Wow, awesome, amazing. These all apply to my first day at Maker Faire UK but express the Maker Faire experience completely inadequately. Maker Faire was brilliant. Hmm, not much better let me try again. Today I spent almost the entire day talking to like minded people excited and passionate about making and doing cool stuff. I got on-site to complete set up as soon as the doors opened to exhibitors - 07:00, I left at at 18:00'ish. Except for one brief step out - to buy arrows when a fellow maker pointed out a sale in a hobby shop opposite the Maker Faire venue - I didn't stop all day. Our stand demonstrations went well - the multi-touch table worked pretty well even in the bright spring sunshine (!), A1DW and the iRobot Create ran alternately to charge batteries, for the entire day.
The Xbox controllers used to drive either robot were clearly universal tools in the hands of all ages of demo participant. The real pleasure was so many interested people stopping to discuss the technologies, the setup and the possibilities. A stark contrast to the normal 'Microsoft' exhibit environment where delegate apathy often riegns supreme. Here people were keen and passionately interested - it was a really happy, fun day for me and I look forward to tomorrow.
I had a few snags to sort out first thing but the 'can do' attitude of the organisers saw these all sorted asap! Thanks to Graham for the keyboard replacing the one I left at home - enabling me to get A1DW working. And to Dave for partitions and a Maker Faire banner that help shade the multi-touch table and created such a Top background for R2D2 - James' life size model which many a child and adult enjoyed being photographed with.
Tomorrow I hope to do some filming of the event and other makers exhibits so I can bring you a proper Maker Faire UK report.