A week from today, Maker Faire Bay Area will be open to the public. It is the 20th anniversary of Maker Faire and the fourth year that it will take place on Mare Island in Vallejo. Some of our crew is already on site, setting up tents and stages. This is our big event, one that I’m extremely proud to share with so many people, especially kids. You can buy tickets and preview the schedule, sign up for workshops and meet the makers on our website.

Grant Patterson was a guest on this week’s Make: Live, which featured some of the makers coming to Maker Faire Bay Area next weekend. Grant is a software developer who also likes to use software to create art, such as this imaginary butterfly that he controls using voice commands tied to an LLM.

Grant’s work turns tools of technological progress into art that questions entrenched systems, blending science, biology-inspired digital forms, and interactive installations that blur artist and viewer. Techniques include laser cutting, LEDs, sensors, AI, and solar power. His projects have appeared at Maker Faire, Burning Man, CODAME ART+TECH, and in permanent and private collections.

Also a guest on Make: Live was Jon Davis, a lifelong tinker who loves exploring new technologies. He is a contributor to the Meshtastic open-source project along with being a leader of the San Francisco Bay Area Mesh users group. bayme.sh

Meshtastic is an open-source group dedicated to developing and maintaining a versatile communication platform for off-grid, long-range messaging using inexpensive LoRa radios. The community focuses on creating reliable, low-cost connectivity solutions that can be used for various applications such as emergency communication, outdoor adventures, and remote monitoring.

For many years, we have opened Maker Faire to schools and their students. I’ve always thought it was important to introduce our event to as many kids as possible, especially those who might not get to come on the weekend.

So, Friday is officially Field Trip Friday and I can’t think of a better opportunity for students to get out of the classroom and experience the people, projects and activities at Maker Faire. We will have over 5000 students and teachers on site on Friday, and it’s wonderful to see their excitement and interactions at Maker Faire.

Mouths Open Wide. Of course, the same activities and projects are available over the weekend when parents bring their kids and they engage in activities.

We are introducing something new at Maker Faire Bay Area, the New Product Showcase on Friday at 2pm. It’s an opportunity for makers to demonstrate and talk about new physical products that they’ve developed. This event is at a time that’s free for makers participating in Maker Faire and we hope they come to check out some of the products that makers are showing this year. We are working with Humanmade’s hardware accelerator program in SF as well.

It’s a first-time for the this event so we consider it a prototype but we’d like you to be a part of it. However, Maker Faire has always been a place where makers debut new products and test the interest in what they’ve developed.

The Maker Faire Two-Minute Film Festival is a celebration of backyard productions and
amateur filmmaking, a showcase of 120-second films submitted by the maker
community. This year’s theme is “Where Curiosity Leads,” which is woven throughout
ultra-short stories featuring homemade props, costumes, and sets. Come see how your
fellow makers focused their skills through a cinematic lens, and find out where curiosity
can lead you.

Make Things is a weekly newsletter from Make: for the Maker community. This newsletter lives on the web at makethings.make.co

I’d love to hear from you if you have ideas, projects or news items about the maker community. Email me - [email protected].