Our family’s World Maker Faire New York experience of the Greatest Show (and Tell) on Earth took place at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York. World Maker Faire is the New York area’s premier DIY showcase of skill and talent highlighting the very best of the Maker Movement. The 2017 World Maker Faire delivered us the opportunity to explore and learn all about the world of making.
Features of 2017 World Maker Faire New York included projects with social impact and making for good, health care, and food, alongside the latest developments from core pillars of the Maker Movement such as microelectronics, 3D printing, drones, robotics, and more.
Our Family World Maker Faire New York experience started at the Dancing Water Fountain, a dancing musical individually from a piano, which was our toddler’s wonder-filled stop. It was wonderful watching her interact excitedly with the Dancing Water Fountain, courtesy of the maker Scott Schneider, an electrical engineer who just likes making unusual things in his spare time, including a Dancing Water Fountain Christmas display.
Our next Family World Maker Faire New York experience included a visit at the Brooklyn Robot Foundry booth, a company that strives to empower kids through fun, DIY classes in robotics, engineering, circuitry, programming, design and more! With a heavy focus on STEM/STEAM topics, Brooklyn Robot Foundry loves to unite all kinds of creative kids over their shared passion for building and hands-on learning. Our girls delighted in making their own parachutes and watching them take off in the air.
We then had the pleasure to meet Vivian T. Lee, a current graduate student in Parson’s Design and Technology program. With a background in animation, she aims to create works that combines storytelling and technology. We delighted in her creation, Milk’Em, an interactive play experience that was inspired by a story Vivian is developing called Olive You. We enjoyed our time with Penelope, the Neopolitan cow, that can produce chocolate, vanilla and strawberry flavored milk to be used for ice cream.
Our Family World Maker Faire New York experienced Cocoa Press Chocolate 3D Printer, a company that prints one of our favorite treats, chocolate. Cocoa Press features a pneumatic syringe, milled aluminum extruder and a solid state chocolate cooling system. To print, a chocolate bar is inserted and Cocoa Press takes care of the rest. Developed by Evan Weinstein, a junior at the University of Pennsylvania, majoring in Mechanical Engineering.
Our Family World Maker Faire New York was quite the experience at the Future Food Makers booth. Future Food is an ecosystem that food innovation a key tool to tackle the great challenges of the future, connecting with the world’s food hub. We got the chance to see the food innovation with Granola Bites powdered with Cricket Flour and Chili-Lime Crickets with Pumpkin Seeds. None of us was brave enough to try but we admired those who did!
One of our two oldest favorite places to visit was the Raspberry Pi booth where they enjoyed learning how to code with Processing on the Raspberry Pi computer to create visuals, interactives, games and physical art. They experienced a live demonstration of the Processing programming language, the Raspberry Pi’s pins, and how to get creative with code and electronics.
Matt Richardson is a San Francisco-based Executive Director for the Raspberry Pi Foundation. He’s the co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and is a columnist for The MagPi, the official Raspberry Pi magazine. We had the pleasure of learning about the magazine (Hello World), a computing and digital making magazine for educators, that you can read for free online.
Then it was my turn to hear Zach Kaplan talk about his upcoming book, “Getting Started with 3D Carving”. For years, 3D printing has been the hot topic in the maker world. But there’s another type of desktop manufacturing that’s become the go-to choice for anyone who needs quick, durable results- 3D carving.
Zach Kaplan is the founder and CEO of Inventables, the leader in 3D carving. A maker his whole life, he is on a mission to ignite digital manufacturing world wide and provide everyone with ambition a way to get started. Inventables flagship products Easel, Carvey, and X-Carve are used by a new wave of makers carving everything from circuit boards to skate boards.
The girls had the pleasure to listen to Allie Weber Kid Inventor aka “Robot Maker Girl” is the inspiration behind the Robot Girl Lottie Doll. Allie is a Maker, Builder, and Inventor. Allie was the winner of the 2016 Global Spark Lab Invent-It Challenge, and is also the Student Ambassador for the 2017 Spark Lab Invent-it Challenge.
Allie weber has gotten additional press coverage for multiple inventions she has developed. Tech-nic-Allie Speaking is her YouTube Channel devoted to tech-toy reviews, and to show other kids her inventions to inspire them to build make and create.
The highlight of their day was helping Jonathan Bobrow, founder of Move38, in the Troxes booth. We met Jonathan when we attended Westport Maker Faire in April and were excited to learn that he would be at the World Maker Faire New York. In pursuit of playfulness, Jonathan creates highly considered design objects like Troxes which are triangular, interlocking building bricks.
Designed at the MIT Media Lab as a medium for geometric play, Troxes exercise and deepen spatial thinking, and allow for the construction of objects as beautiful as they are unusual. Our girls along with their friend had the honor of assisting Jonathan in the booth and it was all they talked about on the way home.
One of my favorite Family World Maker Faire New York experience was watching Drone Sports World 2017 with Aerial Sports League, the longest running drone sports event in the world, featuring some of the best FPV (First Person View) pilots on the East Coast as they battle it out for domination of the ASL drone race track. In order to fly the drone, a pilot must wear goggles. When the pilot looks through these goggles, they see from the front of the drone. It’s as if they are sitting right there in the drone’s cockpit.
We had heard about drone racing on CBS Dream Team with The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation with Mo Rocca. To see drone racing live was a dream come true and I am so glad I got to experience with my family. I am dedicating a blog post all about drone racing as part of my memorable experience.
We ended the day at the mimicRobots booth and enjoyed interacting with their mimic educational robots. Mimic is a collection of robots, sensors, and programming tools that are simple enough for kids but powerful enough for experts. Their mimicArm is a desktop sized robot arm that can be controlled manually with our revolutionary Posi-Feel force feedback controller (pat. pend.) or automatically with an Arduino or mimicDuino. It was simply the best way to end our wonder-filled family World Maker Faire experience
As always, hands-on activities were plentiful across all sorts of projects with something for makers of any age and skill level. Our Family World Maker Faire Experience was full of inspiration delivered by the creativity, ingenuity, innovation, and inventiveness represented by the hundreds of makers who were exhibiting at World Maker Faire. We are already making plans for next year and encourage you to do the same because there is nothing like experiencing World Maker Faire for yourself!
The WELLthy Mom NODte:”There’s no value that can be placed on learning other than the realization that one’s life is much richer only when experienced.” -Nathalie O’Donald
