I'm headed for the San Francisco Bay area tonight to attend Make Magazine's Maker Faire. I am very excited about this, as it has the potential to be a truly wonderful thing. I personally am leading several events including a potato gun workshop, a how-to session on tensegrity tower building, and a presentation on Adventures from the Technology Underground.
If you go, please look me up and say hello. This is my picture, so you can recognize me. Bring ants if you've got them. Mmmm, ants.
While I don't have the time to check out a lot of new events, in general I'm all for them and hats off to the people at Make for doing this. Think of all the huge, way-too-big events out there now that started small and for the first few years were wonderful, magical even. Burning Man, the Olympics, the SuperBowl halftime show; before they bloated up they were pretty cool. So, I guess the trick is to find something new that looks way cool and enjoy it before it goes stale and bloaty.
Why would you say that Burningman is bloaty? That's been the most interesting thing to watch over the years. How does a crazy creative/anarchistic/etc community scale? How big can it get? Could it grow forever until it turns the entire world into a burningman-like community? Should it? I don't know. But it sure is interesting to see how it evolves every year.
ReplyDeleteAs for stale, I could see that. I got jaded for a couple of years. But then I started looking for different ways to attend the event (ultralightweight, with only a bike and backpack, as a Black Rock Ranger, as a public slave wearing a toolbelt and a sign saying "use me as you wish!", etc), and I found that the event was much more exciting if I tried looking at it from a different angle rather than just doing the same old thing every year. I met different people, got involved in some cool stuff, got to help people with their art, etc.
Anyways, I was surprised to see you say that burningman has become bloated and stale. I will have been going 9 years this August, and I expect this year to be the best one yet. :-) Have fun!