Open Sauce is a confoundingly brilliant Bay Area event
jeffgeerling.com
jeffgeerling.com
The panels I did see, the moderator (William Osman) didn't do a very good job moving through questions, so very few people got to actually ask anything.
I also felt very strange that the only place I saw kids was lining up to ask YouTubers questions during the panels. I couldn't help but think about how many kids want to be YouTubers when they grow up - it seems like YouTuber idolism was the main event and not any of the awesome booths by non-famous people.
The after party is where the real fun begins. Playing with dangerous high-energy devices? Hell yes.
Especially when we have seen over and over again that some youtubers (not pointing at any at this even specifically) have shown themselves to be of quite low character.
I don't know any "tech oriented" people that put down anyone "in the arts", but most of them have no interest in sports. That doesn't mean they denigrate anyone in sports, but as for myself I do find humanity's fascination with putting balls into goals, holes, hoops and elsewhere a bit tiring, and I think it's a bit of a waste of humanity to put so much importance on putting balls into goals, holes, hoops or elsewhere, but we are all free to have our own opinions.
Sports can be seen as something of an improvement over more lethal forms of inter-group conflict.
Fortunately tech oriented folks have invented "e-sports", which are competitions based on pressing keys on a keyboard or buttons on a game controller, and possibly moving and clicking a mouse in order to affect pixels on a screen.
What does interest me is solving real problems, not manufactured problems.
Simulations are particularly valuable because they allow you to test out strategies for risky activities (wars, investments or business ventures, gambling, etc.) without actual risk.
Twitch/reflex games like first-person shooters can improve eye-hand coordination. It's a fun recreational and social activity that can also help surgeons make fewer mistakes.
Narrative games are largely a modern form of storytelling, one of humanity's oldest and most important cultural practices.
Social games can build connection and teamwork; cozy games can facilitate relaxation; construction games can facilitate creative expression and spatial reasoning....
The reason people like games is because they are fun; but the reason games are fun is that they engage - and often challenge - the abilities that we use to interact with the real world.
Most YouTubers that kids use as role models are simply questionable entertainers and pranksters, so I’d say on average, it is much worse than having a footballer as a role model…
The graduate unemployment rate is not that high. Did you perhaps see the viral Tweets TikToks or Reddit posts going around recently based on the article that got the decimal point wrong and overestimated it by an order of magnitude?
Panels are a pretty mixed bag at conferences in general. So many panelists are reiterating talking points, they're repetitious a lot of the time, they're too polite and in agreement, and audience questions are often in the vein of not so much a question but a comment. I have seen good panels but I often avoid them as a rule.
This wasn't billed as a career fair. Why are so many comments criticizing as if it were?
And on the subject of careers. What's inherently negative about kids wanting to be a YouTuber? For every kid chasing fame, there is probably an equal who just wants to share their passion with an audience.
This encapsulates the disconnect with Open Sauce: It’s pitched as a big Maker Fair crossed with VidCon, but in practice a lot of it revolves around William Osman and his entertainment style.
If someone who adores William Osman and his content went to a panel like this they’d be entertained.
If someone who went there expecting to hear from the makers and have questions answered, they’d be frustrated by the way the moderator became the centerpiece and the questions felt like fodder for the moderator to riff on.
This is the disconnect that has turned off a lot of my maker friends from Open Sauce: It’s a fun idea, but the actual conference leans toward being a William Osman centered show with YouTuber friends doing guest appearances. That’s great for people who are into that and obviously a lot of people enjoy it, but the maker side of the conference feels like something of a sideshow at times
Personally, I can't help but feel like those wanting it to be something else are responsible for projecting those desires on to the event, and not the other way around.
This all makes sense for people who discovered it and hear about it through William Osman.
More broadly, it’s not marketed as a William Osman centered event. Spend some time on their website and there’s barely any mention of William Osman. Instead it’s about education, growing communities, and building careers: https://opensauce.com/about/
So for people in the in-group who rally around William Osman, the chaos all makes sense.
