I went to this and really enjoyed myself. Do you like enthusiastically interrogating teenagers about robots they've made? You should, it's really fun!
I also got to play a 3D printed violin, and meet a lady who had built a terrifying battlebot that was too vicious to be allowed in the arena at the event as it would have broken straight though the safety plexiglass.
Jeff Geerling is one of my favorite public figures (I’m not sure how far or if I’m stretching the definition of public). I keep meaning to subscribe to his patreon, I mean that’s the least I could do - I think he’s the only creator I consume the content of on 4+ platforms. And occasionally he shows up here too. I just love the sheer “making things” energy, and all the open work he does.
If there was, say, a Patreon equivalent that was just a static site that displayed an address to send weird or excess hardware, cash, etc to, that would be so ideal!
i was there. it’s an awesome event. it’s like maker faire but if it were run by feral youtubers. like half of the exhibits are some sort of cursed side quest. i got to drive the crazy oshcut simulator. i love it.
As a teacher I have become more skeptical about whole maker movement. Don't get me wrong - I really appreciate what has become possible. I couldn't even dream about most of it when I grew up in seventies in Soviet Union. I use a lot of open source hardware and the results maker movement myself as a hobbyist and as a teacher.
But the problem is that while kids like it a lot, it doesn't translate to engineering careers. Kids don't want to become engineers as result, they want to become content creators, tinkerers etc. Even rather good students with a lot of potential see all this engineering stuff more as a media career or a fun hobby.
PS. I don't say the engineering hobby isn't cool and fun. I don't say that maker movement doesn't produce incredibly cool and deep stuff. I'm not even saying that it's the only reason why there is a shortage of engineers. But it's certainly contributing because I see it.
I'm a member of local engineering community and I see a lot of stuff like the quality of civil engineering sinking and we're all paying for mistakes in it. I see a lot of local production closing only because all R&D engineers are 60+ and planning to retire.
> NASA features many of Matthew's photos, but he told me he's also pushing for more sharing of the RAW image files
These two shots of the moon and earth are so cool. This is such an interesting view of something that we are all familiar with, but will likely never see from this vantage point. I would love to be able to play with the RAW files, as some kind of deeper experience with the images.
I went and enjoyed it a lot. The variety of the exhibitions was great (personally I loved the watercolor pen plotter) and the age of the exhibitors - both very young and old, was delightful.
Just for balance, I went there, and it was pretty disappointing. I do love math and engineering, but it was very gimmicky, especially the panels. I tried striking up a few conversations, but people were really awkward and ran away. Also, generally as an event it was frustrating in many ways (for example, mobile internet is mostly down, and the agenda is not printed anywhere). But who wants to hear me complain.
I was also there and especially enjoyed seeing the number of parents with kids. The badge making area is always full of kids, and adult parents or staff/volunteers guiding them in completing the Open Sauce badge.
Getting to see and hold a 3D printed regenerative cooled liquid rocket engine was my personal highlight.
BPS.space (Joe Barnard) released a nice YouTube Short that also highlighted some favorites.
For anyone interested in a little context behind the organisational effort that goes into this event, William Osman (the genius brain behind Open Sauce) has put up 12 short videos documenting his attempts to promote the event in the week leading up to it. This is the first of those videos: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9qbjES787ZI
I was there, and unlike many of the other commenters, I feel like it was just ok. Imagine maker faire but there happens to be a stage next door with YouTubers.
The panels I did see, the moderator (William Osman) didn't do a very good job moving through questions, so very few people got to actually ask anything.
I also felt very strange that the only place I saw kids was lining up to ask YouTubers questions during the panels. I couldn't help but think about how many kids want to be YouTubers when they grow up - it seems like YouTuber idolism was the main event and not any of the awesome booths by non-famous people.
Back in the day I use to like watching people creating things in YouTube. After a while I notice a trend of people building stuff just for the views. I think that's one of the reasons Ben left Element 14, they did not care about inventions, they just wanted content.
I feel like open sauce, as mentioned by others here, is just a place for YouTubers to gather an audience. With some exceptions, of course (I'm looking at you technology connections).
I really wish Open Sauce made more effort to showcase Open Source solutions as the name clearly implies. So many things presented are proprietary, which makes them useless for significant community improvement and collaboration.
Those pushing corpotech in an event meant to have a community vibe feels gross.
Granted MakerFaire is the same these days.
Are there any actual events showcasing exclusively open tech in the US?
I attended for the first time this year after wanting to go since the first year. As someone who watches science techy engineering YouTubers, but hardly does anything with hardware, I had a great time. Even though I'm a fan of some of William Osman's work, I didn't really enjoy the panels. Relative to effort of attendance, they were kind of boring, something you could probably just watch as a YouTube recording.
