Maker Faire Archives

Most Friday mornings at 6:45 am, you can listen to IheartPGH talk live with Jim and Randy on the WDVE morning show about things to do in Pittsburgh on the weekend. Here is our list of events and links to more information for this weekend….

Redd Up Weekend

3 days of cleaning for the city of Pittsburgh
10,000 volunteers, including 2000 Pitt Students, will help get this city clean
55 different Neighborhoods in Pittsburgh and Allegheny County
Clean ups take place Saturday around 9am
To volunteer contact – boris.weinstein@verizon.net or call 412-688-9120.

Make a Glass Pumpkin @ The Pittsburgh Glass Center

Friday, October 21, 2011
3-10pm
$25 to make a glass pumpkin
ages 10 and older

Urban Hike Scavenger Hunt – Sq. Hill

Saturday, October 22, 2011
Meet behind Gulifitys at Noon
Teams of 5 or less

Bakery Scare

Saturday, October 22, 2011
3-7pm @ Bakery Square
Fun for all ages – kids to adults
check out the 2nd Annual Running of the Weiners
For the adults – Free craft beer at the boo bar

Owl-O-Ween

Saturday, October 22, 2011
6-8pm
not-too-scary evening at the National Aviary
hang out with the Owls and meet the Aviary’s Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches

photo via Maker Faire Daily

Mini Maker Faire

Sunday, October 23, 2011
Noon-6pm @ The Pittsburgh Children s Museum
national festival of all thing geek comes to the Children’s museum
check out the printer that prints in Easy Cheese
Demonstrations and hands on activities in technology and crafts

Last 2 Weekends for Kayaking!

Kayak Pittsburgh is open weekends in October!
Located under the Roberto Clemente bridge
Venture Outdoors has some group paddle events taking place this weekend as well – check out scheduled events here.

BUT, wait there are even more great things happening this weekend (and we didn’t have a chance to talk about all of them!)

East End Book Exchange sets up a permanent home at the Pittsburgh Public Market

what started as a pop-up shop will now be at the Pittsburgh Public Market
Stop by every Friday, Saturday & Sunday to say hello and pick up some new-to-you books

Carnegie Museum of Natural History’s 2011 Preservation Fair

Saturday, October 22, 2011
10am-4pm
learn how to preserve your family treasures
free with Museum admission

Pittsburgh Party for a Purpose support GTECH

treats, music, networking
Saturday, October 22, 2011
9pm-2am @ Shadow Lounge
Quarterly event to bring together Pittsbughers to support a local non-profit
This month’s non profit is GTECH
GTECH = Growth Through Energy & Community Health – an awesome Pittsburgh org that has been cleaning up empty lots by planting sunflowers!
$10 at the door goes to GTECH

Image by maltman23 via Flickr

I have been waiting for MakerFaire to come to Pittsburgh for years!!! I have been a follower of Make and Craft – both are magazines/blogs published by O’Reilly Media. The Make magazine folks organized the first Maker Faire in CA back in 2006. It was a live festival of all things creative, handmade, DIY and hacked. Since 2006 – Maker Faires have been held all over the world.

Maker Faires have included demonstrations of all kinds of neat things. I had the opportunity to see Bre Pettis, who is a maker/hacker extrodinairre, give a talk on the 3d printer back in 2009 at ROLFcon. You can check out a video of his presentation about rapid prototyping and the 3d printer at ROLFcon here. I left ROLFcon thinking Pittsburgh needs to have a hacker space of our own.

Fortunately – others were thinking the same thing. In May 2009, HackPGH opened a hacker space in the uptown neighborhood to provide a workshop space where makers could come together and well, make stuff. HackPGH has hosted and continues to offer many classes on things like lock picking, LED Flowers and crafts.

Maker Faires are meccas of making things. I know many a Pittsburgh who has traveled to Detroit or beyond to attend a Maker Faire.

This weekend the fun comes to Pittsburgh! The first Pittsburgh’s Mini Maker Faire is this Sunday, October 23, Noon-6pm at The Children’s Museum. The event might be called mini but they have a mighty line up of makers who will be showing off their projects and offering workshops. You can check out the entire list of makers here.

Here are just a few of the things that will be demonstrated on Sunday:

Cheese Printer – Matt Stultz, one of the co-founders of HackPGH will be there demonstrating the cheese printer.

: photo via Maker Faire Daily

Pittsburgh Lock Picking Club

Yes, Pittsburgh has a lock picking group! This city has something for everyone. Not sure about lock picking – I wouldn’t have thought much of it before either but then I read this fascinating article from a 2009 issue of Wired about the Ultimate Lock Picker.

The Traveling Pittsburgh Craft-o-tron Machine

This is an awesome collaborative project of artists and hackers. But what you really need to know is that this is a vending machine where you can get a crocheted pierogi.