For people who stumbled upon the conference as a new maker fare with cool exhibits, it’s weird to show up and experience the vibe that orbits around William Osman and his friends.
Not suggesting it’s good or bad, but the disconnect is obvious throughout this thread. Even the Open Sauce website focuses on things like career building, but then people in this thread are being criticized for thinking the conference has anything to do with career building.
But when the creator of a conference has such a large following and primarily promotes through their YouTube channel, a lot of attendees will come to expect that person to play a large role in their experience.
It’s hard to break free of that.
Respectfully, I fail to see how that gives folks anything but the expectation it's centered around YouTubers.
And one of those observations is that it was a very weird vibe to see dozens of 6 year olds line up excited to ask a question, and only 3 or 4 getting the opportunity.
William Osman’s style is the anti Mark Rober: His channel is about winging it with projects that halfway work if they’re lucky, while being kind of awkward and mocking everyone and himself. Moderating the panel and getting questions answered probably wasn’t their goal. The goal was to be kind of entertaining in the style that their viewers are familiar with.
Would be frustrating for someone to go into one of those panels expecting a traditional efficiently moderated panel.
> I also felt very strange that the only place I saw kids was lining up to ask YouTubers questions during the panels. I couldn't help but think about how many kids want to be YouTubers when they grow up - it seems like YouTuber idolism was the main event and not any of the awesome booths by non-famous people.
Open Sauce was supposed to be inspired by two other conferences: Maker Faire and Vidcon. Vidcon was primarily a YouTube and later TikTok conference. Open Sauce is basically VidCon’s successor in California with some maker booths added in and an emphasis on maker channels. It’s still heavily a YouTube conference though and the primary focus is YouTuber audiences, which is where they do much of their marketing.
Meeting your favorite YouTubers is one of the main selling points of the conference. I wouldn’t read too much into the fact that you saw kids excited about their favorite YouTubers at a conference literally pitched on YouTube as a way for them to meet their favorite YouTubers.
> Meeting your favorite YouTubers is one of the main selling points of the conference.
These statements seem at odds with each other. If meeting your favorite YouTubers is the main selling point, then IMO they did a pretty bad job with the fan service.
The few fans who get to ask questions aren’t the ones being served. They’re entertaining the mass of people who came to see more of the same content on their YouTube channels, which is disordered chaos where they joke with each other, make fun of things, and joke around.
It’s a continuation of their style everywhere else, and it’s what many of their fans came to see.
If you were expecting a traditional panel style where each question-asker got to be the focus and drive the show for a minute, that’s not their style.
I’m not saying it’s good or bad, it’s just different from what you might expect from a more formal conference.
I do think you’re not the target audience, though. A lot of my maker friends also skip Open Sauce because it’s more about the YouTube personalities than about science and makers
There's also a whole robotics, rocket building, and gaming area, and booths ranged from artsy to extremely technical (CuriousMarc was live debugging some old HP oscilloscopes, nearby some Apollo hardware sitting out on a table).
With that said, you want to pay close attention to your small children, as some of the exhibits are not super kid safe. But that is part of the fun!
There is a lot of variability in what you see as well. Some tables have incredible cutting edge projects, and other are exciting for a highschooler. Some are amazing highschool/middle school projects that the builders are really passionate about, but might not wow you technically.
Every year I find an amazing creator there, where I bring in their work to our house for the family to build/play with. Last year we found https://www.trackstacker.net/ which has provided hours of fun over the last 12 months. And this year we found https://professorboots.com 3d printed construction equipment.
Sounds pretty bad...
But the problem is that while kids like it a lot, it doesn't translate to engineering careers. Kids don't want to become engineers as result, they want to become content creators, tinkerers etc. Even rather good students with a lot of potential see all this engineering stuff more as a media career or a fun hobby.
PS. I don't say the engineering hobby isn't cool and fun. I don't say that maker movement doesn't produce incredibly cool and deep stuff. I'm not even saying that it's the only reason why there is a shortage of engineers. But it's certainly contributing because I see it.
