The Maker Movement: Young Makers and Why They Matter

Google Tech Talk (more info below) November 15, 2010 Presented by Dale Dougherty, Tony DeRose, Karen Wilkinso, Mike Petrich, and Michelle Hlubinka ABSTRACT Make magazine and Maker Faire are part of a larger "Do It Yourself" movement that has been gaining momentum over the last decade. In this talk we will discuss some of the factors behind the movement, where the movement is now, and where it might be going. We'll also highlight ideas for supporting youth who are passionate about hands-on activities. One such idea is the Young Makers Program that we are launching as part of a collaboration between Make Magazine, The Exploratorium, and Pixar. Dale Dougherty is the founder of Make magazine and the creator of Maker Faire, which leads a growing maker movement. He is GM of Maker Media at O'Reilly Media in Sebastopol, California. Dougherty is a co-founder of O'Reilly Media, a technical publisher and conference organizer known for its advocacy of Open Source and the Web. An early Web pioneer, Dale was the developer of Global Network Navigator (GNN), the first commercial Web site launched in 1993 and sold to America Online in 1995. Dale was developer and publisher of Web Review, the online magazine for Web designers from 1995-1999, which was sold to CMP in 1999. He coined the term Web 2.0 as part of developing the Web 2.0 Conference. Make Magazine started in 2005 followed by the first Maker Faire in the Bay Area in 2006. This year, Maker Faire was held in the Bay Area, Detroit and New York City. Tony DeRose is currently a Senior Scientist and lead of the Research Group at Pixar Animation Studios. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985. Before joining Pixar in 1996 he was a professor of Computer Science at the University of Washington. In 1999 he received the ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, and in 2006 he received a Scientific and Technical Academy Award (c) for his work on the mathematics of surfaces. He loves working in the garage with his two sons on various whacky engineering projects, many of which are a combination of hardware, software and art. He has attended every Bay Area Maker Faire and has exhibited at the Faire the last three years. Karen Wilkinson and Mike Petrich direct the Learning Studio at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The Learning Studio is an interdisciplinary lab for the design and development of new ways to engage people with hands-on, technology-rich, arts-infused making opportunities. These activities are based on the notion that making is an important way for people to learn, especially in a materials-rich, studio environment, surrounded by others investigating questions of their own. This is the way our group designs and develops new activities, and this is the way we engage visitors on the exhibit floor. The work is messy, sometimes chaotic, a lot of fun, and always innovative. It offers visitors the opportunity to think with their hands. Karen and Mike both have undergraduate degrees in fine art from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and both are graduates of the Harvard Graduate School of education in Cambridge Mass. Most of their real learning, however, has occurred in close proximity to museum visitors, graduate students, prisoners, kindergartners, and monks, in a variety of learning environments, each trying to figure things out for themselves, despite the best efforts of their formal education. Michelle Hlubinka is the Education Director for Maker Media, overseeing educational outreach and programming. Before joining the Maker Faire crew, she worked at the Exploratorium (in the Center for Museum Partnerships) and MIT Media Lab's Lifelong Kindergarten group (her research funded by LEGO and the NSF Playful Invention and Exploration grant.) That work built on previous research at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and as a long-time mentor at the Intel Computer Clubhouse Network. At the very first Maker Faire she demonstrated clay animation with Zeum, a children's art and technology museum, and thereafter joined the Maker Faire crew. When she's not supporting future Makers, she does some making of her own, most often as a graphic designer and illustrator.