Maker Faire

Amateur Rocketry and Amateur Radio in the Black Rock Desert   Kevin Weiler
What's it like to join two hundred rocket enthusiasts for three days in the middle of North America's largest desert playa as they put the finishing touches on their rockets and then send them off into the upper atmosphere on pillars of fire? And where does amateur radio fit into all this? Join Kevin Weiler, K6XXX, as he gives a close-up look at some of the temporary but rocket-crazy denizens of the Black Rock Desert. To see additional interesting things you can do with ham radio, go see the Foothills Amateur Radio Society booth at the Faire!

Remaking Pen and Paper: Livescribe Demos the World’s Smartest Pen   Jim Marggraff
An introduction to paper-based computing using the Pulse™ smartpen. Jim will cover the key features that define a smartpen, as well as demonstrate how a smartpen can improve your ability to capture, search and share new information. The Pulse smartpen has won numerous awards, including: Macworld 2009 Best of Show, Popular Science Best of What’s New ‘08, Popular Mechanics 2008 Breakthrough Award, 2008 Java One Show Device, and a 93/100 Superior rating from PC World.

Getting Out of the Garage: driving your design ideas to success with Chinese manufacturing   Liam Casey
Looking to get your ideas out your home workshop and in front of prospective vendors? Liam's talk focuses on introducing the benefits and advantages of fabless manufacturing to bring your concepts to market. With over 13 years of hands-on experience in introducing clients to Chinese manufacturing, Liam offers a unique perspective on global supply chain.

SETI@home   Dan Werthimer
Are We Alone? Chief SETI@home scientist Dan Werthimer will discuss the possibility of life in the universe, and how you can create the possibility of your computer detecting the first signal from a civilization beyond Earth.

What's a nice lady like you doing in (a) space like this?   Esther Dyson
Esther Dyson tells tales of her cosmonaut training. Recently returned from five months at the Yuri Gagarain Cosmonaut Training Center outside Moscow, she comes equipped with photos and stories - and a willingness to answer questions!

Creating Killer Innovations   Phil McKinney
Innovation is a key catalyst for economic recovery, yet some find it elusive. As Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for HP’s Personal Systems Group, Phil McKinney sees daily examples of the breadth of human ingenuity to solve social, economic, political and even technical challenges. McKinney is passionate about tapping that human ingenuity to deliver great results and is regularly sought out to guide teams to unleash their own creative potential. In this presentation, McKinney will share the “how” of unleashing your own personal creativity. One example that he will share is the turning points in his own R&D team’s journey to identify and create a whole new way for computers to interact with the world’s population -- ways that involve natural human expression with nary a keyboard or mouse in sight. Attendees leaving his presentation will discover a renewed level of confidence in their own ability to create the next killer innovation while organizations will have the confidence that they can compete and win in the emerging creative economy.

Colossal Failures   Adam Savage
I'll be talking about failure - unmitigated, colossal failures that I've been a party to.

Remaking American Manufacturing with Robotics   Rodney Brooks
American Manufacturing remains a strong segment of the American economy and is more adaptable and flexible than ever before. At Heartland Robotics we've visited many factories around the country over the last six months and have learned how that flexibility is achieved: through a combination of large numbers of production workers and a lot of ingenious custom engineering. Every facility we've visited has onsite engineers who design and build specialized tools, jigs, and automatic machines for their own unique facility. These engineers work constantly with production workers to modify lines and machines for improvements in productivity and quality. But American industry will face challenges from changing demographics, as the availability of production workers declines. Workers can use robots to fill the gap, but general purpose industrial robots remain relatively rare in American factories. What will it take for robots to be added to the toolchest of the makers of American manufacturing, so that they can increase productivity, provide better jobs for American workers, and compete even more strongly in our globalized world?

A New World for American Manufacturing   Mitch Free
Mitch will be speaking about his observations on how manufacturing products – from conceptualization through introduction to markets – is evolving rapidly, and how technology is not only shortening the design and sales cycles but how these changes will enable new creativity and ideas in the marketplace. Mitch will share these views through his many years of invention, manufacturing and leadership experience.

