My son and I were amazed at the diversity of exhibits at Maker Faire - here are some pictures of a few of the vehicles we saw (not including the LEGO Van which was in the LEGO! post, and the LEGO Jeep which we didn't photograph for some reason)...
Electric Powered Stagecoach
I should have gone to see what was in that trunk...
Loved this Zeppelin
The original "Beetle"
There was a cool backstory on this one - it is a chariot pulled by a robot, and IIRC, it was solar powered. Made by a race car maker, but I don't remember the details...
Why not?!
The bicycle squeeze horn is a nice touch...
They put powered wheelchair motors in these...I had a nice conversation with the woman who made this one, she was quite proud of it. She had to rework the folding mechanism to make it work...
That cannot be light...
This awesome on / off road racer was one of the few street vehicles at Maker Faire...
I didn't get a good shot of the car - this one is from their website
I've been doing smaller blog posts as I get through all the photos and reflect with my son. I've told everyone I've met this week about Maker Faire - and when they say "that sounds awesome!", I share our plans to bring a little bit of the awesome back to Central Florida.
Here's the list (in rough chronological order of events)
My 11 year old son & I attended Maker Faire Bay Area 2011 recently. When people asked why we were going, I typically mentioned 3 things that I thought they could recognize. Most people know Mike Rowe from the show Dirty Jobs, Adam Savage from Mythbusters, and some have heard of Arc Attack from their time on America's Got Talent. On Sunday morning, we had an action-packed few hours with a mixture of all three!
Note: This is a long post - if you get bored, scroll down to the videos of Mike Rowe and Adam Savage each having their turn in the Arc Attack Faraday cage...
You can learn more about Arc Attack at their website - www.arcattack.com
At Maker Faire, they were in the "dark" hall - we were surprised to find such a large dark space, but it was PERFECT for all the LED projects and the giant Tesla coils on the main stage. Arc Attack seemed to be playing on the hour - they were constantly picking people from the crowd to put into their large Faraday cage. Below are some pics of one of their performances...
Yes, he's wearing a special suit!
There were thousands of people crammed into the hall for every Arc Attack performance...
Mike Rowe told the crowd he wants to make a show about Makers called "Shut Up and Make It!"
The whole thing made for a great network pitch move - "look how many people were there for the announcement!"
Mike took questions from the crowd like "Will the new show be on Discovery Channel?" That one seemed waaaay too convenient...but effective...
This girl asked if she could hug Mike. "With a hat like that, of course!"
Apparently she makes those kitteh hats...
This girl asked Mike a tough question, so he called her out to the front of the stage. Hmmm, that's two of them - maybe Mike has realized Geek Girls are pretty awesome!
Surrender the microphone, Mike - you are headed into the Faraday cage!
I shot some video, but this youtube video has a better perspective...and they captured the banter before and after his time in the Faraday cage...
Later, Arc Attack took some audience members based on their pledge to dance for the crowd while in the cage...
Adam Savage made his 4th? appearance at Maker Faire, commenting that he didn't know he was on the front of the program guide...
He read inspirational passages from some of his favorite books. I appreciated the content, but it was tough to follow without having the passages on screen. He had a tough time managing the mic and the various books too. I was amazed my son stayed with it, but he seemed to enjoy it. Luckily, FORA.tv was there, and I can watch it again and look up the references...
We'd been standing there for close to 2 hours when Adam started taking questions. My son asked if we "had to stay for questions" - and I took that opportunity to duck out. We missed seeing Adam Savage in the Faraday cage, but luckily youtube had it readily available, and FORA.tv also has it... Enjoy!
