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Past Shows and Events

Join Kevin Toyama for a live roundtable with Will Nava, Freesia Gaul, David Thulin, and Lauren Meichtry, four of the participants of this year’s Maker Faire Two-Minute Film Festival whose short films were chosen for screening at Maker Faire Bay Area 2026.

Will, Freesia, David, and Lauren will share their creative visions and talk about how they focused their maker skills through the lens of cinematic storytelling. From set design to miniatures to prop making, their films show the amazing things that can happen when imagination meets innovation.

Special guest Jesse Velez, owner and lead designer of Raptor House FX, will provide his insight on the use of practical effects in film and offer tips for budding filmmakers.

The Maker Faire Two-Minute Film Festival debuted in 2025 to encourage makers to showcase their skills in the universal storytelling vehicle of film. Judges for 2026 entries included Industrial Light & Magic Visual Effects Supervisor Eric Leven (Severance, F1: The Movie); Women in Film SF Bay Area Board Member Nil Unerdem (SF Short Film Festival official selection Pearl in the Window); Post-Production Producer Kayla Lane (The Mandalorian, The Irishman); and Raptor House FX Lead Designer Jesse Velez, who has created animatronic and puppetry projects for Netflix, 20th Century Fox, and Sony Pictures.

Join Dale Dougherty and a group of Maker Faire Bay Area 2026 exhibitors for a fun, behind-the-scenes look at the wild builds and can’t miss moments headed your way.

This year is Maker Faire Bay Area’s 20th anniversary and we’re going big! In this tantalizing preview of what’s to come the weekend of September 25-27, 2026, you’ll hear from makers who blend machine learning with 570 LEDs to light up an AI-powered butterfly, Lepidoptera Imaginaria, that turns your voice into glowing light patterns; Meshtastic, a crew of radio tinkerers who use open-source, off-grid radio networks to keep communities connected without cell towers or the internet; Michael Theodore Schupbach, an official Muppet maker and four-time Emmy Award-winner; Jonathan Taylor of Daredevil Chicken, whose absurd, circus-skilled vaudeville act has drawn laughs on stages in over 34 countries; Scatha G Allison of miss velvet cream Neocouture, who’s been turning offcut fabric and old t-shirts into wearable art since her first Maker Faire appearance back in 2006; plus a few special surprises

👉 Get 20% Off Advance Tickets to Maker Faire Bay Area: September 25-27, 2026

Join us live for a chat with the authors of Make: Volume 98 about getting out of the workshop and putting rubber to the road for our Action issue!

Engineer and inventor Saul Griffith will show off his all-wheel-drive, electric go-cart that’s just as fun to drive as it is to build (and can theoretically beat a Tesla off the line!). Bay Area Foam Tag’s Ryan Cho will talk about building and battling with custom Nerf-style blasters. Professional magician and escape room creator Bizzaro will show off his Halloween-themed treasure box with a ssssurprise sssscare inside. Alex from Methodical Maker will talk about building handheld jet turbines for speeding down the ski slopes. Plus, much more from Make: Volume 98!

👉 Grab your copy of Make: Volume 98 in the Maker Shed:

👉 Subscribe to Make: magazine:

In this Make: Live session, join Dale Dougherty and authors Joan Horvath and Rich Cameron for an in-depth look at Make: Physics, their new physics book bringing a learn-by-doing approach to mechanics for advanced high schoolers, first-year college engineering students, and adults who want to reengage with the world of science.

Joan and Rich have spent over a decade teaching educators and scientists how to use maker tech. In Make: Physics, they bring that same approach to kinematics, energy, momentum, rotation, and related topics using maker-level materials like BBC micro:bit processors and 3D prints.

They’ll walk through how the book connects calculus to physics; demonstrate the ways hands-on experiments can better teach complex concepts than through passive listening; and how Make: Physics’ simple models and projects are the perfect way to challenge young people, engage students bored with conventional teaching methods, and empower lifetime learners to reignite their passion for science. Bring your curiosity and your questions. 

Joining them is Simon Huss, STEAM Director at Windward School, who brings the educator’s view: what happens when you actually put these projects in front of students.

👉 Grab your copy of Make: Physics in the Maker Shed today!

👉 Check out more books from authors, Joan Horvath and Rich Cameron

Join us live to check out the tech-craft fusion in Make: Volume 97: bargello embroidery, LED embellishments, digital ceramic design & more.

It’s a craft takeover with a tech twist! Technology doesn’t just make new gadgets possible, it’s also transforming traditional crafts of all kinds. In this issue, we celebrate the fusion of tech and craft in the spirit of our companion magazine Craft: (2006–2009). In our cover project, try out bargello embroidery and build your own glowy mini bag, powered by 3D printing and the Pixelblaze LED controller. Follow artist Kenny Sing as he uses digital design and fabrication to create stunning contemporary ceramics. Forge a knife, sew an inflatable costume, and give wood projects a deep, charred finish with the Japanese technique yakisugi. Or learn 18th-century paper quilling and then light it up with LEDs!

👉 Grab your copy of Make: Volume 97 in the Maker Shed:

Join Dale Dougherty and some of the original makers from the 2006 Maker Faire Bay Area as they look back on their projects and share what they’ve been up to since.

The first Maker Faire took place on April 22, 2006, at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. About 200 makers participated in the two-day event, drawing an attendance of roughly 15,000 people, and none of us could have imagined what the next 20 years would bring.

Now, two decades later, we’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of Maker Faire Bay Area. With this year’s event just around the corner at the Historic Mare Island Naval Shipyard (September 25–27, 2026), we wanted to mark the occasion in a meaningful way – by catching up with some of the original makers who brought their projects to that very first Faire. Join us for this special celebration to hear how their work has evolved, what they’ve been building, and how their passions have grown and changed over the past 20 years.

