Maker Fair North Carolina

Last Saturday our family finally made it to the Maker Fair here in North Carolina, held at the State Fairgrounds. This is an event... that is very hard to describe. The website says it is "North Carolina's celebration of everything made." This throws the net pretty wide, and let me tell you... there was everything there from comic book sketching to robotics! 

Maker Fair started in San Mateo, California in 2005 and has since grown into an idea featured all over the country and even the world. New York City has a World Maker Fair every year, and there are even Maker Fairs in Tokyo and the United Kingdom.

Our Maker Fair, I am told, is small in comparison to the one in California (a mini Maker Fair), but I am also told that this year was the biggest one yet! We spent at least four hours in there and we didn't even begin to see or do everything there was to see and do. I highly recommend this for anyone who loves technology, hands-on stuff, and anything geeky. It was a great time for the kids, and we were able to see a great many of our homeschool friends there, especially as many of them were there representing their Lego League and Robotics teams. 

I'll simply post here several pictures of the things we saw and did. Another good article can be found here, and there are several activities in this article that we completely missed. We will definitely try to make it again next year!

The "Womping Willow" trebuchet.














 Making home-made household products (can't remember what this was).

Wooden Tardis! (This one is for my Mom:))















Lego challenge. The challenge is to put together a small Lego creation while it is still in the bag!

Make a stop-motion animation Lego film.

Trying to drive the robots (notice Darth Mal in the background). See Wake Robotics.


















Exploring and enjoying the huge marble run with a friend.

3D Printer. You can make any object you program in. It's fascinating. You truly can make almost anything you can think up.


Giant fighting robot thingies. You strap in and make it fight for you. Sounds fun!













On a more traditional note, there were wood-workers turning bowls and such. There were all kinds of things you could make out of paper. Book binding. Comic book making. Calligraphy...

My daughter tended to gravitate toward these things.

The Society from Creative Anachronism had people in Medieval Dress sharing weaving, weapons and calligraphy (our local chapter website is here). 

This woman was amazing. I asked her about the gold leaf she used on her piece and she said she had experimented with an old technique wherein you boil down Guinness until it is a sticky paste and use it to glue the gold on. 

Steampunk was also represented...


As were the guys and gals that like to dress up in Star Wars garb for fun.

Make something at The Scrap Exchange. This is a nonprofit creative reuse center. They collect and distribute all kinds of stuff. It gives new meaning to the saying "One Mans Trash is Another Man's Treasure". I think it's a marvelous idea, and I hope we can go visit the store some time. 







Robot hockey matches. This was my son's favorite thing.

 Make a little guy climb the mountain!

Computer/robot assisted chess.

Jinga! 















Tesla coil. This was pretty cool.

 Learn about circuits.

 Hand-made instruments.

Building all kinds of stuff.