Maker Faire San Diego: Celebrating ‘Geekdom’ of Every Stripe

Article Content

It’s billed as “The Greatest Show (&Tell) on Earth,” and researchers from the University of California San Diego will once again be part of the spectacle as Maker Faire San Diego takes over Balboa Park.

For the second consecutive year, affiliates of the UC San Diego Qualcomm Institute (QI) and Jacobs School of Engineering (JSOE) will participate in this celebration of the global, tech-influenced do-it-yourself community known as the Maker Movement. 

Maker Faire -- which takes place this Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 1-2 – is an all-ages gathering of tech enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, science clubs, authors, artists, students and much more. The Faire is a part of Innovate San Diego, a week-long series of events showcasing innovation in the Cali-Baja region, and has become part of pop-culture – a place for experiential marketing, debuting new technologies and inventions and celebrating geekdom of every stripe. 

Researchers from QI and JSOE will exhibit their work at venues throughout Balboa Park (for a full list of makers, click here). Included among them:

• QI’s Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3) and the QI DroneLab will have several drones on display, as well as drone-derived imagery.
• QI’s Engineers for Exploration program will also demo an underwater stereo camera rig, a paraglider and a radio collar tracker (for tracking wildlife).
• The Computer Science and Engineering Department will be showcasing Gagdetron - a hands-on experience that uses a GUI-based programming environment to program configurable robots. 
• The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department will bring homemade pinball machines and Aduino-based (open source) projects.
• The Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department will showcase laser-cut acrylic pendulum clocks and student-made robots.
• The EnVision Arts and Engineering Maker Studio will highlight how to build and create a user-oriented maker space.

Also representing UC San Diego at Maker Faire are the UCSD Solar Car Team (Engineers for a Sustainable World), Triton 3D (a 3D printing club) and UC San Diego Extension.

“The nice thing about Maker Faire is it’s an opportunity to show the community-at-large the cool interactions between engineering and exploration and science,” says QI Principal Design Engineer and E4E Co-Director Curt Schurgers. “It’s a chance for people to see how you can become an engineer and become another Indiana Jones.”

Maker Faire San Diego is open to the public on both days from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets are $10 for children/$15 for adults admission includes entry to participating venues. For more information, visit sandiego.makerfaire.com.