Two Bay Area Young Maker Events This Weekend

It’s my pleasure to tell you about two fantastic Young Maker/Open Make events happening in the San Francisco Bay Area Saturday, Feb. 16. But be ready for a twinge of disappointment: You’ll have to pick just one of these two happenings because they taking place at the same time. Each offers a flurry of activity that starts at 10am and ends with an inspiring “meet-the-makers” panel discussion.

The events are at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose and Berkeley’s Lawrence Hall of Science. Each museum is also hosting a plussing session, where registered Young Makers can develop and finesse their projects for Maker Faire Bay Area, as in this picture from last month’s East Bay Young Makers plussing session (left) in which Stavros Boutris talks with Yoshi Seaver about the Wacky Bike he exhibited at Maker Faire 2012.

Two Open Makes/Young Makers Meetings From South to North

The Tech Museum takes its second Open Make @ The Tech to new heights with their theme of Flight. In The Tech Studio, their new space for making and learning, Rick Schertle launches the day with a drop-in workshop on his soaringly popular compressed air rockets. The meet-the-makers panel, moderated by Dale Dougherty, includes Chris Anderson, Team Viper, and Rick Schertle.

At Open Make @ the Hall, the Lawrence Hall of Science has invited everyone, young and old, over for a play date! Jay Silver, inventor of MaKey MaKey, will be on hand for some hands-on making. Participants can make floppy-disk derby cars and pinwheels with Ignacio Zulueta from East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse, speedy mouse trap cars with Ace Monster Toys, or hybrid-toy sculptures with young makers Elsa Rudolph-Swanson and Annabel Dudash of MUTANTS. Alice Brooks and Bettina Chan of Roominate will show you how to wire your dreamhouse and Craig Hansen (right) will showcase his finished Giant City-Bot Man X-3! Young Maker CamDAX (aka Cameron Mira) will tinker with his Tesla coil.

Registered Young Makers get free museum admission on Open Make days for themselves and one adult mentor. Additional family members get into the museum at the group rates.

And next weekend…

There is yet a third Young Makers meeting on Feb. 23 at The Bay School in San Francisco. The theme of that meeting is prototyping and documentation. There will be prototyping and documentation workshops, as well as meet-the-maker talks from Carley Jacobson from Instructables, and DIY drones by Mark Harrison of Pixar. Please read more details here.

Whether you can come to an event this weekend (or next) or not, if you are a young maker interested in creating your own project to exhibit at Maker Faire, just fill out our registration form to get started.