I think I might still be dead from Maker Faire UK. After a full week of creating a cardboard mock up of Atomic Duck after it became clear there would be no aluminum parts in time, followed by two days of talking to hundreds of people at what I mistakenly thought would be a smallish show, I still feel like I need a rest!

But Maker Faire was brilliant. While I was a shame that I couldn’t get the prototype parts cut in time, the reception to the cardboard model was great. I think that most people I spoke to were surprised that Atomic Duck is so close to kit production because we only had the model to show.

My touting of the speed of construction for the aluminium & epoxy did lead to an interesting quote though:

Nought to bike in time for a chicken dinner

from @tbsliver

I think the main reason why Maker Faire was so friendly was because non of the exhibitors were in competition. I think only O’Reilly and Sugru were selling from their stall, so for everyone else it was only about spreading your idea to as many interested people as possible.

Planet Scicast were close by to us, and you tell they were getting everyone to have fun by the number of drinking straws were scattered around the place, from experiments on vectored thrust. I think they went through about 1000 straws on Saturday, and had to come up with a new experiment for Sunday to try and curb their consumption.

While I didn’t get to see much of show because it was so busy, I did get to have a chat with Aaron at Oomlout, who were showing their Arduino starter kits, and Nick Sayers with his estate agent board igloo. I really have to go and get hands on with Ooolout’s laser cutter – I’ll be glad to help them get through this laser tube quickly so they can replace it with the 150W one, in return for taking across the Atomic Duck prototype of course!

Hackerspaces were present in abundance. I had a few drinks with Hack:MAN on Saturday night, who were there with their giant etch-a-sketch project; oogled the workmanship in the giant cardboard spider from Northackton, and chatted to loleg from OxHack who was interested in Atomic Duck as a possible project because of their links with the CycleOxford.

Make sure you keep an eye on the Gadget Show if you didn’t get to Maker Faire in person, they had a cameraman and presenter Jon Bentley there, so there might well be a piece in next week’s show.

Also in the great quotes from Maker Faire came:

I'm sorry, could you speak up? I can't hear you over the sound of the tesla coils…

More from Maker Faire: