One of the really interesting phemonena that the Internet has brought to light is the growing globalization of niche interests. The Internet allows people of similar interests to find each other easily across distance and even language boundaries. One of these rapidly growing niches is people that like to figure out how things work.

If you're a fan of Myth Busters,  Time Warp, or Doing DaVinci you're aware of a trend towards curiousity about how the world works mixed with a strong sense of whimsy.  Make Magazine , is devoted to this curiousity about and delight in technology and desire to get hands on to really understand how things are put together. Make sponsors an event called the Maker Faire, which our own Dave Taggart attended. I chatted with him about the experience and will summarize some of the highlights. All photos are courtesy of Dave Taggart, including the Snail Car to the right.

The Maker Faire is a place where people who've built unusual and interesting (and somethings dangerous) mechanical devices come to show them off. It's also a place to pit your ingenuity against others in things like robot battles, and power tool races. It's a place to learn. There are tutorials and seminars on things as diverse as surface mount soldering to building shoes, from constructing the soles to tanning leather for the body of the shoes. And you'll meet experts on technologies that have been forgotten for decades.

Scanning the schedule of presentations and demos one finds things like "How to make your own Robot", "Fiber Fantastic (basket making and spinning)",  "Home-made chocolate truffle making", and "Do-it-yourself Biology". That's just a few intriguing titles that caught my eye. In addition there was live music, food, and general partying. And the faire has events for all ages, including demos geared to kids.

This Maker Faire was held in the San Mateo Expo Center, just south of San Francisco at the end of May. Dave didn't know exactly how many people where there, but 80,000 were expected to attend, and there were alot of people there.The first Maker Faire had 20,000 people in attendance, so this is obviously a growing community.

Here are a few pictures Dave caught while wandering through the Faire.

The wings had a 25-30 foot wing span, weighing 8 tons. They sat on a free-floating gimbal and moved and rotated in the wind and were a big hit with the attendees.

The Giant Hand is fully articulated: fingers, thumb, wrist and elbow all capable of motion. It was able to pick things up and toss them ... like cars. And yes, that is a person standing under it, for an idea of scale.

In the Steampunk gengre: an engraved Derringer, a Holtz machine with Leyden bells, and a fully functional laptop by Datamancer.