I went to the Austin Maker Faire this weekend. This is the first year it has been in Austin so it was my first opportunity to participate. I had been anticipating this for many months and, like a kid on Christmas morning, I was both pleased and disappointed with the whole event. Here's a run down of what I think was the good, the bad and the ugly of this event.
Location - The Faire was held at the Travs County Fair grounds. This is a large area where Travis County has its annual Fair. There are three large buildings - one is an arena that looks like a space for hockey games, one is a smaller modern exhibit space and one is a large animal show barn. The first two were air conditioned while the latter was not. Most of the electronic, geeky stuff was in the arena. The Make and Craft magazine store was in the second building. The more hands-on crafty stuff was in the barn. The grounds were full of tents for exhibitors of alternative housing, local food providers, a human sized mouse trap game, a watermelon catapault launcher, two music stages and a huge area where the largest kites I have ever seen were flown. The location gets a mixed review. The sales space was great, the arena was crowded and very noisy. The barn was unacceptable. The barn floor was dirt and the walls were open to the elements. As the temperatures were around 90 both days it was truly uncomfortable. Maybe they can find a different space for next year.
Pictures above are of the human sized Mouse trap game, a distant view of the Mentos and Diet Coke fountain and a look at the grounds with a view at the human powered ferris wheel free-wheeling it over the grounds.
Swap-o-rama-rama - This clothing swap and clothing re-design area was in the barn. I brought a couple of shopping bags full of stuff and was surprised that I only saw two pieces on the tables for swapping. One was an old white turtle neck and the other was a light weight wool shirt. The shirt actually ended up on a mannequin of one of the local designers being refashioned into a sleeveless cropped jacket. There was very little sewing going on. The most action was at the tables where the silk screeners were busy adding embellishments to the mounds of t-shirts that people were decorating. The fashon show at the end of the day had nothing to do with the action during the day as the clothing shown was from the designers assisting in the Swap and not from the participants. This was a disappointing experience for me as I was hoping to see a lot of action here. I did find three denim skits for myself that were my size but I did not re-fashion them as they were great just the way they were. Maybe next year the designers will be more pro-active in helping people select and redesign the available clothing. AND the location sucked... an open air barn with a dirt floor is not the best place for this kind of activity.
Other Crafty Exhibitors - I really enjoyed seeing some of the people that I regularly visit on the web. A little hut, from Kingwood of all places, had a nice exhibit of recycled art and did a demo on her work at the store building. I also saw a Roomba vacuum reworked into a random painting tool. And check out the great drawing of classsic horror movie villans on on a dirt covered car.
Geek heaven - The arena area was wild. I made a circuit board that played sounds when connnected correctly, listened to a lecture on catapaults, chatted with a woman who makes robots and who also demoed hand quilting, and enjoyed the robot band that used plastic baby doll heads as a key design element.
The robot and hand quilter booth, the lecture on catapaults with a list of the 10 favorite things to fling including dead bodies, snakes and rejected messengers, and the baby doll head robotic band.
The Store - Being the most modern building with the nicest bathrooms made this a great location. I did do some shopping and ended up with a new pocket knife specifically for electrical work. The label on it was 'bomb diffuser' and both my son and I decided it is the coolest tool in my collection. The editors of both Craft and Make magazines did a lot of demos in this space. I stopped to rest my feet and ended up watching a demo on making paper beads. The demo only took about 10 minutes with the balance of the time taken up with the Craft editors trying to prove that even a child could make them without much help... they were proven wrong :-).
Overall I enjoyed being at the Maker Faire. The location was not as user friendly as I had expected but I spoke to a lot people that I admire and saw some incredible work. I certainly had a chance to try out things I would never do on my own. I will go again next year but wear more comfortable shoes.
Several people have asked if the American Sewing Guild should participate in such an event. I definately think there is a place for us but this is an event where you can't sit back and wait for people to show an interest. The most successful booths had displays on their back wall with interactive areas on the aisle, inviting people to sit down and participate in some activity. The weavers, spinners and lace makers all had successful booths. The local ASG chapter did participate and were making comfort bags for a local hospital. It was not as successful as some of the other booths but they had some incredible garments on display.
Now I had better go and batten down the hatches as a cold front is coming and the temperatures are expected to drop into the 50's before the end of the day. Yahoo!
No comments:
Post a Comment