The Hacker Hut portion of the Southwest Michigan Mini Maker Faire was a huge draw today, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a portion of the tent city below the bluff that wasn't a big hit in the grand scheme of things. Thousands of eager kids of all ages made the trek to Whirlpool Centennial Park to find all sorts of opportunities to make things with their own hands, or learn about things being made all across the region.
The 2nd Annual SWM Mini Maker Faire saw significantly larger crowds today than a year ago, spawned by a renewed interest in the hands-on opportunities at hand courtesy of Berrien RESA, Cornerstone Alliance, Kinexus and St. Joseph Today. Everybody in sight was smiling broadly celebrating the spirit of making things, and joining the nationwide movement to get young people interested in and engaged in the art of making things with their own hands and minds. Hoping to provide a skilled work force for the corporate needs of the future, the Mini Maker Faire holds great promise for building that interest.
From kids learning hands-on welding techniques to create their own metal sculpture to take home thanks to the team at Lake Michigan College to the rocket-launching and robotics teams that gave kids a great sense of science around them, the showcase was a strong success again this year.
Multiple, small-scale, but decidedly high-tech looking 3-D printers were churning out plastic parts driven by computer aided design techniques inside The Hacker Hut, making that large tent a substantive draw. But, there were multiple stations on site for all sort of creativity from kids piecing together mosaic tiles for the Water Street Glassworks, to the stellar showcase of Dolls Re-Imagined by a teen-aged girl named Etta who showed great resources in taking traditional dolls in very untraditional directions.
Virtually all of Whirlpool Centennial Park was engaged in activities from The Nerdy Derby where kids hand-crafted race cars to venture down the Edgewater Auto-Motion Track, to Comstock Schools popular encore opportunity to make and launch your own rocketry high into the sky alongside the Whirlpool Compass Rose Fountain.
Also spread across multiple tented structures were things like the Krasl Zipline, the Jug Huffers Instrument Petting Zoo, and even a Whirlpool peek inside a Plexiglass dishwasher and a cut-apart dryer. Multiple teams from the FIRST Robotics showed off their robots from recent competitions all the way to the international level.
The show is a family-friendly showcase of invention, creativity, and resourcefulness. A place where people show what they are making, and share what they are learning. The Makers on hand ranged from tech enthusiasts to crafters and homesteaders, from scientists to garage tinkerers.
Participating sponsors also included Beaudoin Electrical Construction, Bosch, Michigan Gas Utilities, Whirlpool Corporation, Lake Michigan College, Kendall Electric, Silver Beach Pizza, JR Automation Technologies, SeeMeCNC, Tyler Honda, Chemical Bank, Revolution Design (who handcrafted acres of signs for the event), United Federal Credit Union, Hanson Mold, the Berrien Community Foundation, and Revision Legal.
Organizer Joe Rommel says they were so pleased with this year's performance, that there is no question that the 3rd Annual event will take place in June of 2017, so if you missed it…get it on your calendar for next year's big show.
Another hand-crafted innovation from the Mini Maker Faire in St. Joe Saturday…
A young rocketeer launches his hand-made rocket at the Mini Maker Faire…
LMC Instructors give kids hands-on welding experience at the Mini Maker Faire…
