What a day !. Today was the first Champlain Makerfaire  and it was simply amazing. I say first, because based on the crowd and energy today, we will surely hold more of these in the future.  I don’t want to get any further without thanking John Abele, the spark behind the faire, Doug Webster, the manager of the faire, Jerome Cann the organizer supreme, Jenn Karson the web mistress and the folks at Ara for publicity.. and all the other volunteers it took to put this event on. It all worked, really.,really well Thanks you all for your efforts.

As I said last night, we sold out of 800 pre-sale tickets last night and had an additional 200 at the door. I don’ t have the tallies yet.. but I know we sold several hundred more after we ran out of those 200 .. I’m guessing we had about 1300 folks there.. . The amazing thing is.. we’d expected about 500. . though we knew we were in for more than that about the first of the week.   Despite the rainy weather, the venue was packed from about 11 A until after 4. .. The energy was really amazing. with makers of all sorts milling about and meeting or reconnecting .. There were electronics geeks, metalworkers,sculptors,  wood workers, software nerds , artists, inventors, weavers, toy makers, musicians, jugglers, journalists, parents and kids. I was so pleased to see that so many folks we invited to participate as makers showed up.. !

shelbunre farms was a magnificent setting.. beautiful even in the clouds and intermittent rain.

here’s Jerome.. the organizing life blood of the event ..

our friendly volunteers

Thanks to out volunteer ticket takers

the soldering folks from Lab-B

here’s Beth and freind  during setup

Chris’s steampunk stuff was a big ht. i love the jetpack

Tom T had his weird guitarry thingy

Dave D. was there..

ready to cut anything with his waterjet cutter

there was a remote control lawn mower that zoomed around at  15 miles per hour.

here’s Jen and Steve and the guys from Sparkfun who’d come all the way out from colorado

Herb brought our project x robot. it was one of several peices ‘d helped build at the fair today. It was great seeing this guy working well

Kat had lent us her awesome steel couch..looks soft.. but it was heard as … well… steel !  she showed up later in the day.

Steve setting up for quad coptering

rebecca

The divinci guy was there.. he had some really nice pieces. and he was dressed up to match !

as with any event.. there were lots of little disasters.. I had to go repair the ping sound I’d made for chris’s steampunk sub.. and.. worse. When I fired up my larger  tesla coil for a first test, it blew out the arduino processor in Colin’s Echo sculpture.. I couldn’t believe it.. but.. thank goodness we were at a maikerfaire, we were able to find a spare in just a few minutes.. But then,. I tried my van de graaf.. and guess what happened. ?!.. it blew out the replacement  processor.. My guess was we didn’t have any good grounding. so we went begging one more time an got a third to replace it.. Colin had the whole thing working again in a few minutes. but I  figured that twice was too much, so i decided not to use either of my big devices. Instead I shared the table with my buddy Bill from Echo. I used my small tesla coil and my hoolahoop.. I didn’t want to risk burning out anything else.. Actually, that worked out perfectly, because it allowed me to walk around and talk to folks without being glued to a booth.

Colin’s piece, the one we build for our UVM project.. worked perfectly from that point one. Kids were playing with it all day.. drawing with their hands using the kinnect , playing music and yelling in to the mike to make it move.

i let folks play with my hoop which was fun.. this guy was juggling and hooping, wish I’d gotten a picture of that.

my freind Tom’s daughter alo took a try..

Dave D and Marjorie were nxt to us. Dave’s been making stainless steel tombstones. they are actually more lasting than stone.. and very cool.. if tombstones can be cool !

he was there with Talapia Tim.. who helps him with the self sustaining fish breeders.. Tim also had a home made 3d printer there.. very simple and elegant.

Eric’s nice lights were across from us.

Ken had a cool processing color tracking app

Taylor and his gf were there with his machine that recycles plastic into 3D printer cord.. He also had a business casting replacement handles for the Segue.  I got to introduce him to Dean Kamon  later in the day.

i was waling by Joe C and Jim D’s FIRST robotics display when I noticed that their robot had a samstone on it.

their last years robot did too !

Jeff B and Jen launched their arduino powered baloon.

Howie D and friends did 2 sets of rocket launches.

there was an amazing display of pumpkin chucking trebuchets. The big one through something like 500 yards.. I couldn’t believe it !

Teachers !!!!!

I saw SO many folks there that I knew.. or barely new.. or thought I new.. I had 2 second conversations with most.. If I saw you today and wandered off mid sentence, please forgive me.. this was  so much stimulation, it was harder than usual for me to stay focused.

Dean Kamon and his s.o. drove in for the event.   I got to tlak with him for a bit He’s relaly an inspirational guy. he talked about prosthetic arms he’s building and about his water purification system.. then he talked about his favorite topic, FIRST robotics. It was great having him there to speak on that .. We’re starting to really ramp up FIRST in Vermont. I’m actually going to be the emcee for the states first tournament this fall. More on that as it gets sooner.

Dean met with the two first teams that were at the event.  and their coaches Joe and Jim.

I spent the rest of the day walking around talking to makers.. like the guy that made the worlds only titanium flute .

to my freind Terry , recently back from several years in China and tanzania.. and who knows where else .

And the lock picking guys..

Finally around 5 things started to wind down.. Around 6 we broke out beers.. and about 7 we were packing up. it was a lot of clean up.. and probably more to do there tomorrow.

Diane and I went home to feed the dogs who’d been patiently incide all day.. then headed to Stephanie and Marc’s for a late night campfire..

great, rewarding day..

i’ thinking back on the maikerfaire feeling really good about how it went for our first year. I can think of many ways ot improve it next year.. for one thing, we’ll be at least twice as big. It’s gonna be amazing..

I want to thank all the organizers, volunteers, speakers and makers again for their time and energy.. we couldn’t have done it without you.. and thanks to all the folks who attended.. you were why we did it..!

Most importantly.. if you’re a maker of things.. or want to learn how.. or just watch, I want to encourage you to join us at Vermont Makers at one of our meet ups, makerspaces or book club events (soon to be starting). its an amazing group of people.. and it would be that much more amazing if you joined us !

nite all , nite sam

-me