El Pulpo Magnifico shooting fire into the night sky at Maker Faire Bay Area 2026

This past weekend I was back at Maker Faire Bay Area as Producer in Residence, supporting lead producer Gillian Mutti for a second year. This time I also ran the main stage, the Foundry Stage, with Rich from Vital Sound Solutions on sound and video. This year was extra special. It was the 20th anniversary of the very first Maker Faire, which Dale Dougherty started in San Mateo back in 2006. Here's what I saw.

Thank You, Dale

Selfie of Mario Cruz with Dale Dougherty, founder of Maker Faire and Make: magazine
With Dale Dougherty, the father of Maker Faire

Before anything else, none of this exists without Dale Dougherty. In 2005 he launched Make: magazine. In 2006 he put on the very first Maker Faire at the San Mateo County Event Center. The idea was simple. Give the people who build things a place to show them off, and let everyone else see that they can do it too.

Twenty years later, that idea is a worldwide movement. There are Faires all over the world, run by people who caught the same bug. That includes me. Maker Faire Miami exists because Dale built something other people could pick up and run with. Every kid who walks into a Faire, sees a robot or a rocket or a fire-breathing octopus for the first time, and thinks "I could make that" is part of what he started.

So thank you, Dale. Happy 20th. Here's to the next 20.

Selfie of Mario Cruz in a Maker Faire Bay Area Mare Island cap in front of the giant red Makey robot
Checking in with Makey on Mare Island, @makerfaire

The Foundry Stage

The Foundry Stage was sponsored by OpenAI this year. Thank you to OpenAI for backing the main stage and helping bring all of these talks and shows to the Faire.

Joshua Ray on the Foundry Stage with kids from the audience
Joshua Ray's Inimitable Worm Circus, @joshuaraymagic

On Friday, magician and teacher Joshua Ray brought Mr. Ray's Inimitable Worm Circus to the stage. Colorful ropes turned into worms that did tricks, and kids and parents from the audience got pulled in to be part of the act. The message was that no matter your size or where you come from, there's magic in you. Simple, silly, and the kids were all in.

Lee Buchanan speaking on the Foundry Stage Selfie of Mario Cruz with Lee Buchanan and a copy of Little Woodchucks
Lee Buchanan, co-author of Little Woodchucks, on stage and after her talk, @leebuildstudio

On Saturday, Lee Buchanan talked about Little Woodchucks, the NYT bestselling woodworking book for kids and families she wrote with Nick Offerman. Lee is a woodworker, furniture maker, and teacher based in El Cerrito. She walked through simple projects families can build at home and the basic starter tool kit for kids and parents who want to get into woodworking.

John Boiles and Joe Taylor of East Bay Makers Club holding a blue ribbon
John Boiles and Joe Taylor of East Bay Makers Club, @eastbaymakersclub

One of my favorite sessions was John Boiles and Joe Taylor, founders of East Bay Makers Club, with their talk Don't Let the Robots Eat Your Joy. Both work at OpenAI, and the best way I can explain it is a DJ set, but for coding. They live coded four projects at the same time, jumping between them while the AI agents did the grunt work. They designed a PCB for a mini split, had Codex drive Fusion, reverse engineered a Sphero so they could control it with hand tracking through MediaPipe, got a 3D printer working for people who are visually impaired, and hooked up an infrared camera, plus a few other things along the way. It was fascinating. It showed how powerful AI can be when you mostly know what you're doing and use it to handle the parts you'd rather skip. They got one of my blue ribbons.

Tools like these are a big deal for makerspaces like the one they started. East Bay Makers Club began as build nights in John's basement back in 2017 and is now a real community space in Berkeley, with 3D printers, a laser cutter, an electronics bench, and free open build nights every other Friday.

Selfie of Mario Cruz with John Law, co-founder of Burning Man
With John Law, co-founder of Burning Man, @johnwilliamlaw

On Sunday, Dale Dougherty sat down with John Law for a conversation called Don't Ask Permission. John is a co-founder of Burning Man and was part of the Cacophony Society, the Suicide Club, and the Billboard Liberation Front. He's been shaping the Bay Area's creative culture since the 1980s. He's a neon artist, and it was his idea to light the Man at Burning Man with neon. His urban exploring in abandoned San Francisco buildings is legendary, and he has climbed the Golden Gate Bridge several times, without permission. The title of the talk says it all. I needed to get a selfie with this legend.

Hip Hop MD: The Science Will Blow Your Mind

Mario Cruz with Maynard Okereke holding his book
Watch the closer. A trash can of liquid nitrogen, a bucket of hot water, and a stage full of cloud.

Maynard Okereke, the Hip Hop MD, did his show The Science Will Blow Your Mind every day, and I saw it three times. It got better every time. He had kids and adults locked in with great show and tell, but the closer was the moment. He poured liquid nitrogen into a trash can, climbed up on a chair, and dumped a bucket of hot water in. The whole stage disappeared in a cloud. The title was not an exaggeration. He got a blue ribbon from me too, and he earned it.

He also has a new book, Zombie Spiders and Asteroid Blasters. It's about real science that sounds made up, like spiders turned into robots and a team whose job is protecting Earth from asteroids. It has interviews with real scientists, so kids can see people who look like them doing this work.