Numenta's Vision Systems   Dileep George , Bill Atkinson
Numenta is releasing a Vision Toolkit in June that will enable hobbyists to train their own vision system based on our technology. Users will need to train the system with a collection of images, much like humans learn by being exposed to visual images. After training they can present new images (e.g. through a web cam or by dragging image files) to see if the network can recognize them. They can then embed this feature into their own website. It won't be perfect, but I think it will be the first time that computer vision will become really accessible to end users without a specialized degree.

The Most Elaborate Watch Ever Made   John Biggs
In 1783, on the eve of the French Revolution, master watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet was offered a unique commission. He was hired to build the most complex watch known to horology, a masterpiece of form and function. Forty-four years later, it was finished and, in the process, Breguet created new technologies, new engineering methods, and paved the way for precision timekeeping and, some would say, the Industrial Age. The horological equivalent of the Moon Shot, number 160 or the Marie-Antoinette is the most complex watch of its era. We'll discuss Breguet's background, the problems he solved purely mechanically, and the birth of analog programming through the use of levers and cams. We'll also discuss modern watchmaking methods.

DIY Drones   Chris Anderson , Jordi Munoz
Making low-cost autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles, from planes to blimps.

Building an Airplane From the Ground Up   McKinley Siegfried
When McKinley Siegfried was only 16 years old, her parents gave her an airplane for her birthday. The only caveat: She had to build it. "We just thought, you know what, this is perfect, this will do it; she'll get a thorough understanding of the process and what goes into it," said her father, Rand Siegfried. McKinley was not new to flying. She had been soloing airplanes since she was 14 years old, but she was new to building them, especially one that she would fly.... Come hear directly from McKinley and Rand as they recount their story and describe how they were able to accomplish this incredible task!

High-Low Tech: Rethinking Cultural and Material Contexts for Technology   Leah Buechley
People knit scarves and solder radios together in their homes and garages. In contrast, companies produce high-tech things by high-tech processes. A host of new tools is making many of the resources previously available only to companies accessible to individuals, empowering people to design, engineer, and build devices that integrate high and low technology.

The Myth of the Silicon Valley Garage   Steve Blank
The origins of Silicon Valley can be traced to a Palo Alto garage. Bet you don't know which garage.

Leaders Make the Future   Bob Johansen
Author of a new book, Leaders Make The Future, inspired in part by the Maker movement, Bob draws on the Institute of the Future's latest forecast to introduce skills that will help leaders see connections in the larger systems of which they are a part, embrace shared assets and opportunities, and cut through the chaos to make a better future.

Flying the World's Fastest Aircraft   Jerry Glasser
What's it like to be a pilot in some of the world's fastest aircraft? Jerry is an experienced pilot and flight instructor for supersonic aircraft. Come listen to his PowerPoint presentation, titled "Lockheed's SR-71 Politics, People & Plane".

Electric Cars - Why They're Better and How To Buy Them   Jason Jungreis
An overview of electric vehicle technology. This presentation will explain electric vehicle components, and the different types of electric vehicle designs and their comparative merits. Learn how electric vehicles are superior because of their greater efficiency, reduced environmental impact, and reduced dependence on foreign oil. We'll discuss the electric vehicles that are available today and the many more that will be available in the next couple of years.

Android Beyond the Phone   Daniell Herbert
Google developed Android explicitly to run on cell phones, but it is robust enough to run on other devices. Because Android is open source and not restricted by licensing agreements/permissions, and because it is supported by an active development community, it is already growing beyond its mobile device roots. Learn how to use this standardized toolset and you can create applications that easily share and use information across many types of devices -- from cell phones to netbooks to set top boxes to home automation systems. Your fridge could twitter your shopping list when your last RFID-tagged container of milk is used… Your doorbell will send you photos of the people who rang it… Seamless connectivity and control across a range of mobile and stationary devices: welcome to the land of Big Android!

The Universal Remote Control Platform (URCP)   Mark Sigal
Imagine a universal remote control device that controls your home entertainment center, home alarm system AND functions as your interactive programming guide. This presentation, by digital entrepreneur Mark Sigal and Square Connect (doing the demo) will discuss the hardware and accessories that you need to build an iPod touch/iPhone powered universal remote control “touch pad.” It will show you the necessary wireless signaling protocols that you need to control your home entertainment center, activate and deactivate your home alarm, turn on, off or dim lights, and more. Finally, premised on an objective of making media more interactive, Mark will introduce an framework (lifecycle) for thinking about social, metadata and services overlays and interconnects. Don’t miss it.