Join Make: Editors live for a chat with the authors of Make: Vol. 96 as they show off and talk about the inspiration and elbow grease behind their builds.

Backyard Brain’s Alex Hatch will show off his neuro-powered Spider-Man-inspired web flinger, Justin Andarza will talk about how he transforms physical spaces into immersive, video game-like experiences with his company Warped Worlds, pseudonymous craftswoman sky-guided will power up her high voltage plasma toroid generator and walk us through the science behind it, and Robert Quattlebaum will share how art, code, and hardware come together as Lumanoi interactive LED sculptures.

Subscribe to Make: magazine

Grab your copy of Make: magazine Volume 96, the special Digifab issue, now at the Maker Shed.

Make: Volume 96 (PRINT)

Make: Volume 96 (PDF)

At Make: we’ve cheered, and sometimes steered, two decades of rapid evolution in digital fabrication tools for home, hobby, and business use. But this year is an astonishing one.

Make: Vol. 96 is all about the latest digital fabrication tools! Join us live as we talk about 3D printer tech, CNCs, lasers, and more! Multi-material 3D printing is finally legit, with smart, tool-changing machines that don’t waste filament. We’ll talk about Snapmaker’s U1 tool changer, plus new 3D printers from Elegoo, Flashforge, and Prusa that are packed with advanced features at plummeting prices. We also got to go hands-on with new lasers from xTool — the burly MetalFab metal cutter/welder and petite MOPA F2 Ultra engraver — and with desktop CNC mini mills that have achieved the trifecta of power, price, and software that doesn’t suck.

It’s a good time to succumb to your tool temptations.

Featuring guest authors and standout projects from Make: Volume 96, including:

• Bradley Woods –  Founder and CEO, The Virtual Foundry
• Steve Peterson – Voron Design/Steve Builds
• Alder Riley – Co-Founder & CEO at Itemfarm
• Victoria Roznowski – Founder, Addit.Studio
• Matt Stultz – COO, Cocoa Press and Print Kits

Subscribe to Make: magazine

Grab your copy of Make: magazine Volume 96, the special Digifab issue, now at the Maker Shed.

Make: Volume 96 (PRINT)

Make: Volume 96 (PDF)

Join Dale Dougherty and Steph Piper, author of the new Skill Seeker: Young Maker Edition activity and guide book, to explore how “skill trees” transform learning into a game that motivates young makers along their STEAM path.

Inspire discovery in budding makers! 

“Skill trees” provide essential structure and guidance for ages 8–12, key developmental years in a young maker’s life. Creative technologist Steph Piper joins Dale Dougherty to explore her second book in the Skill Seeker series, the Young Makers Edition activity and guidebook, and how its use of skill trees leads kids from one STEAM achievement to the next.

Steph’s system turns learning into a game that challenges kids without overwhelming them. The book covers 3D printing, vinyl cutting, electronics, crafting, robotics, and more. Parents, educators, and makerspace leaders won’t want to miss this conversation on why skill-building matters—and how kids can apply what they learn in the real world.

Steph Piper is the Library Makerspace Manager at UniSQ, based in Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia. She designs beautiful, multicolour circuit boards you can find on Etsy, and crowdfunded GlowStitch, the machine-sewable LEDs. Steph also created The Party Button, a two-meter-tall art installation inspired by the classic crosswalk interface. She teaches 3D printing, 3D modelling, and Arduino classes, and has a background in biofabrication and 3D printing for medical-grade implants. Steph previously wrote Skill Seeker: Maker Edition, for adults to chart a path toward maker-skill mastery.

Grab your copy of Make: Skill Seeker – Young Maker Edition today in the Maker Shed.

Make: Skill seeker – Young Maker Edition (PRINT)

Make: Skill seeker – Young Maker Edition (PDF)

Join us for a Fireside Chat with Dale Dougherty and Kathy Ceceri, author and educator, as she shares the story behind the updated and revised edition of a Make: classic, Paper Inventions. This new edition ignites imagination with hours of hands-on STEAM activities for young inventors and busy adults. 

In this Fireside Chat, Kathy will talk about her creative process behind the more than 30 fun projects and variations in this book, from traditional decorative pastimes, amazing math oddities, and daring feats of construction to light-up, motorized, and programmable paper circuits. She’ll also be bringing several of her favorite paper inventions, demonstrating how they fold, pop, spin, glow and even compute!

Kathy Ceceri is the author of over a dozen books for kids featuring hands-on STEAM activities, including Making Simple Robots 2nd Edition, Edible Inventions, Musical Inventions, Fabric and Fiber Inventions, and BOTS! An award-winning writer, educator, and maker, Kathy teaches enrichment classes and professional development and parenting workshops at schools, museums, libraries, and after-school programs in person and online. She has also developed learning materials for organizations including Chibitronics, KidWind, Maker Shed, and Adafruit Industries and created robotics badges for Girl Scouts of the USA. Kathy lives in Upstate New York and loves biking and kayaking, watching movies, and going to Maker Faires. Find out more at kathyceceri.com.

Today’s special guests will also include Jie Qi, co-founder and CEO of Chibitronics, and Angii De La Cruz, lead Instructor at the Thinqubator (the children’s makerspace at the Tech Valley Center of Gravity in Troy, NY.

Grab your copy of Make: Paper Inventions, 2nd Edition today in the Maker Shed.

Make: Paper Inventions (PRINT)

Make: Paper Inventions (PDF)