Today I brought my daughters to the San Diego Maker Fair at the Del Mar Fair Grounds. This was the first Maker Fair in San Diego, so I was not sure what to expect as I have not made it to any of the others ones around the US.
To begin the weather was not the best, as it was cold and raining for most of the day, but the event was held in-doors so that was good. With the lack of known advertisements for this event I was surprised by the amount of people that were there standing in the rain waiting for tickets. I may be wrong in the lack of advertisement, but I did not hear about this on a radio station, and I don't really pay attention to the news (it could have been on there). Sometimes I see event notices on twitter, but I found out about it through a friend on Facebook about a week ago. I loved the fact that I was able to purchase the tickets before had on eventbrite and then just show the QR code to get inside.
I think they planners also under estimated the amount of people that were going to show up at this event as it was very hard to move around and get hands on with a lot of the displays. I was always trying to keep an eye on my daughters, as there was not much walking room between the exhibits. My daughters has a great time walking through and seeing the 3D printers, Laser printers, and even trying to make the derby cars. I would have liked more stuff with the derby cars besides coloring a block of wood. There was sand paper but in the end it is still just a block of wood with wheels. I guess you really can pull out table saws, and the likes at a place like this though. The quadraptors were also interesting to see but only 1 was actually being flown. We even saw the air compressed rocket launcher, just like the one I built for my daughters a few years back, and they had folks trying to build rockets for it.
A lot of the booths had lines waiting for people to build what ever they were offering, and some ran early in to the day. I did not really have a chance to hear any of the speakers talking, nor take part in any of the classes. Overall I had a great time even though it might sound otherwise. I just hope that with the great turn out this year they will have it in a bigger area, so they can have bigger exhibits, and more hands-on at the booths.
To begin the weather was not the best, as it was cold and raining for most of the day, but the event was held in-doors so that was good. With the lack of known advertisements for this event I was surprised by the amount of people that were there standing in the rain waiting for tickets. I may be wrong in the lack of advertisement, but I did not hear about this on a radio station, and I don't really pay attention to the news (it could have been on there). Sometimes I see event notices on twitter, but I found out about it through a friend on Facebook about a week ago. I loved the fact that I was able to purchase the tickets before had on eventbrite and then just show the QR code to get inside.
I think they planners also under estimated the amount of people that were going to show up at this event as it was very hard to move around and get hands on with a lot of the displays. I was always trying to keep an eye on my daughters, as there was not much walking room between the exhibits. My daughters has a great time walking through and seeing the 3D printers, Laser printers, and even trying to make the derby cars. I would have liked more stuff with the derby cars besides coloring a block of wood. There was sand paper but in the end it is still just a block of wood with wheels. I guess you really can pull out table saws, and the likes at a place like this though. The quadraptors were also interesting to see but only 1 was actually being flown. We even saw the air compressed rocket launcher, just like the one I built for my daughters a few years back, and they had folks trying to build rockets for it.
A lot of the booths had lines waiting for people to build what ever they were offering, and some ran early in to the day. I did not really have a chance to hear any of the speakers talking, nor take part in any of the classes. Overall I had a great time even though it might sound otherwise. I just hope that with the great turn out this year they will have it in a bigger area, so they can have bigger exhibits, and more hands-on at the booths.