I'm a member of local engineering community and I see a lot of stuff like the quality of civil engineering sinking and we're all paying for mistakes in it. I see a lot of local production closing only because all R&D engineers are 60+ and planning to retire.
You can self-learn as much about engineering as you'd learn at university. Most kids eventually pivot from wanting to be astronauts/influencers to something more realistic.
IMO tinkering is an amazing hobby which will benefit you in whatever direction your career ends up going in.
With tech becoming more prevalent, people making more things and people repairing more things, I think it's an overall good thing. Also if they become content creators, then so what?
I think there has always been that though. When having a guitar was cool and people thought they'd be famous doing it. Of course 0.00001% actually managed it, but some craft out a career in music or related areas such as being studio engineers etc. (I did)
And for some it shows that it is possible, that people like them can be enabled and make their own stuff.
It might be that they're are organisations needed to bridge this new gap and get people into more formal engineering, but they'll also hopefully realise that people like them might work one day at top tier engineering companies.
But I'm glad to be able to get into a 3D printer for an affordable price to do the other things. Probably wouldn't have happened without the mass(ish) market adoption.
How is this a problem?
Neil Postman used to make this point about TV politics and children's TV. Because TV as a medium must be show business, people were taught that if it isn't show business it isn't politics. When kids got spelling lessons on Sesame Street they weren't taught to learn languages but learning how to watch TV.
This seems positive, no?
I love the idea that young people want to make stuff and tinker in their free time.
I'm not sure about the media part, is it because of Youtubers? If so that sounds like wanting to become the modern version of a movie star. In that situation maybe encourage them to do a multimedia class at school and see if they like it.
Because there's no incentive alignment in the market to cooperate on larger works.
I've been grinding away to solve this exact problem. https://prizeforge.com/vision (don't log in yet. deploying things and everything will be deleted)
People may start out with the idea that they can be content creators. They'll have to go through several steps from planning, iteration, implementation, analyzing success or failure, etc.
I wanted to make video games as a kid. Then it was being a pro gamer. And then it was physics. And then it was linguistics. And now I'm rounding out the end of a software engineering career. I didn't know how to program, and I wasn't particularly mathematically inclined. This led me down several paths all around the idea of generally being a better user of technology.
One of the most seemingly random and yet greatest contributions to my path in life was playing EvE Online. I learned logistics, collaboration, tactics, strategy, spycraft, improvisation, mental fortitude, and even how to administrate LDAP servers. In no way was this a pursuit toward an engineering career.
I'm also a lifelong musician, but there was a significant pause through my twenties due to lack of means. Now that I'm a programmer, I've been able to intuitively command my knowledge of music theory because it's systematic and documented thoroughly.
Learning to play Counter Strike taught me how technique and approach is just as important as mechanical skill. I can specifically recall a tutorial regarding instantly headshotting someone as you round a corner without the need to flick your mouse. You simply anchor your crosshairs to the corner your pivoting around, place it at head height, and click when you see a head. This is an extremely valuable lesson in abstract.
Learning to play Street Fighter competitively was informed by my experience with learning instruments and specifically key components of Jazz. Improvisation, syncopation, consistency, timing, and training the other person to expect one thing and immediately subvert that expectation all translated well.
I am a champion-ranked Rocket League player. To me, my car is an instrument. I practice it like I practice any mechanical skill that I want to make second nature. Repetition, technique refinement and acquisition, control, and composition of all skills simultaneously are shared between these two things. Because of Street Fighter, I also approach it as a fighting game. Attacking your opponent's mental stack is key to high level success in the same way.
David Sirlin's "Play to Win" taught me the value of removing artificial constraints. I seek to explore the bounds of any problem space to their fullest extent and use that knowledge to exploit opportunities without changing the space I'm in. This is a book about applying Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" to Street Fighter and not directly abstract in the least.
