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Graduating Makers
A salute to those makers graduating this year; Maker Faire Vientiane in Laos kicks off and ArduPilot was behind the drone attack in Russia.
Dale Dougherty
June 06, 2025
Karydis Johnson (photo by Jon Sarriugarte)
Congratulations to all the makers who are graduating this spring/summer. We were delighted to see Makey on the mortarboard of Karydis Johnson, who has been coming to Maker Faire since 2007. We are proud to see young makers grow up!
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Karydis Johnson, graduate
Karydis Johnson’s parents were part of the Cupcake Cars that came to Maker Faire Bay Area as early as 2007. Keith Johnson, father, held baby Karydis while riding the Prozac Cupcake car.
Karydis Johnson graduated from Skyline High School in Oakland this week. She gave us some background on her growing up at Maker Faire and her plans for college.
My parents were part of the original cupcake crew (ACME Muffineering), and made the Prozac cupcake and the S&M cupcake, which are now the peppermint cupcake and sweet heart cupcake respectively. This is also where we met Jon (Sarriugarte), Kyrsten, and Zolie, who we became super close with and have worked on several projects with. Maker Faire was one of my favorite things to do, along with Burning Man, and has really influenced me to pursue making theatrical machines, following what my parents, Jon and Kyrsten, and many of other makers at Maker Faire do and have done. I am currently planning to study robotics engineering at UCSC this coming fall, and intend to use that degree to continue my path as a maker.
Karydis Johnson, Skyline High graduate and maker (photo by Jon Sarriugarte)
Maker Faire Vientiane
Did you know there’s a Maker Faire in Vientiane, the capital city of Lao People’s Democratic Republic? Vientiane Center, a shopping mall, hosted the event. Ken Streutker of The Makerbox Lao (makerbox.la) is the organizer.
I love the creativity of this Maker Faire poster, doing fun things with Makey.
Ken shared a few pictures with us. “The opening event yesterday was amazing, and the feedback has been great. Although exhausted, we are elated.” Here are a few pictures from the opening.
Inflatable aliens for exhibit on space
An analog Pacman game
Photos from Maker Faire Vientiane
ArduPilot software behind Ukraine’s drone attacks in Russia
You might remember the early days of drone development. Chris Anderson wrote the cover story in Make: Vol 19 about flying drones on autopilot. Jordi Munoz, whom we put on the cover, was a co-founder with Chris of a company that grew out of DIYdrones.com and developed the open-source ArduPilot software.
ArduPilot was in the news this week in a story published in 404 Media and written by Matthew Gault.
The story quotes Anderson: “That's ArduPilot, launched from my basement 18 years ago. Crazy.”
On X, (Anderson) tagged his the co-creators Jordi Muñoz and Jason Short in a post about the attack. “Not in a million years would I have predicted this outcome. I just wanted to make flying robots,” Short said in a reply to Anderson. “Ardupilot powered drones just took out half the Russian strategic bomber fleet.”
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