A Fencer Scores at Maker Faire Detroit

DALE DOUGHERTY is the leading advocate of the Maker Movement. He founded Make: Magazine 2005, which first used the term “makers” to describe people who enjoyed “hands-on” work and play. He started Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and this event has spread to nearly 200 locations in 40 countries, with over 1.5M attendees annually. He is President of Make:Community, which produces Make: and Maker Faire.

In 2011 Dougherty was honored at the White House as a “Champion of Change” through an initiative that honors Americans who are “doing extraordinary things in their communities to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world.” At the 2014 White House Maker Faire he was introduced by President Obama as an American innovator making significant contributions to the fields of education and business. He believes that the Maker Movement has the potential to transform the educational experience of students and introduce them to the practice of innovation through play and tinkering.

Dougherty is the author of “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing our Jobs, Schools and Minds” with Adriane Conrad. He is co-author of "Maker City: A Practical Guide for Reinventing American Cities" with Peter Hirshberg and Marcia Kadanoff.

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@dalepd

July 29th, 2012 2

Mike Irvine is a maker who is a lead designer for Useful Robot, which develops geeky kit watches. Mike is also a fencer in his spare time. Noticing that the electronic systems for keeping score were expensive, he decided to create his own system for under a $100, a factor of ten lowering in price of what’s out there now. There are small clubs and schools who would benefit from a more affordable scoring system. Mike hopes to finish up developing a sport fencer device for sale.

I did not know that fencers are plugged into their automatic scoring systems. Wireless systems are used only at the highest level such as the Olympics.