What I did enjoy alot were the exhibits. There's the spectacle of seeing all kinds of weird and interesting builds in person. But what's really, really enjoyable is that because the exhibits are done by average people who generally don't have a big public following; you can just ask them endless questions and they're more than happy to answer and give such a great insight into the build process, the work that is involved, the inspiration and the little details of all the things that they made. Granted, I will agree, many of the exhibitors are not socially dexterous, but because they're there, they're very willing to talk and explain things. Definitely worthwhile. I even got to use a soldering iron for the first time in a decade years.
Despite having been organized on the former grounds of Maker Faire, the whole thing felt smaller. Exhibit halls were very poorly ventilated, and doors left open didn't help. Only the main conference hall was breezy enough. Panels were hard to follow due to bad acoustics of smaller halls.
Retro related halls were mostly about NES/console Retro, not 8-bit in general.
People were fantastic though. I liked seeing many different robots and cosplayers. I got to play many great games, looking forward to their release. Not many mindblowing stuff but, were I a kid, I would be blown away for sure. Robot fights were also exciting (maybe outdoors would be better for it though).
I saw Ken Shirriff, and thought to myself "oh he must have left his assistant in his place". I'd never guess he'd be that young which impressed me even more given his phenomenal work. So, I missed my chance to thank him in person. Next time!
Had good time in general. I hope to see it get better in upcoming years.
I exhibited there, and I had a lot of fun. My friends co-hosting the noisebridge booth got a lot of folks to find a makerspace near them. Several general attendees told us that the very first time they had soldered was at Open Sauce, when putting together their badges. The event has positive impact, and I'm hoping it sticks around.
25 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 40.7 ms ] threadI also got to play a 3D printed violin, and meet a lady who had built a terrifying battlebot that was too vicious to be allowed in the arena at the event as it would have broken straight though the safety plexiglass.
If there was, say, a Patreon equivalent that was just a static site that displayed an address to send weird or excess hardware, cash, etc to, that would be so ideal!
But the problem is that while kids like it a lot, it doesn't translate to engineering careers. Kids don't want to become engineers as result, they want to become content creators, tinkerers etc. Even rather good students with a lot of potential see all this engineering stuff more as a media career or a fun hobby.
PS. I don't say the engineering hobby isn't cool and fun. I don't say that maker movement doesn't produce incredibly cool and deep stuff. I'm not even saying that it's the only reason why there is a shortage of engineers. But it's certainly contributing because I see it.
I'm a member of local engineering community and I see a lot of stuff like the quality of civil engineering sinking and we're all paying for mistakes in it. I see a lot of local production closing only because all R&D engineers are 60+ and planning to retire.
These two shots of the moon and earth are so cool. This is such an interesting view of something that we are all familiar with, but will likely never see from this vantage point. I would love to be able to play with the RAW files, as some kind of deeper experience with the images.
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/amf-iss071e609065/
https://www.nasa.gov/image-detail/gvynuzswiaatoq/
Getting to see and hold a 3D printed regenerative cooled liquid rocket engine was my personal highlight.
BPS.space (Joe Barnard) released a nice YouTube Short that also highlighted some favorites.
The panels I did see, the moderator (William Osman) didn't do a very good job moving through questions, so very few people got to actually ask anything.
I also felt very strange that the only place I saw kids was lining up to ask YouTubers questions during the panels. I couldn't help but think about how many kids want to be YouTubers when they grow up - it seems like YouTuber idolism was the main event and not any of the awesome booths by non-famous people.
I feel like open sauce, as mentioned by others here, is just a place for YouTubers to gather an audience. With some exceptions, of course (I'm looking at you technology connections).
Those pushing corpotech in an event meant to have a community vibe feels gross.
Granted MakerFaire is the same these days.
Are there any actual events showcasing exclusively open tech in the US?
What I did enjoy alot were the exhibits. There's the spectacle of seeing all kinds of weird and interesting builds in person. But what's really, really enjoyable is that because the exhibits are done by average people who generally don't have a big public following; you can just ask them endless questions and they're more than happy to answer and give such a great insight into the build process, the work that is involved, the inspiration and the little details of all the things that they made. Granted, I will agree, many of the exhibitors are not socially dexterous, but because they're there, they're very willing to talk and explain things. Definitely worthwhile. I even got to use a soldering iron for the first time in a decade years.
Retro related halls were mostly about NES/console Retro, not 8-bit in general.
People were fantastic though. I liked seeing many different robots and cosplayers. I got to play many great games, looking forward to their release. Not many mindblowing stuff but, were I a kid, I would be blown away for sure. Robot fights were also exciting (maybe outdoors would be better for it though).
I saw Ken Shirriff, and thought to myself "oh he must have left his assistant in his place". I'd never guess he'd be that young which impressed me even more given his phenomenal work. So, I missed my chance to thank him in person. Next time!
Had good time in general. I hope to see it get better in upcoming years.