ART

Pt 2436
Natalie Jeremijenko @ EXIT ART tonight if you're in NYC. Opening tonight, show is January 9 - February 6, 2010...

Waterpod: Autonomy and Ecology, the sixth exhibition of the SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics) program, documents and revisits the Waterpod's five-month voyage around the boroughs of New York. It includes videos, photographs, relics, art works, journal entries, and ephemera that tell the story of this unusual public art project.

The Waterpod was a floating, sculptural structure designed as a futuristic habitat and an experimental platform for assessing the design and efficacy of living systems fashioned to create an autonomous, fully functional marine shelter.

A New York-based multinational team, led by founder and artistic director Mary Mattingly, drew upon the talents of artists, designers, builders, civic activists, scientists, environmentalists, and marine engineers to bring this cross-disciplinary collaboration to fruition in the waterways of New York City. During a global recession and within strict government guidelines, the Waterpod managed to achieve new ways of community outreach, resource sharing, and art creation.

To fortify against the possibility of widespread climate change, desertification, overpopulation, and rising sea levels, the Waterpod offered a pathway to sustainable survival, mobility, and community building through a free, participatory project and event space that visited the five boroughs and Governors Island, for a voyage lasting from June to October 2009. The Waterpod's mission has been to prepare, inform, and offer alternatives to current and future living spaces.

As a self-sufficient, navigable living space, the Waterpod showcased the critical importance of water within the natural world. Collectively embracing the richly-patterned folkways of the five boroughs of metropolitan New York, the Waterpod reified positive interactions between communities: private and public; artistic and societal; scientific and agricultural; aquatic and terrestrial.

Related:
Make Pt0307

MAKE AUDIOZINE - - Natalie Jeremijenko.
Natalie Jeremijenko: The WorldChanging - Interview.
Make - Volume 02 - Maker: Natalie Jeremijenko - (Page 22).
Jeremijenko talks art, activism, - interspecies cooking.

Young Makers

Maker Jon Sarriugarte of Oakland, California raises his daughter Zolle in the air at the 2008 Maker Faire in the Bay Area.

At a higher education conference (dgree.org) last week, I met Marie who told me the following story about her young daughter, Annika.

"I have a son who is a whiz at math. I've kind of understood what he needs and where he's going. My daughter was different and I didn't really understand who she was and what she did. Then I became familiar with MAKE. I recognized that she's the kind of kid who's always off doing something, making something out of parts she finds around the house. I realized she's a maker. I was so happy."

When I wrote Marie asking if it was okay to write about Annika, she responded with a quote from her daughter: "Did you tell him that if you turn your back on me for one minute, I start making?" What a great kid!

I can't tell you how much that means to me. I feel fortunate that we produce a magazine that helped a mother discover her own daughter in a new way. I don't think it's the only such example out there. I wonder how many kids there are that could benefit from being seen as makers.

Young Makers Program

Last summer, Tony DeRose, of Pixar, talked to me about an idea for developing a program for young makers. He and his kids built a Potato Gatling Gun and brought it to Maker Faire last year. They had such a great experience, taking an idea and developing it in their garage shop, and bringing their work to share with others at Maker Faire. Tony felt that more kids should have this kind of experience.

In addition to talking to me, Tony had been talking with folks at the Exploratorium in San Francisco about what he thought then were "two different things: 1) how to use Pixar's cachet to promote science and math education, and 2) his family's love of making." Tony was introduced to Karen Wilkinson and Mike Petrich who have run the Learning Studio at the Exploratorium for years. (They've organized the Exploratorium's participation in Maker Faire each year.) The Learning Studio is dedicated to the idea that science and math education can be advanced by tinkering and that places like science centers should encourage more creative ways of making and doing. They saw Tony's interests as a way to try out some new ideas at the Exploratorium and work more closely with us at MAKE.

We talked about getting kids to meet makers and demonstrate different modes of making. We wanted to explore projects in areas such as circuit-building, soft circuits, music, and mechanics. Mike and Karen want to have making become a regular part of the Exploratorium experience. We also want to find places where kids can work with mentors to make things. So, we also brought Jim Newton and TechShop in as partners. Together, we've come up with a Young Makers program for the Bay Area, which is now ready for a trial run.

I'll use Tony's words to give an overview of Young Maker program:

People learn in many different ways, but many learn best by building things. Building toys such as Lego blocks offer powerful and open-ended experiences for younger children. Unfortunately, as shop classes have closed over the past few decades, there remains very little infrastructure to nurture older kids and teens who want to expand beyond construction kits.

The Young Makers program is intended to create such an infrastructure. The idea is to create a community, both online and physical, that brings together like-minded kids, adult mentors, and fabrication facilities. Mentors help young makers define a project vision if they don't already have one, and then guide the kids in realizing that vision. Along the way, both kids and their mentors will expose the underlying math, science, and engineering principles behind the projects, explore tool usage and safety, and collectively create a collaborative culture of innovation and experimentation. Maker Faire becomes the deadline, and offers a stage for the resulting projects to be exhibited and explained.

In my view, we'd like to help develop young makers and encourage them to participate in Maker Faire. We'll be creating a special kids area at Maker Faire this year and we will invite kids to exhibit their projects. Our initial focus is on teens from middle school through high school.

Kickoff of Open MAKE at the Exploratorium

As part of the Young Makers program, the Exploratorium will host "Open MAKE" on the last Saturday of the month, beginning January 30th, continuing on February 27th and March 27th and concluding on April 24th.

The goal of the program is to encourage kids to make, show them different things they can learn to make, and work with kids who'd like to bring some of their work to Maker Faire.

On each Saturday, we will start with a "Meet The Makers" program in the McBean Theater from 11am-12pm. From 12:30-3:00 pm, we'll be "In the Studio" where kids can do projects and learn from other makers.

For our first program on January 30th, our theme is making simple circuits for small robots. Our featured makers will be Ken Murphy, maker of Blinkybugs, and Windell Oskay and Lenore Edman of Evil Mad Scientists Labs, who created Bristlebots. Kids will be able to make Blinkybugs and Bristlebots in the studio.

(We're still firming up the list of makers for future dates.)

If you have kids (or can borrow some), please join us at the Exploratorium, January 30th. I'll blog about what we learn from creating this program. We'd hope to see Young Maker programs develop in other communities as well.