Maker Faire Vancouver

Call for Musicians

emilysmith — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:25:33 +0000

Vancouver Mini Maker Faire is looking for musical acts to play throughout the 2-day event. We are open to roaming performers, and will also have a stage set-up. Please sign up and we will be in touch!

Inspiring Makers — Ladyada Takes One Giant Step for Womankind

Lena Ross — Tue, 22 May 2012 20:17:25 +0000

Limor Fried, or Ladyada as she’s better known in geekspeak, is a prolific maker, engineer, kit maker, entrepreneur, MAKE advisory board member and open source hardware pioneer.

In an exciting blessing for makers and female engineers, Fried graced the April cover of WIRED magazine: a publication that’s been around for 18 years. This is the first time a female engineer has ever been featured on the cover.

MAKE Magazine called it a milestone for makers, for women, for engineers, and anyone who makes things for a living.

Fried was also interviewed this year on CBC’s Spark by host Nora Young. She defines what a Maker is, and touches on some amazing projects she’s got her eye on for the future.

“A maker is the new hobbiest. It’s someone who likes to build stuff with their hands and with tools,” Fried says. “I work a lot with electronics makers, people who really like to build electronics, both from scratch, and to take stuff off the shelf and modify and manipulate it to make it do cool and awesome stuff.”

Cool and awesome indeed. Though she’s one of the most talented, hard-working and intelligent voices in the maker community, one of the best things about Ladyada is that she’s female, and she embraces it.

As she explains to CBC:

“I just love glam. I wanna go out there and be crazy and blinky and awesome and have a good time.”

Yes!

After first talking about the importance of open source software and hardware (that’s how she learned her stuff), Fried talks about her own clothing line using wearable computing. This is clothing with embedded coloured lights that allows the wearer to feature a movie, favourite team colours, or other more elegant displays using layers of softly lighted fabric to create a stunning visual display.

And what if she gets lost?

Fried also has an idea for a handbag that would harness GPS powers to tell the wearer which direction to walk in.

Want.

If you’re still not convinced that Ladyada is awesome, take a gander at her website Ladyada.net. The site receives about 3000 unique visitors each day, and logs an average of 20G of traffic per day. After taking a peek around her site, it’s easy to see why.

There’s a veritable feast of information on how to make/deconstruct/hack/recreate different electronic items, all with her trademark upbeat, step-by-step instructions.

Two of my favourite projects are the Minty Boost: a portable USB charger, and the x0xb0x: a digital synthesizer.

The Minty Boost is a small-yet-powerful USB charger for your mp3 player, camera, cell phone, and pretty much any other gadget that plugs into a USB port to charge. And it all fits neatly into an Altoids tin.

You can order the kit from Adafruit Industries, Fried’s webshop. With a few basic souldering skills and your own discarded tin, you can make your very own Minty Boost for about 20 bucks.

And once you’re done, just sit back, relax, and watch your electronics come to life!

The x0xb0x is substantially more complicated.

x0xb0x (pronounced “zocks box”) is a full reproduction of the original Roland synthesizer with a fully functional sequencer. The sequencer can be programmed just like the original, and can be used to control other synthesizers using one of its various output formats.

The x0xb0x boasts 128 banks of track memory and 64 banks of pattern memory, which are stored in onboard EEPROM.

And, of course, it’s got no less than 40 LEDs.

“Crazy and blinky and awesome!”

In Fried’s words:

“Electronics is now the new palatte. It’s the new way for us to modify, hack, explore… It’s great for everyone to know how to fix the things around them, or upgrade the things around them… [because] everything that you fix is another thing that isn’t being thrown away.”

Amen sister. Now how do I join your official fan club?

Photo credits:

Wired Cover — Courtesy of blog.makezine.com

Fried with x0xb0x — Courtesy of wired.com

Minty Boost and x0xb0x — Courtesy of ladyada.net

Meet your Sponsor: Plush on Main

emilysmith — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:54:53 +0000

Interview with Brigitte Stroud of Plush on Main

If you came to Vancouver Mini Maker Faire in 2011, you probably came across Plush‘s booth, where you could have made a bottle cap pendant, or purchased a felting kit. Or, you could have seen or worked on the giant felt egg that they brought to the Museum of Vancouver Fundraiser party back in March.

