Maker Faire Austin Video

A sampling of the wondrous creations at Austin's Maker Faire with interviews of Mark Frauenfelder, Mitch Altman, Bre Pettis and John P. Funk.

I interviewed some of the other makers too, but either the sound was too bad to use (I was recording with the camera's on-board mic and it picked up all the ambient noise.) or I had to cut them for time. Keeping the video within YouTube's 10 minute constraint was a challenge. I would have like the music montage at the end to be longer, for example.

It took awhile but I finally got my Maker Faire video edited and posted. Have you ever tried to build a helicopter out of a wash tub and an umbrella? It was pretty much just like that. I think the old Bat Computer has just about reached the end of it's useful life. It has been a great workhorse and has more or less done all that I've asked of it, but it just doesn't have the stones to run these new-fangled programs. Grateful I am to Professor X and Dexter for the gift many moons ago.

(Although they did stand us up at Maker Faire, which we attended at their invitation. Cough...Cough...)

You can check out my Flickr photo set of the event here.

I ran into Mark Frauenfelder a couple of times at the Faire. He must've thought I was stalking him. At least that's what the restraining order said. You can read my post about Mark and check out my previous radio interview with him here.

Next I chatted with Mitch Altman and tried out his way-cool brain machine. I talked to Mitch on our morning show after the faire. You can listen to that interview here, with links to my Vox posts about my brain hacking experiences.

Next, I had the pleasure of meeting Bre Pettis, the weekend projects guy for Makezine.com. I got tickled when he couldn't quite wrap his brain around the name of the game he played on his home-built shovercraft. Later he said he'd never get on a shovercraft and use 250ft of surgical tubing. I'm not sure I even want to know what he meant by that. I decided to slip in a gag about a Hov-Shov-Hov-Hov-Shover Board kit in a box.

Unfortunately, after a couple of passes through video editing software and conversion to YouTube, it could be a box of plasmatic stembolts for all you can tell. Here's a better look at the front and side graphics.

When I told Bre that I was a maker too has asked me what kind of stuff I made. I drew a complete blank when I thought of a half-dozen unfinished projects in various states of completion. Heck, I was wearing a T-shirt of my own design at the time! (available to you through my cafe press store!) I hope to wrangle a radio interview with Bre. I'll keep you posted.

The last interview on the video is with independent filmmaker John P. Funk. John has spent some $20,000.00 on his space epic so far. My grainy, dark, video shots don't do all his hard work justice. I really envy John. I would love to create a project like his. We had planned to interview John on  "The Big Show" right after the faire, but he smashed a finger on the set of a movie where he was working as a stage hand and we had to postpone. You can check out John's website here.

Two interviews I had to cut were with Ed from Hasbro R&D because the sound quality was so bad, and Scott Wade because of time. Ed was a lot of fun to talk to. He showed off some prototypes of toys and compared them to the production models. You might be surprised that something can go from duct taped PVC pipes to slick, packaged Nerf rocket launcher ready for toy stores. Scott Wade is an artist who works in the medium of dirty windshields. His art is both novel and well executed. We've interviewed him on our morning program too. I'll do a future entry about Scott with the video and photos from Maker Faire, and our radio interview.

The video and photos were all captured on a Kodak CX7530. It does a great job with photos and a pretty decent job with video, although in video mode it goes through batteries like J. Wellington Wimpy at a hamburger stand. Video was edited with (don't laugh) Arcsoft Showbiz 2 and Pinnacle Studio 10.7. (I Have studio 11, it just won't run on my current system.)

Comments

[Brian Boyko]

Hey. My name's Brian Boyko and I'm doing my own documentary of the Maker Faire - I was wondering if perhaps we could combine some footage. Give me an e-mail.

-- Brian.

[Heidi]

Hey,

I have a great link for an interview of Dale Dougherty at the SXSW Interactive Festival, filmed in the famous Austin City Limits Studio. Dougherty is the editor of CRAFT and MAKE magazines and founder of Maker Faire. The interview focuses on Dougherty’s views on how building do it yourself (DIY) communities can be similar to building online communities (Blogging). Here is a link to the video from the website of the show Docubloggers on the PBS station KLRU in Austin, Texas. Enjoy!

http://www.klru.org/docubloggers/?p=263

OR

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WdLBjhLFiEU

-Heidi, Austin, TX

[Heidi]

Hey,

I have a great link for an interview of Dale Dougherty at the SXSW Interactive Festival, filmed in the famous Austin City Limits Studio. Dougherty is the editor of CRAFT and MAKE magazines and founder of Maker Faire. The interview focuses on Dougherty’s views on how building do it yourself (DIY) communities can be similar to building online communities (Blogging). Here is a link to the video from the website of the show Docubloggers on the PBS station KLRU in Austin, Texas. Enjoy!

http://www.klru.org/docubloggers/?p=263

OR

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WdLBjhLFiEU

-Heidi

[arizona seo]

I enjoyed reading the whole entry. Honestly, i was a little bit surprised to some information.