We found MakingThings inside the Shed, and we got a little 10'x10' booth in Expo Hall, not far from the hourly Tesla coil demos. We set up a couple of computers running a MIDI-controlled synthesizer patch, an Arduino I/O demo, and a small collection of Jitter patches.

We're used to being the odd-ball company in the corner of fairs and trade shows, so it was a thrill to see so much MaxMSP and Jitter expertise being demonstrated at the Maker Faire. A lot of our friends and long-time users stopped by the booth to say hello and take a peek at Max 5. The Cycling '74 booth was a real hub of activity. We also got to meet a lot of great new people in the Expo Hall and hear about their awesome projects.

Here are some project highlights from the show that use Max:

• Josh Boughey brought along a couple of friends to help promote his Stribe controller, a uniquely designed fader box inspired by the Monome project. It was great to finally see the Stribe in person and meet the nice people behind it.

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• Over at the CNMAT table, Adrian Freed and Michael Zbyszynski were demonstrating some peculiar interfaces built with new conductive materials and Michael's experiments in molecular gastronomy (carrot caviar anyone?).
• Nearby, Jitter power-user Peter Nyboer was Maxing it up with his Livid Ohm controller and a couple of Percussa AudioCubes.

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• Perry Hoberman had a fantastic 3D viewing project on view that used Jitter's OpenGL to do some great tablet-controlled 3D sketching. Maybe it's our love of anything to do with 3D glasses, but we had a lot of fun watching it in action.
• Also on hand were Guillermo Galindo's Max-powered sound robot MAIZ.
• The Guitar Zeros show how combining gaming, music, and computers can be a beautiful (and fun) thing.

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• ALERT (Active Learning Environment with Robotoic Tangibles) allowed people to interact with the iRobot Roomba by placing tiles on the floor that it can recognize.

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• There was a metal sculpture of a tree with spinning bicycle wheels (created by Mary) combined with sensors, MidiTron and Max (created by Jason). Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture.

While we enjoy seeing all the Max-related projects, we don't miss other Maker Faire highlights like the giant, rolling cupcakes and all the pedal-powered projects including a soundstage for performances.

Hope to see all of you next year!