"2018?", you say. "That was seven years ago, did you forget what year it is?" No, but World Maker Faire has now been gone from New York City for nearly as long as it existed, and this is a perfect opportunity to reflect back on what the Faire was for us (and for the people of New York), how 2018 went for us, and what's next for graphing calculators at Maker Faire-style venues. For some reason, we also never wrote a recap of our 2018 experiences (my then-two-year-old startup was probably a factor...), and this article rights that wrong.
World Maker Faire started in 2010 as the latest expansion of the then-rising idea of Maker Faires, opportunities for DIYers, hackers, hobbyists, and nerds of all stripes to show off their projects. I actually attended the first World Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York with a friend, but only as a visitor, not an exhibitor. Two years later, Cemetech had its first presence at the Faire: Alec "Qazz42" Szigeti joined me at the Faire to show off a small set of graphing calculator hacks: CALCnet2 networking, the CALCnet Chat! client, FloppyTunes, the Ultimate Calculator 2, and of course, hands-on exhibits of a TI-84 Plus Silver Edition and Casio Prizm with games galore. All seven years from 2012 to 2018, Cemetech exhibited a growing set of displays showing off projects from around the community, on calculators from TI, Casio, and HP. The Cemetech and sister community members attending grew in sync. Every year, we handed out hundreds of Cemetech bookmarks, showed visitors young and old what could be made with graphing calculators, and collected a handful of new Cemetechians.
In 2018, we announced our decision to attend in July, with the 2017 displays plus a new RadioShack LED cube controlled by a calculator, a collaborative project between Cemetechians Nik, geekboy1011, and me. The Faire was our usual success (Maker Faire 2018 photo album): we handed out bookmarks, we showed off our displays, and we collected a list of improvements we could make the following year.
We had about nine displays/demos: calculator networking, hands-on calculators with games, calculator music with a floppy drive, a GPS-connected calculator, the calculator-controlled LED cube, the Whack-a-Mole, the calculator-driven model train, the Arduino-calculator pairing, and the emulated TI-84 Plus CE inside our "Program a Game in 60 Seconds" board.
World Maker Faire was a unique opportunity for us: it gave us the opportunity to meet other graphing calculator community members for the first time, and it was also the first and for most of us, only, chance that we've had to talk about our passions for programming and hacking graphing calculators with a wider audience in person. In the seven years of our World Maker Faire booths, I'm confident that we spoke to many thousands of visitors about our hobby, and the value of graphing calculators as a STEM tool, and that tens of thousands had the chance to at least see that graphing calculators fit into a Faire all about creativity, technical passion, and thinking outside the box. Every year, I returned home from World Maker Faire absolutely exhausted but energized about the work we do to spread STEM skills, and brimming with ideas of what we could do next, not only at the next World Maker Faire but at TI's T^3 conference and other venues in between.
Sadly, with the end of World Maker Faire and the shrinking of TI's T^3 conference to an invite-only affair, we have mostly lost this opportunity. There are still similar Faires and conventions out there, though. For example, last year, Cemetechian and Youtube star TheLastMillennial brought a variety of graphing calculator projects to a "Calculator Hacking" booth at OpenSauce 2024, a "celebration of Makers and Creators" in San Francisco. Adult life and lack of planning made it impossible for us to get a contingent together this year, but I ardently hope OpenSauce and/or similar venues will make it possible for us to once again show off our projects. The loss of World Maker Faire was also a profound loss for the people of New York, especially teens and kids who otherwise have very few opportunities to see people passionate about STEM and the amazing things you can do with curiosity and some self-taught hardware and software skills. If I had a dollar for every time a visitor to our booth said, "wow, I had no idea calculators could do that!", Cemetech wouldn't need ads. And I know that wasn't unique to our booth: over the seven years that we exhibited, and the nine-year span during which I attended the Faire, I saw it rapidly grow in scope to encompass a huge range of impressive projects, from the amateur to professional, 3D printing galore to drones to microcontrollers, individuals to makerspaces and school clubs showing off their imagination and ingenuity.
As phones, ChatGPT, and the removal of ASM/C programming from modern graphing calculators renders them ever-less-used in and out of the classroom, we have gradually seen graphing calculators fading as the STEM teaching tool that got so many of us into STEM fields in the first place. Nevertheless, they remain a great niche hobby, and a fun, challenging platform to use to write powerful software or create interesting (non-cheating) hardware hacks. I would love to once again be able to show off a whole new set of calculator-based projects, and I wager more Cemetechians than TheLastMillennial and me are interested as well. If you would be interested in joining us or even hosting community projects at a Maker Faire-style event near you, please let us know!
