Two weeks in the past, we noticed the introduction of Open Sauce, a two-day celebration of Makers and Creators at San Francisco’s Pier 35. This inaugural occasion guarantees to be the primary of many, as its success already has folks asking about tickets for subsequent 12 months’s occasion.
A BOLD EXPERIMENT
Rob standing in entrance of the inaugural Open Sauce.
Any new enterprise will be scary, however while you resolve to create an occasion of this measurement and magnitude, properly, that’s downright terrifying. Will anybody present up? In the event that they do, will they take pleasure in it? Can we get fascinating folks for audio system/featured creators/exhibitors? The solutions are a powerful sure, sure, and sure!
The group at Open Sauce. Sure, that’s Adam Savage on the principle stage. (Picture by way of Open Sauce)
Open Sauce was the brainchild of William Osman and Ian Dokie, in an effort to create a big gathering of like-minded makers, engineers, and creators. Osman described it as an occasion that would “seize the creator summer time camp feeling of early YouTube conventions, the place you work together with all of those folks you watch on-line in actual life.” They reached out to all corners of the maker neighborhood, and the response was overwhelming.
Apparently they weren’t the one ones trying to recapture that feeling, as a result of Open Sauce featured panel discussions and talks by over seventy 5 high STEAM creators, together with (and it is a very abbreviated record) Jorvon Moss (Odd_Jay), Becky Stern, Ruth Amos (Children Invent Stuff), Emily the Engineer, James Bruton, Joel Telling (3D Printing Nerd), Estephannie, Joel Gomes (Integza), Nerdforge (Martina and Hansi), Codemiko (Youna Kang), Will Bales (from BattleBots’ Group Hypershock), Colin Furze, Mark Rober, and Adam Savage. For these of you doing the maths, that is lower than 20% of the wonderful folks sharing their perception onstage over the weekend. Moreover, relying on the extent of ticket they bought, attendees had the choice of attending a small group chat with lots of the featured makers.
A number of ticket stage choices had been out there, however everybody acquired a candy badge like this (sponsored by JLCPCB).
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!
Other than the audio system onstage, the weekend was additionally full of demonstrations and occasions, similar to Powerwheel Racing, Egg Drop exams, an incredible Gloop demo, electrifying Tesla coil demos from Arc Assault, fight robotic demos wherein attendees are invited to take part, and a ground-shaking demo with ExoSapien.
ExoSapien sits right here quietly, however finally got here to life in an Earth-shaking and crowd-pleasing demo.
In fact, the core tenet of Open Supply is that each one makers, all creators, ought to be capable to share their concepts and creations. To that finish, Osman and Dokie determined to make exhibitor house free for people, college students, nonprofits, and open supply tasks. This allowed for a lot of extra folks to indicate off and share their concepts with 5 thousand of their closest maker pals! College students exhibiting off their Arduino self-correcting rocket, Quint Crispin and his knife throwing machine, Anna Ramirez (AnaTheQueen) sharing the work she’s doing instructing women in Mexico to code and create, and dozens of different exhibitors getting the possibility to spend the weekend bragging, studying, and laughing with their friends, contemporaries, and heroes.
Whoever mentioned you shouldn’t meet your heroes by no means met these guys. (Photobomb by James Bruton.)
BETTER TO GIVE THAN RECEIVE
I didn’t go to Open Sauce empty-handed. I introduced a few of our SIKs, together with a few of our pre-release XRP kits. I used to be capable of give a few of our Inventor’s Kits to a couple makers who, like Allie Katz final 12 months, had been trying to enhance their data and understanding of coding and microcontrollers. Keep watch over Ruth and Shaun over at Children Invent Stuff, together with Ali Spagnola and Colin Furze, and also you simply may see extra microcontrollers sneaking into their builds. I additionally put some kits into the arms of Ana Ramirez (Ana Queen Maker), together with a few younger youngsters whose eyes had been vast with amazement on the robots they had been watching.
Colin Furze was fairly excited to get his arms on a SparkFun Inventor’s Equipment.
GREAT NEWS
There was a lot extra to see at this occasion than I may even start to impress upon you in a easy weblog put up. (Did I point out that your Open Sauce ticket included admission to the SS Jeremian O’Brien?) Should you had been there, then you recognize the dimensions of this occasion. However for those who missed it, don’t fear, common admission tickets are already up for pre-sale for subsequent 12 months’s Open Sauce occasion, scheduled for July 2024! You may get them right here, and I will see you there!
Rob, Odd_Jayy, and the brand new XRP equipment. You possibly can count on to see much more from this trio.
Two of my favourite 3D folks, Josef Prusa (Prusa Analysis) and John Olhoft (Lulzbot), had been completely happy to get to catch up.
James Bruton, this time not simply photobombing, was completely happy to speak about bots and mechanical design.
Had been you at Open Sauce? Tell us your favourite half within the feedback!