Factorio is a common programmer obsession. Because of this game, I have an intuitive mental model of algorithms and data structures, separation of concerns, fault tolerance, and how different parts of any system interact. It's not abstract math in my head- it's Factorio.
My father started his career as a draftsman for oil companies, and his command over his hands has always inspired me. Reading "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" showed me that I could engage abstract thought at will. This would come up later when I read "Thinking, Fast and Slow" and I was able to draw connections between artistic pseudo science and an intellectual understanding of different modes of thought.
I am a veteran. My job was being a Crypto Linguist. My experience in the military taught me the value of motivation, rigor, and discipline. I failed basic Spanish multiple times in high school and yet could dream in Korean with the right environment supporting me. These skills and lessons are key to becoming an expert at anything.
I dismantle opponents in Rocket League by applying mental stack management from Street Fighter, tactical prowess from EvE, discipline and motivation from the military, acquisition of mechanical skill from learning instruments, and exploitation of existing mechanics from "Play to Win". Nearly everything I've learned has created a rich tapestry of thought that I pull from.
I am now a successful, specialized software engineer with a long career. I stumbled into this, and I've never been able to succeed with formal higher education. I attended several high schools, often switching mid-semester. This destroyed my ability to get the ball rolling in mathematics. I could write a compiler before I truly understood what math was. Everything from my childhood acted as the foundation for where I am today- even if it was "pointlessly" meandering my way through trying to make a video game, a better MySpace page, process diagrams, drawing, setting up Linux, audio engineering, etc.
People don't take a direct path to their dreams. They evolve and their former experiences inform their future goals, choices, and opportunities.
Absolutely baffling comment.
Like if kids started eating healthy and the complaint was 'yea, but they're not interested in growing up to be professional nutrionists'
People have lost the ability to distinguish signal from noise. We have been programmed to chase incorrect proxies for good!
Meanwhile the shortage of engineers is actually a shortage of everyone, as demographics shifted towards there being fewer children overall.
Regarding solutions all eyes should now be on Japan, as they're a harbinger state - crises they have tend to repeat elsewhere - and they have had this problem for decades now.
I really like engineering; especially the delivery part. That's where I give the results of my work to others, and they use it. It's been that way, since I was a kid.
The delivery part means there's a fairly significant amount of "not fun" stuff, like Quality Assurance, Documentation, and Support.
I don't especially like that part, but the end goal has always made it worth it.
It's been my experience that companies like to pay for the delivery part. For some reason, delivery is important to them.
I'm also "on the spectrum," so process and repetition have always been something I can dig. I find comfort in structure and Discipline, which, in my opinion, are required elements of "engineering," as opposed to "coding."
They might even be right.
Well, let's see, would you rather make your money slaving away in some corporation for absurdly low pay, or pointing a cellphone camera at yourself and attracting an audience of worshippers that could make you squillions with the right sponsorships?
The problem isn't the maker movement; it's the broader problem that "influencer" is the new "rapper". Everybody thinks they can do it, and the younger generations are so much disproportionately sicker with main-character syndrome that they think they deserve the fame and riches of the best and luckiest, even though the Cool Career Pigeonhole Principle says they probably won't get it.
I mean, ultimately, you gotta love the work itself, otherwise why bother. I love game development, but I know I'm never gonna be John Carmack, or even John Romero. I keep doing it for the satisfaction I get from doing the work. Maybe the maker community needs to emphasize that aspect more to counteract influenceritis. Or maybe we need to instill more of a sense of duty and responsibility in our young people, so that the smarter ones will step up and take on engineering jobs out of a sense of service to our civilization.
With narcissism being the defining characteristic of society in the USA, going into the highest reaches of power here, I don't know that that will be possible for a while yet.
From what I’ve seen at maker and science fairs, these events often attract students who feel overlooked in schools that heavily prioritize sports. How many schools have pristine football fields, while the physics teacher is spending money out of their own pocket to build hands-on experiment kits, just to show students that physics is more than what’s in a textbook? (That was the case for my dad)
These fairs open kids eyes to a broader world. One that celebrates creativity, problem-solving, and scientific curiosity.
