Maker Faire - a rave review

I just got back from one of the most remarkable weekends of my life. I took my family to the 2nd Annual Maker Faire in the San Francisco area. (www.makerfaire.com)

This was an event that attracted "Makers" of all kinds to one venue to share their newest inventions and passions. Each booth was another porthole into vast as-yet-uncharted territory for all of us.

There is just too much to try and explain here, but there is tons of information on their site along with pictures of this past weekend's event.

The highlights for us were:

1. My husband and son watched hours of the Combat Robots competition and now they want to build robots and compete with them.

2. My daughter and I spent hours at one of the felt making booths and learned to felt. (Thanks Moxie!) This has opening a whole new area of art for both of us.

3. My son also purchased a fabulous radio control car and will be getting up to competition level with this.

4. My daughter and I were able to carry around a prototype camera purse and take candid pictures of the fair that are on line on the flickr site.

5. We learned about TONS of new technology in the internet world, got a great tip on how to set up a photography studio for cheap, learned to hand spin yarn, discovered an new and free 3D program that can be downloaded from the net, made some very cool jewelry out of recycled materials, found out about an awesome fundraising tool and of course.... walked the hamster wheel to power the giant nose picking sculpture.

6. We met lots of great people, get a zillion new ideas and were generally happier than pigs in the mud all weekend.

All this for a $20 ticket for the entire weekend for adults, $15 for students and $5 for 12 and under. Talk about a bargain.

I'm sure that everyone in my family learned more this weekend than they would have learned in an entire year of Science, Technology and Art classes.

We WILL be attending next year's faire. Check this out. For anyone who LOVES to MAKE things and is interested in what others are doing... this is THE place to be.