Drones were flying and bots were battling on Merchants Row when my family and I arrived in Rutland last weekend. We’d come for the Mini Maker Faire, a show-and-tell exhibition of DIY inventors and homegrown creations.
This wasn’t my first such event. I’ve attended the Champlain Mini Maker Faire, which since 2012 has filled Shelburne Farms for an annual weekend with local hackers, innovators, robotics teams and other outside-the-box thinkers. And homemade rockets. And ham radios.
In an effort to explain to my 2-year-old daughter, Joni, where we were going, I said, “We’ll see some drones. And robots. And definitely lots of blinking lights.”
This was Rutland’s second annual Mini Maker Faire. Both times, organizers — including the Rutland Economic Development Corporation, Castleton University and Champlain Mini Maker…