Not every student needs to become an engineer. What matters is that they feel hopeful about the future and engaged in something positive, instead of turning to drugs or escapism.
It's especially disgusting when you realize just how little teachers are paid. Where I live the superintendent makes ~$300k. Average teacher salary? $49k-$65k. This is a HCoL area too, you can't live on that.
I think it's important that there be a path from tinkering into engineering, if the individual desires it, perhaps in addition to "just go to college."
A couple of years ago I relized that games have become a religion for many young people. I have made legitimate critical comments about gaming that are resposponded to witb a viritol I only see matched by political flame wars. Its nearly a "taboo" subject for them to be critical of the game or industry.
From one teacher to another, I'm sorry what?
If teaching kids how build things doesn't encourage them to become engineers, what does?
If you're taking about attention grabbing Youtuber-engineers, I think that is very different than the makerspace movement that gives people access to CNC machines/3D printers/welders without a person needing to personally own a CNC machine/3D printer/welder.
All of the greatest engineers I know spent their childhood playing with legos, hot glue, solding irons, and hobby rocket kits.
Gross.
Maybe people should be able to enjoy doing things. Not every moment of child rearing needs to be dedicated to maximizing shareholder value.
And maybe it would be good to extend that attitude into adulthood.
Engineering was my ticket for my transition from farm boy to lifelong steady employment with good pay and benefits.
I chose the engineering path because I like to build things, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to do that as a career.
Much more gross to end up doing something they don't like because they never got to try it out...
There's nothing wrong with turning something into a career, but turning every action into career chasing is saddening. It's pretty gross to leave kids thinking they can't just enjoy something without juicing it for cash.
If they try a hobby for a while and give up on it because they don't enjoy it enough, then yes. That seems like a reasonable definition for "failure."
Nothing wrong with failing - in your career, hobbies, relationships, or whatever else. Sometimes EQ means recognizing that you should stop beating a dead horse.
There's more to life than a career.
Huh? I can't think of a more disingenuous interpretation of GP's comment.
We should really reform camping to optimize the career funnel.
This has been a factor in the slowdown of commercial IoT, as it is often dismissed as science fair stuff.
'Shortage' of US engineers is same as 'shortage' of developers - artificially engineered by off-shoring and importing foreign labor via H1B etc.
There are jobs, there just aren't jobs that want to pay well..
The independent maker thing is probably the solution to this.
There are the people who like building things, and the people who like making content.
Some people check both boxes, but in practice the people who like building things the most aren’t spending time grinding the YouTube game with clickbait thumbnails and constant self promotion.
So like many domains, the part you see on YouTube isn’t representative of the movement as a whole. It captures the people who like entertaining and making videos the most.
What changed everything for me was visiting a hackerspace and getting my own hands dirty making things. I got so distracted making things in the 15 years since that I have never have time to make content to share what I learned. Always more things to build or fix.
Totally the opposite problem to what you describe!
Maybe we should focus more on exposing people to making things in workshops, and communities, rather than content.
1. Not true in the slightest; you even contradict yourself. Engineering interests absolutely do grow from it like you said, and you will never get someone doing good work in an engineering career without a prior interest.
2. Life is not a career. Even just fostering an interest in something creative is invaluable on its own. Perceiving something as harmful because it isn't corporate enough for your tastes makes me extremely sad for you.
I also got to play a 3D printed violin, and meet a lady who had built a terrifying battlebot that was too vicious to be allowed in the arena at the event as it would have broken straight though the safety plexiglass.
I think we all deserve to see a video of this battlebot. It's been a tough week.
Those are by https://www.neoluthy.com/
Definitely one of the joys of being a FIRST robot league parent/volunteer.
There was also some map someone mentioned at one point, that was much better than the official map on https://app.opensauce.com (at least on mobile).
Getting to see and hold a 3D printed regenerative cooled liquid rocket engine was my personal highlight.
