My Maker Faire Experience

The Maker Faire (San Mateo, CA) was fantastic. All kinds of crazy experiences from electric super cars to a giant nose picker. Music from Kid Beyond to the Lil' Billies. Creations of all kinds, Power tool races, giant Tesla coils, baby Tesla coils, robots of all kinds, columns of fire : it was all there at the maker faire.

One of the exhibits that drew a large crowd was a giant replica of Mouse Trap the board game. On the surface the exhibit was a large replica of a iconic board game that I grew up playing. Which is cool. It's a larger than life, physical Rube Goldberg. Which is very cool. But at a deeper level it was even more interesting. The exhibit was really an experience in debugging. They set this mouse trap off once every couple of hours during the two days of the Maker Faire. Each time it got closer to completing it's task of dropping the two ton safe on the government cheese. Every iteration a bit further down the contraption until the final running of the Faire, it worked. Quick, ship it.

The other thing that really stood out in my mind was that Microsoft was there, embracing the maker spirit. Showing things from their labs and things from the students they sponsor. They have taken a step toward the maker community with their XNA Game Development giving people the tools to run their own creations on their XBox. Sony are you there?