This weekend, the University of the District of Columbia hosted the inaugural National Maker Faire. The event was a free, family-friendly version of the monster expositions that filled UDC's Van Ness campus. The event was organized by the government of the District of Columbia, UDC, and Nation of Makers (the group that previously put on the DC Mini Maker Faire) in collaboration with Make Media.
Ars spent Saturday at the event, which included instructional sessions as well as a blend of corporate sponsors, individual makers, undergraduate and graduate student projects, and things targeted at or built by children. It also provided a snapshot of just how far "maker" culture has begun to infiltrate the mainstream.
The event had a fairly heavy federal government presence, as government agencies are attempting to both reach out to individual makers and leverage some of their expertise. NASA, for example, was on hand to promote the agency's Solve initiative—a crowdsourcing project aimed at helping the agency find answers to some of its most difficult mission challenges. One example on display was a sample of an airtight "zipper" closure that might be used to assemble parts of habitats on Mars; by its nature, it's supposed to be extremely difficult to unzip (though I did it relatively easily by using a little leverage).
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