Champlain Mini-makerfaire

Today was out third Makerfaire here in the green mountain state and it was amazing. After yesterday’s rain, folks poured in to our second day at beautiful Shelburne Farms.

i took advantage of the drive west to stop at my friends Nina and Micah’s for breakfast . They just moved to hunntington . They found the most amazing house !

then it was on to Makerfaire.. I saw a ton of new stuff there. even though I only had an hour or so to look around.. Every nerd, geerk, maker and techy artist I knew was there so it was an excellent chance to schmooz.

My oly responsibility for today was to help judge the champbot competition. Our group put out a high stakes challenge to create a creature that looked like champ.. , navigated slalom course through the water. They could then try several optional tasks including dropping an object in a target, lighting ssoemthign on fire or submerging. I have to say it was a very tough challenge… i’m not sure I would have been up to it.

in the end we had 7 entrants, 2 of which completed the course.. and most others with valiant attempts. .. it was great to watch.. we also learned plenty about making next years challenge a bit more accessible.

We even had soem contestants who swam along to help their champs !.. now that’s a real champ !!!

i was very impressed with the creativity and spirit of all the teams.. it was really amazing to see what they were able to do ! thanks to all who participates !

one funny thing that happened is that my freind Mike at Rutland Technical center evidently gave his students extra credit for tracking me down to get a signature and a selfie. All day i was meeting cool kids from Rutland.. Here’s a couple of them