BPS.space (Joe Barnard) released a nice YouTube Short that also highlighted some favorites.
If there was, say, a Patreon equivalent that was just a static site that displayed an address to send weird or excess hardware, cash, etc to, that would be so ideal!
These two shots of the moon and earth are so cool. This is such an interesting view of something that we are all familiar with, but will likely never see from this vantage point. I would love to be able to play with the RAW files, as some kind of deeper experience with the images.
Maker Faire got crowded and a bit repetitious from year to year.
Maybe you can characterize — is Open Sauce has slightly less art, slightly more tech? That's my impression watching a few videos now.
Early Maker Faire (in the Bay Area) was a mix of art booths/vehicles coming out of Burning Man storage and independent makers showing their projects and inventions. Then it rapidly commercialized with company booths taking most of the show space, and then it finally imploded financially. The recent resurrected version is less commercial, much smaller, and aimed more at younger children and their parents, but is overall not that far off from the Make origins.
Open Sauce is very much Creators (content and otherwise) and independent makers, growing in scale every year. It works well, in part because the company/sponsor booths are no larger or flashier than the hacker/maker booths.
It's a balance and so far Open Sauce seems to have done okay there; but a couple sponsored booths felt a bit more corporate/salesy and out of place this year.
You could tell people would kind of give them a wide berth compared to walking around other areas, where people were more densely packed around all the booths.
This year my friends and I felt it swayed a bit far to sponsored booths. There were fewer cool experiences (like the mini-golf) and I’d seen everything in one day. We wondered if the cool booths got denied in favor of ones that could pay more.
We still had great conversations and met incredible people, but felt we had to work harder to find it.
That said.. I think William’s team has been in a deficit each year and he said in his OpenSauce+ video how he is trying to be more sustainable.. I still remember buying the $69.69 early early bird ticket on the way out of 2023 for 2024 just to help them cover existing costs.
I really hope they figure it out. It’s such a great environment and has a great team behind it
I feel like open sauce, as mentioned by others here, is just a place for YouTubers to gather an audience. With some exceptions, of course (I'm looking at you technology connections).
The group really needs to hire a long term secretary that understands engineers and content creation.
(& no quality!=production value)
He’s been advertising the conference constantly for months, not just a couple days before.
What I did enjoy alot were the exhibits. There's the spectacle of seeing all kinds of weird and interesting builds in person. But what's really, really enjoyable is that because the exhibits are done by average people who generally don't have a big public following; you can just ask them endless questions and they're more than happy to answer and give such a great insight into the build process, the work that is involved, the inspiration and the little details of all the things that they made. Granted, I will agree, many of the exhibitors are not socially dexterous, but because they're there, they're very willing to talk and explain things. Definitely worthwhile. I even got to use a soldering iron for the first time in a decade years.
Retro related halls were mostly about NES/console Retro, not 8-bit in general.
People were fantastic though. I liked seeing many different robots and cosplayers. I got to play many great games, looking forward to their release. Not many mindblowing stuff but, were I a kid, I would be blown away for sure. Robot fights were also exciting (maybe outdoors would be better for it though).
I saw Ken Shirriff, and thought to myself "oh he must have left his assistant in his place". I'd never guess he'd be that young which impressed me even more given his phenomenal work. So, I missed my chance to thank him in person. Next time!
Had good time in general. I hope to see it get better in upcoming years.
Thanks! But are you sure that was me? I haven't been young for a long while now :-) If the person you saw wasn't wearing a lab coat, then it was probably Mike Stewart or TubeTimeUS.
Those pushing corpotech in an event meant to have a community vibe feels gross.
Granted MakerFaire is the same these days.
Are there any actual events showcasing exclusively open tech in the US?
More on Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maker_Faire
They're actually back now, but in a less expensive venue in Vallejo: https://bayarea.makerfaire.com/
Next Vallejo event is 26-28 September 2025.
Trade shows/conferences without a massive corporate sponsorship backing (e.g. like many trade shows today) are definitely risky, financially.
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