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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.