Blessed with the majestic backdrop of the Colorado Rockies, the Rocky Mountain Center for Innovation and Technology in Loveland will host the first-ever NoCo Mini Maker Faire this weekend, on Saturday, October 5, from 10am to 6pm. We spoke with event producer Elizabeth “Elise” Weiland, who shared:
When I took on this NoCo Mini Maker Faire at the end of April, I thought we would start small and build. Instead we hit this gusher of creativity and support that has taken the region by storm! In less than six months we’ve filled 100,000 square feet with 172 booths filled by makers of all types from across Colorado. A few of the talented makers that we find in our backyard along the Front Range include:
Artist Aaron Ristau
Coming from a family of artisans, Loveland Colorado artist Aaron Ristau has a fascination for creating art that blends nostalgic aesthetics with modern function. His whimsical mechanics and functional lighting assemblages are an intricate integration and redefinition of reclaimed components.
[One of Ristau’s pieces is pictured at the top of this post.]
SoundPuddle
The SoundPuddle is an interactive space of visual-acoustic synesthesia. This spectrographically colorful dome creates color and light from sound, illuminating every noise you make on an immersive canopy of light. You will laugh, shout, and sing as thousands of solar powered LEDs unify your ears and eyes.
MESA rcFoam Fighters
The MESA rcFoam Fighters purpose is to serve, promote, and guide students to the possibilities in the field of Math, Engineering, Science and Achievement through the lens of scratch build remote control aviation. The MESA rcFoam Fighters is a pathway to the engineers of the future and we are committed to making scratch build aviation for kids one of the top outlets in the world for them.
Nerdy Derby
The Nerdy Derby is a no-rules miniature car building and racing competition inspired by the Cub Scouts’ Pinewood Derby. With a larger, more undulating track and no restrictions on the size of the cars or materials participants can use, the Nerdy Derby rewards creativity, cleverness and ingenuity.
Elizabeth adds:
And of course, we’ll have a Nerdy Derby [track pictured above], a robot scrimmage, a combobulator, Western Heritage making castings. If the government shutdown is resolved, we’ll showcase Colorado’s federal research labs like NIST, NCAR, NOAA, RMRS. Colorado is the state for innovation! We also have a documentary filmmaker coming in to film our event, so we’ll show you how it goes!
There will also be several Colorado makerspaces present:
Check out their full list of makers and join them on Saturday!
ADVERTISEMENT
