Maker Faire 2007
Today, I went to Maker Faire at the San Mateo Exhibition Center in San Mateo. After walking around the sprawling event for over three hours, I was quite exhausted. There were a huge number of activities, from arts and crafts to robots to flame throwers to smart cars, there. As I entered the first of the buildings, I ran into my old friend, Craig, who was showing off his new invention, a MIDI controller he built while finishing his mechanical engineering degree at UC Davis. His device, which he used to control Ableton Live, has four knobs, two sliders, eight buttons, and a joystick. It’s basically a guitar-shaped controller. I can’t wait to play around with one.
I almost staggered into Steve Wozniak as he was being interviewed by a television crew (I did get a picture from afar having noticed the line of equipment at nearly the last moment). After following his Twitter posts, I encountered my good friend, Eric Rice, who was escorting his son to the giant nose-picking contraption. I hung out for a little bit with the good folks at the Creative Commons booth and chatted up the EFF folks, acquiring some really great schwag. After wandering around, checking out Sony’s eBook Reader, a myriad of electric commuter cars (including George Clooney’s electric car) and plug-in hybrids, I finally found my way to the FirstGiving booth, talked about bicycle tours and fund-raising with Thos, and played around with a Monome for a few seconds.
Friends of mine were trying to get me to go out to a party in San Francisco tonight, but I’m exhausted. I can’t wait for the next Maker Faire. Wow. So much fun.
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