If you live in the Bay Area, or have some extra frequent flyer miles laying around, then you may just want to consider attending this year’s Maker Faire 2009 at the San Mateo County Expo Center. If you aren’t familiar with The Maker Faire then you have missed out on one of the coolest events on the planet for the past three years, as the Maker Faire is a family friendly, two-day event that celebrates making, creating, learning, inventing, recycling, thinking crafting, playing and being inspired by arts, crafts, engineering, food, science, music and technology. Basically, it’s a weekend of everything you can think of, filling your sensory centers with sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the celebrations of the best things about living in the DIY age.
The 2006 and 2008 Maker Faire were held at the San Mateo Fairgrounds, with the 2007 event being held in Austin, Texas. Last year, more than 65,000 attendees took in some of the most amazing projects in history including a human sized mousetrap, an Arnold Schwarzeneggar robot and a bicycle powered music stage. Last year’s impressive bill of featured guests included writer Stephanie Pearl-McPhee, Tony Baxter, Senior VP of Creative Development at Walt Disney Imagineering whose credits include Walt Disney Resort, Star Tours and Splash Mountain just to name a few, Producer/Screenwriter Lee David Zlotoff who was the mastermind behind the innovations on McGuyver, and Mythbusters’ Adam Savage.
The Faire happens on the last weekend in May, Saturday the 30th through Sunday the 31st, and is expected to be bigger, better and more well attended than last year. The mission for this year: Remake America, stemming from President Obama’s call to “begin the work to remake America.” The Maker Faire is the largest celebratory Do-It-Yourself fair on the planet. This year, the Maker Faire celebrates what The President called the “the risk takers, the doers and the makers of things.”
This year expect the exhibits to be bigger, more creative and better than ever as it features lots of expo and workshop pavilions, a huge outdoor mid-way, and over a hundred DIY workshops, exhibits, demonstrations and competitions plus of course, the 2009 celebrity guest list.
The Fair is put on by Make Magazine, whose mission is to celebrate those people in the world that tackle crazy, imaginative DIY projects in their garages, backyards and basements. Make Magazine calls these innovators “Makers”.
So attend this family friendly event if you can and we might just see you there as the staff here at cool things plans to attend this year’s fair. So, drive your car, hop on a plane – or a bus – or ride your crazy rocket powered pogo stick instead. Just get there!