World Maker Faire started in 2010 as the latest expansion of the then-rising idea of Maker Faires, opportunities for DIYers, hackers, hobbyists, and nerds of all stripes to show off their projects. I actually attended the first World Maker Faire at the New York Hall of Science in Queens, New York with a friend, but only as a visitor, not an exhibitor. Two years later, Cemetech had its first presence at the Faire: Alec "Qazz42" Szigeti joined me at the Faire to show off a small set of graphing calculator hacks: CALCnet2 networking, the CALCnet Chat! client, FloppyTunes, the Ultimate Calculator 2, and of course, hands-on exhibits of a TI-84 Plus Silver Edition and Casio Prizm with games galore. All seven years from 2012 to 2018, Cemetech exhibited a growing set of displays showing off projects from around the community, on calculators from TI, Casio, and HP. The Cemetech and sister community members attending grew in sync. Every year, we handed out hundreds of Cemetech bookmarks, showed visitors young and old what could be made with graphing calculators, and collected a handful of new Cemetechians.
- geekboy1011 and elfprince13 joined us in 2013, going from a tent to a parking lot (the only one of seven years we spent not under a tent) and showing our displays to a much larger number of visitors.
- Eeems joined us in 2014, bringing the crew to five, along with new sturdy, plexiglass-covered displays spearheaded by geekboy1011. We added a TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition-powered Whack-a-Mole demonstrating using TI's MSP430 with the calculator.
- These five joined again for World Maker Faire 2015, with even better displays from geekboy1011, 3D-printed batteries to save AAAs, and many new displays. We added a pink TI-84 Plus Silver Edition that knew exactly where it was, thanks to a GPS module, a demo of the ArTICL library for connecting Arduinos and calculators, a "Program a Game in 60 Seconds" board featuring a giant jsTIfied-emulated calculator, and more.
- elfprince13 skipped 2016, leaving Eeems, geekboy1011, Qazz42, and yours truly, Kerm Martian, to show off substantially the same displays.
- 2017 was our banner year: Pieman7373 and Mr Womp Womp joined Qazz42, geekboy1011, and me to show off even more displays, adding a calculator-controlled model train plus refreshes of existing displays.
- And unbeknownst to us, 2018 was our last year (and the last year of the Faire), bringing Qazz42, Mr Womp Womp, geekboy1011, and myself back one last time to show New Yorkers graphing calculator hacking.
In 2018, we announced our decision to attend in July, with the 2017 displays plus a new RadioShack LED cube controlled by a calculator, a collaborative project between Cemetechians Nik, geekboy1011, and me. The Faire was our usual success (Maker Faire 2018 photo album): we handed out bookmarks, we showed off our displays, and we collected a list of improvements we could make the following year.
We had about nine displays/demos: calculator networking, hands-on calculators with games, calculator music with a floppy drive, a GPS-connected calculator, the calculator-controlled LED cube, the Whack-a-Mole, the calculator-driven model train, the Arduino-calculator pairing, and the emulated TI-84 Plus CE inside our "Program a Game in 60 Seconds" board.
World Maker Faire was a unique opportunity for us: it gave us the opportunity to meet other graphing calculator community members for the first time, and it was also the first and for most of us, only, chance that we've had to talk about our passions for programming and hacking graphing calculators with a wider audience in person. In the seven years of our World Maker Faire booths, I'm confident that we spoke to many thousands of visitors about our hobby, and the value of graphing calculators as a STEM tool, and that tens of thousands had the chance to at least see that graphing calculators fit into a Faire all about creativity, technical passion, and thinking outside the box. Every year, I returned home from World Maker Faire absolutely exhausted but energized about the work we do to spread STEM skills, and brimming with ideas of what we could do next, not only at the next World Maker Faire but at TI's T^3 conference and other venues in between.
Sadly, with the end of World Maker Faire and the shrinking of TI's T^3 conference to an invite-only affair, we have mostly lost this opportunity. There are still similar Faires and conventions out there, though. For example, last year, Cemetechian and Youtube star TheLastMillennial brought a variety of graphing calculator projects to a "Calculator Hacking" booth at OpenSauce 2024, a "celebration of Makers and Creators" in San Francisco. Adult life and lack of planning made it impossible for us to get a contingent together this year, but I ardently hope OpenSauce and/or similar venues will make it possible for us to once again show off our projects. The loss of World Maker Faire was also a profound loss for the people of New York, especially teens and kids who otherwise have very few opportunities to see people passionate about STEM and the amazing things you can do with curiosity and some self-taught hardware and software skills. If I had a dollar for every time a visitor to our booth said, "wow, I had no idea calculators could do that!", Cemetech wouldn't need ads. And I know that wasn't unique to our booth: over the seven years that we exhibited, and the nine-year span during which I attended the Faire, I saw it rapidly grow in scope to encompass a huge range of impressive projects, from the amateur to professional, 3D printing galore to drones to microcontrollers, individuals to makerspaces and school clubs showing off their imagination and ingenuity.
As phones, ChatGPT, and the removal of ASM/C programming from modern graphing calculators renders them ever-less-used in and out of the classroom, we have gradually seen graphing calculators fading as the STEM teaching tool that got so many of us into STEM fields in the first place. Nevertheless, they remain a great niche hobby, and a fun, challenging platform to use to write powerful software or create interesting (non-cheating) hardware hacks. I would love to once again be able to show off a whole new set of calculator-based projects, and I wager more Cemetechians than TheLastMillennial and me are interested as well. If you would be interested in joining us or even hosting community projects at a Maker Faire-style event near you, please let us know!
