Last Friday morning, Sam and I sleepily boarded a big jet plane out to Austin and the Maker Faire. The Maker Faire is put on by Make Magazine and brings together people who are very interested in, well, making things. Friday night felt like a strange dream - we set up our booth next to gigantic robots, bicycle powered carnival rides, and a series of battle-hardened model warships equipped with pellet guns.

The next few days were well worth the trip out. We met a lot of great people and learned a lot about the open-source hardware movement. Although the term still hasn't been clearly defined, the motivating philosophy is similar to that of open-source software. Information, such as schematics and designs, describing hardware is made freely available which in turn fosters a highly collaborative spirit. Judging from the fair, it seems that the open-source hardware movement is flourishing, especially with the advent of new tools such as the oft-used Arduino. Bre Pettis and Phillip Torrone from Make Magazine came by our booth to chat about Octopart's role in reducing the barrier to people who need to find information about electronic parts.

The highlight of the fair was meeting with our users and peeking over their shoulders as they used the search engine. We collected a heap of great feedback which we'll be using to make Octopart better. A lot of people were excited about our new publishing feature, which we'll be improving in the weeks to come.

We also found out that a lot of our users are involved in some pretty amazing projects. The guys over at the Fab Lab are aiming to provide tools to the general public and educate them in their use, complete with afterschool programs which teach young children how to design and solder a circuit. Zach Smith works on RepRap an open-source 3D printer, the stated goal of which is to be able to replicate itself. It seems the group also replicates itself as there are many RepRap groups throughout the country and the world.

We caught our flight out early Monday morning after saying goodbye to our users and all of the friendly robots - but we had such a great time that we'll be seeing everyone again at Maker Faires in the future.

powered by octopart

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To share your part lists on any webpage, make them on Octopart and click the 'publish' link. Copy the code snippet into the body of your webpage and that's it!

Of course, we'll also have our laptops set up to demo Octopart and we'll be releasing a new feature, so stay tuned!

Lastly, if any Makers in the area would be willing to host us any one of Friday, Saturday or Sunday nights, let me know. We have sleeping bags and we're very well behaved. We'll also have doublet boards to offer as gifts!