Friday, September 19, 2014

Maker Club Considerations

This is our fifth year of meeting together to do projects. We have evolved over the years from a few kids working on projects at kitchen tables into an all-ages group of students, tinkerers and expert mentors who meet twice a month in a warehouse space and work on several group and independent projects.

Yet our roots are in the Young Makers arm of the Maker Faire, and our group is still tied to many of those values:
  • choosing a project that is interesting and challenging
  • taking responsibility for finding necessary information and mentorship
  • accepting the inevitability of mistakes and working through them
  • sharing one's work so that others might learn from and build upon it
It looks like we will have a couple of large group projects this year: upgrading and modifying the Power Racer, and creating a miniature mobile cupcake a la the Acme Muffineers. A couple people have also spoken of individual projects, as well.

Meanwhile, Emilio has been been building an art fence at home:  
photos by Sabrina Granados
And Sebastian recently made a charging box for a local school:
photos by Sebastian Simmons

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Reconvening After Summer

Every year, high on the excitement of the Maker Faire, we vow that we'll meet over summer. And every summer somehow flies by.

We sat down for the first time last week to discuss the year ahead. Our enlarged group is now more of an all-ages, cooperative maker workshop than a true Young Makers group, and we may make some adjustments reflecting this.


Sabrina brought their family's county fair award-winning displays on the Maker Faire projects:


And Sebastian flew his quadcopter for us. He is hoping to build his own this next year.