For this year’s faire, they’ll be back at it again, with a sponsored booth and even more felting demonstrations. Plush on Main, located on 4296 Main Street, hosts regular workshops on sewing and felting, and features art and crafts made by local artists. If you haven’t had a chance to check out Plush and you’re wanting to get your felt on, or check out some really great handmade goods, I highly recommend checking out their shop! It’s full of creativity, hand-made art, and knowledge-sharing.

I recently caught up with Brigitte, and learned a bit more of what Plush is all about, and what they will be bringing out for Maker Faire. (Note, Plush is also one of our official ticket sellers for the event, so if you’d like to purchase paper tickets, you can stop by one of these 3 locations and pick them up). Here is a bit of what she had to say:

1. What do you plan on demonstrating at Vancouver Mini Maker Faire this year?

We just got in a fresh batch of lovely wool roving that we can’t wait to mess around with, so we’ll be teaching people how to make felted beads, which is a quick and easy introduction to wet-felting.

2. What was your experience like at Vancouver Mini Maker Faire in 2011, and at the fundraiser party in March?

Amazing on both counts! At last year’s Maker Faire we helped people make nearly 400 bottlecap pendants, which was both inspiring and exhausting. The giant needle-felted Easter egg that we had people working on at the fundraiser was a ton of fun, and it was incredible to watch it turn from a blank (albeit fuzzy) surface to an explosion of different colours and textures by the time the evening was over.

3. Who are some of the feature artists’ works in Plush? What items go the quickest?

What’s best-selling changes week-to-week, sometimes day-to-day! Perennial favourites are Kris Brownlee’s (AKA A Cagey Bee) art panels and lockets, the Naked Soapworks’ line of bodycare products, and the whimsical feltings and DIY felting kits from Blushing Lotus Designs.

4. Can you talk a bit about some of the workshops you have hosted at Plush?

Opening up our studio for public workshops has been super-exciting! And a little bit scary at first… akin to inviting a whole bunch of strangers over to cook in your kitchen! We have a regular rotation of needle-felting, wet-felting, hair fascinator, and t-shirt modification workshops. We’ve recently added a card-making class and a home-made bodycare product class, both of which we think will become regulars on our roster. We also occasionally open up the studio for free craft drop-ins, and every month the Vancouverites for Steampunk meet in our space for their monthly craft meets.

Learn more about Plush and check out their upcoming workshops on their website, or check them out on Facebook.

Call for Food Vendors

emilysmith — Mon, 21 May 2012 20:21:24 +0000

Did you build your own food cart? Do you serve food that is out of the ordinary? Are you a self-contained unit? Are you nodding “Yes!” Then we want to hear from you! Please fill out our food vendor application and we will be in touch shortly.

This year, we are partnering with the PNE, and have agreed that our event can have non-PNE food vendors, as long as the food you are serving doesn’t already exist with other PNE vendors. We are also looking for vendors with a unique “Maker” spin on your food, cart, or general set-up. Please send us an email at info@makerfaire.ca if you have any further questions. We are going to select 10 food trucks (8 food + 2 beverages / snacks).

Early Bird Ticket Sales End this Saturday

emilysmith — Sun, 20 May 2012 18:00:23 +0000

Early Bird -discounted tickets will be ending this Saturday, May 26th. The rate is at $20 for an adult weekend pass, and $10 for children. Once the early bird rate is over, tickets will go up to $15 per day, and $25 for the weekend. If you would like to purchase physcial tickets, we have 3 official paper ticket sale locations: Lee’s Electronics, Plush on Main, and the Hackery.

Plush on Main is located on 4296 Main Street. They are open Tuesday to Saturday from 11 am to 6pm, and on Sunday from 11-4.

The Hackery is located on 304 Victoria Drive. They are open Tuesday to Saturday from 11am-6pm.

Lee’s Electronics is located on 4522 Main Street and are open from Monday to Friday, 8:30-5:30, and Saturday from 8:30-4:30 pm.

Less than 2 days left of Call for Makers!

MakerCoordinator — Fri, 18 May 2012 08:47:35 +0000

All good things must come to an end, and the Call for Makers for Vancouver Mini Maker Faire 2012 is no different. We’ve had some excellet Makers apply over the last 10 weeks, and I can’t wait to share some of them with you via this blog!

But it’s time to finalize the planning for the event, and as such Saturday May 19 will mark the end of the Call for Makers. If you’ve been putting off applying, now’s your last chance to get in! So head on over to the Call for Makers page, and fill out one of the application forms.