Maynard Okereke with his blue ribbon and his book Zombie Spiders and Asteroid Blasters
Maynard with his blue ribbon and his book, @hiphopscienceshow

OpenAI Live Mural

The Shared Spark live mural of pixel art wishes on the Foundry Stage screen
The Shared Spark live mural, every wish turned into pixel art
Pixel art of a tree-planting robot from the Shared Spark mural Pixel art of a laundry folding machine on the Foundry Stage screen
My favorite, the tree-planting robot, and a laundry folding machine on the Foundry Stage screen

Between acts, the big screen ran Shared Spark, a live interactive mural from OpenAI, the Foundry Stage sponsor. Attendees scanned a QR code and answered one question: what do you wish existed? The AI turned each answer into pixel art on the screen, and anyone could pick up an idea and build on it. Some ideas were practical, like a machine that folds your laundry into neat stacks. Some were just fun, like a donkey that flies. My favorite was a tree-planting robot that plants trees in deserts and places where forests have been cleared. It was another cool way to see AI spark creativity, help people get past an idea block, and turn a wish into something you can picture. You can check it out while it's still live: sharedspark.experiments.team/live

Around the Faire

Mario Cruz with Bam Singhasaneh and Science Bob Pflugfelder of CrunchLabs
With Bam Singhasaneh (@bam.misc) and "Science Bob" Pflugfelder (@sciencebob) of CrunchLabs

Bam Singhasaneh and Jack Monaco, toy engineers at CrunchLabs, ran a workshop called How to Have New Ideas on the Make: Le Tigre Stage. They talked about where ideas come from and good brainstorming etiquette, then got the whole crowd brainstorming live. It was so popular we added a second session on Saturday. Bam was on my stage last year talking about how there's no such thing as failure, just iteration, so it was great to have Bam back. I also got to see "Science Bob" Pflugfelder again. I met him last year too, and he's awesome and always great to say hi to. He taught science in classrooms for more than 20 years before joining Mark Rober at CrunchLabs, and now he gets to inspire kids on a much bigger scale.

Selfie of Mario Cruz with Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino
With Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino, @mbanzi

I also got a selfie with the man himself, Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino. Massimo was at that very first Maker Faire in 2006, so having him here for the 20th anniversary felt right. So many maker projects start with an Arduino board, and his work helped make this whole community possible.

El Pulpo Magnifico, the Star of This Year's Faire

When night hit, El Pulpo Magnifico came alive, @elpulpomecanico

I was in awe of El Pulpo Magnifico. It's a 28-foot mechanical octopus built by Duane Flatmo and crew out of scrap metal, old kitchenware, and thrift store finds. In the daytime, you can walk around it and spot pots and pans in the tentacles. When night hit, it turned into a show, with fire shooting into the dark and the whole thing coming alive. I got a selfie with the hard hat crew who bring it to life. It also got one of my blue ribbons.

El Pulpo Magnifico in daylight with pots and pans in the tentacles El Pulpo Magnifico lit up at night El Pulpo Magnifico crew member holding a blue ribbon Selfie with the El Pulpo Magnifico hard hat crew
Pots and pans in the daylight, fire at night, the blue ribbon, and the hard hat crew

My Blue Ribbon Picks from Around the Faire

Two of my blue ribbons went to stage shows, East Bay Makers Club and Hip Hop MD, and one went to El Pulpo. Here are the rest.

Chris Mora, CMR Fabrication

Giant steel Iron Giant head on a flatbed trailer at golden hour Mario Cruz and Chris Mora with his blue ribbon in front of the Iron Giant head
The Iron Giant head at golden hour, and with Chris Mora and his blue ribbon, @chrismorarobots

Chris brought a giant steel robot head from Colorado, and it's just the beginning. He's building a full 1:1 scale Iron Giant from Brad Bird's movie. It will be over 60 feet tall, all steel, and projected to weigh more than 25 tons. The plan is to install it on his property in Fort Lupton, Colorado, unless it finds a home someplace else. That's a year-long project and a huge dream, and I can't wait to see it standing.

Twisty Maurice, Samyra Drift

Samyra Drift, a four-foot paper octopus glowing in a dark tent
Samyra Drift by Twisty Maurice (@twistymaurice). Watch the light move through the layers.

Samyra Drift is a four-foot octopus made out of paper. There are paper cutouts layered inside, and the lights shift through them so the layers look like they're moving, like water. She sat in a dark tent surrounded by sea stars and urchin shapes, and she also won an Editor's Choice award. The artist behind Twisty Maurice is amazing. Last year my very first blue ribbon went to her Oscillara infinity tubes, and it's been great to see her come back with something completely new.

Thank You

Selfie of Mario Cruz with Jamie of the Maker Faire Bay Area crew Selfie of Mario Cruz with Katie of the Maker Faire Bay Area crew
With Jamie, and with Katie
Selfie of Mario Cruz with Rio, lead area manager for the Foundry, in a Maker Faire Bay Area crew shirt
With Rio, lead area manager for the Foundry
Mario Cruz with Rich of Vital Sound Solutions Mario Cruz with Gillian Mutti, lead producer of Maker Faire Bay Area
With Rich of Vital Sound Solutions (@vitalsoundsolutions), and with Gillian Mutti

Huge thanks to Gillian Mutti for bringing me back. None of this happens without the crew behind the scenes. Thank you to Jamie and Katie, who were everywhere all weekend, to Rich for keeping the Foundry Stage sounding and looking great, and to Rio, the lead area manager for the Foundry, who kept the whole building running. Thank you also to the people who didn't make it into my photos but were a huge part of the weekend: Mike Walker, Cassy, Nicole, and Jen.

Weekends like this get me excited to start planning Miami Maker Faire. You might have noticed I never write one of these about Miami. That's because when I'm running a Faire, I'm in the trenches. I don't get to walk around and take it all in. At Bay Area, I get to enjoy it without the worry, because Gillian, Katie, Jamie, and the rest of that amazing team are the ones doing the worrying. Thank you for that. Now it's time to get to work on Miami.

Selfie of Mario Cruz with Agusto in front of the giant red Makey robot on Mare Island
With Agusto, a fellow maker in residence

One last thank you. Agusto was also a maker in residence this year. He comes from Moonlighter Miami, and now he helps me run Maker Faire Miami. See you back home.

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