Two weeks ago, we saw the introduction of Open Sauce, a two-day celebration of Makers and Creators at San Francisco’s Pier 35. This inaugural event promises to be the first of many, as its success already has people asking about tickets for next year’s event.
A BOLD EXPERIMENT
Any new venture can be scary, but when you decide to create an event of this size and magnitude, well, that’s downright terrifying. Will anyone show up? If they do, will they enjoy it? Can we get interesting people for speakers/featured creators/exhibitors? The answers are a resounding yes, yes, and yes!
Open Sauce was the brainchild of William Osman and Ian Dokie, in an effort to create a large gathering of like-minded makers, engineers, and creators. Osman described it as an event that would “capture the creator summer camp feeling of early YouTube conventions, where you interact with all of these people you watch online in real life.” They reached out to all corners of the maker community, and the response was overwhelming.
Apparently they weren’t the only ones looking to recapture that feeling, because Open Sauce featured panel discussions and talks by over seventy-five top STEAM creators, including (and this is a very abbreviated list) Jorvon Moss (Odd_Jay), Becky Stern, Ruth Amos (Kids Invent Stuff), Emily the Engineer, James Bruton, Joel Telling (3D Printing Nerd), Estephannie, Joel Gomes (Integza), Nerdforge (Martina and Hansi), Codemiko (Youna Kang), Will Bales (from BattleBots’ Team Hypershock), Colin Furze, Mark Rober, and Adam Savage. For those of you doing the math, this is less than 20% of the amazing people sharing their insight onstage over the weekend. Additionally, depending on the level of ticket they purchased, attendees had the option of attending a small group chat with many of the featured makers.
