CLICK HERE if you are having a problem viewing the photos on a mobile device
SAN MATEO — Luke Henderson isn’t sure what to think about the news that this years’ Maker Faire at the San Mateo County Event Center could be its last.
The 16-year-old from Daly City knows he can find information about the latest tech gadgets and gizmos, YouTube demonstrations of DIY projects and forums to answer questions on the Internet. But, he said, “It’s just not the same as seeing something in person.”
He’s been coming to the fair — which combines art, science, a sense of play and a dash of wonder to its hands-on demonstrations and workshops — for about 10 years, he said.
Fair founder Dale Dougherty isn’t sure what will happen next year. He created Make: Magazine in 2005, partly as a way to return to the DIY ethos that seemed to have faded from an increasingly consumer-oriented culture and partly as a way to showcase advances in artificial intelligence, drones, robotics, rockets, 3-D printing and other technologies. The Maker Faire was born the following year as a forum to allow the “makers” and “doers” from his magazine to meet, mingle and share their boundary-breaking ideas, he said.
“To me, they are the bearers of the future,” Dougherty said, adding that he was always fascinated by their creativity. “And they needed to be celebrated.”
The event has come a long way, from filling just one exhibit hall at the San Mateo County Event Center, to a sprawling multi-building, campus-wide event, with dozens of food vendors, thousands of makers and tens of thousands of attendees.
And, while it was always meant to be a family-friendly event, Dougherty said he’s most impressed with the way educational institutions have begun to embrace the still nascent maker movement, incorporating maker spaces into school campuses and libraries. There weren’t any makers who were teenagers or children in the first year, or for the first several years, Dougherty said. Now, community college, high school and other school groups come from far and wide to exhibit and participate, he said.
“It’s like coming in on the side-door in education,” he said. “Administrators know nothing. They are totally clueless, but the teachers are doing it for the benefit of the kids, and the kids are doing it because they need it.”
Raul Garcia, an Oakland resident, second-time attendee and self-described maker, who is a graphic designer by trade and spare-time tinkerer, said adults participate, too, because it’s fun and inspiring.
Garcia decided to brave Saturday’s forecast of rain to see what might surprise him.
“There’s always something,” he said.
But, it’s getting harder for artists and makers in the Bay Area to find spaces where they can make their fun and unusual creations, said maker Ryon Gesink, an Oakland-based metal fabricator. Gesink had a studio at American Steel in Oakland for years before a change of ownership and rising rents forced him to leave. The maker space NIMBY, a favorite of Maker Faire and Burning Man creators, got a major rent hike in 2017 and plans to shutter their storied space this summer.
If rising land prices weren’t enough, the Ghost Ship fire in 2016, in which 36 people lost their lives in a warehouse fire, and the growing cannabis industry, has put major pressure on industrial spaces in Oakland, and around the Bay Area, he said.
“We’re just getting smashed,” Gesink said. “It was like a one-two-three punch with the rapid gentrification of the East Bay, the Ghost Ship fire and the cannabis green zone getting put over all the industrial areas in Oakland.”
But if there’s one thing that makers are really good at, it’s creating something out of what others have discarded as nothing. There are already rumors that a new event could take the place of the Maker Faire, Gesink said.
And while it isn’t clear what that might be just yet, Dougherty said one thing is certain: More people would need to be involved in organizing the event.
“Maybe it’s time has come and passed, but I hope that isn’t true,” he said. “There’s something here that really works.”
