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Steampunk Con Mixes In More Maker Fun

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the rebuttal-of-disposable-culture dept.

California has once again been blessed with another steampunk convention, this time to be held in Emeryville, CA on March 12-14 as the "Nova Albion Steampunk Exhibition." This year's event promises to mix in much more of the DIY/maker flavor for a greater hands-on feel. Steampunk has been gaining much broader appeal in recent months with the continued growth of maker communities, and the many delightful varieties of music and literature. The con will feature, among other things, a 2 day track of 2-hour how-to, hands-on, and interactive workshops gear towards makers, DIY-ers, mad scientists, and evil geniuses. Of course, if you are an evil genius you probably don't need a workshop except as a gathering for potential test subjects.

9 of 50 comments (clear)

  1. Self-Reflexive by Baby+Duck · · Score: 2, Funny

    The Ultimate Maker Convention is where all con-goers construct together the convention grounds themselves.

    --

    "Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins

    1. Re:Self-Reflexive by FooAtWFU · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you want to make a steampunk-con from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

      --
      The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
  2. check -done by formfeed · · Score: 3, Informative

    That would be called Burning Man.

  3. Best opportunity since the early 20th century... by Rollgunner · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... to die in public due to a boiler explosion. Order your tickets now !

  4. Damn by AdmiralXyz · · Score: 4, Funny

    Steampunk has been gaining much broader appeal in recent months...

    Awww, now it's not cool anymore. The mainstream had to take cyberpunk from us, and now this too?

    Hmm, I guess it's time to think of what's next. How about, a genre where the Ancient Greeks actually had advanced technology, powered by water wheels and quicklime? We could call it "marblepunk". Fame, here I come!

    --
    Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
    1. Re:Damn by derGoldstein · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Most steampunk is crappy anyway. It's been so every since the steam engines started featuring LEDs. Now it's not really possible to define it, most of it looks like a low-budget sci-fi from the 80's.

      Cyberpunk died of "natural causes", it wasn't because it got mainstream -- there was simply too much of it for a span of time and the market got saturated. I miss is though, especially the stuff that was written by people who knew what they were writing about. The hard-science cyberpunk, that was mostly based on things you could, in theory, pull off. Now everything is "cyber-saturated", it's simply not 'exotic' anymore.

      (yes, I was born old)

      --
      Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
    2. Re:Damn by ae1294 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ancient Greeks actually had advanced technology

      But the ancient Greeks had advanced technology like steam engines, robots and computers...

      I'm afraid it's really been all down hill since then.

  5. Re:MAKE sucks by DerekLyons · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And dangit, you want it to *stay* that way so you can feel elitist and justified in telling those kids to get off of your lawn!

  6. Re:MAKE sucks by Tetsujin · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And dangit, you want it to *stay* that way so you can feel elitist and justified in telling those kids to get off of your lawn!

    I don't know - I was just disappointed that a magazine that seemed like such a promising work of applied technology turned out to have such a large incidence of fluff... It's kind of motivated me to check out "Nuts n' Volts" again, though, see if it can do better.

    --
    Bow-ties are cool.