Open Sauce Festival pours into San Mateo County, attracting huge crowd
By Brian Hackney
The fourth annual Open Sauce Festival is up and running at the San Mateo County Event Center.
“It’s a giant science fair for nerds. I’m a nerd. I’ve always been a nerd. So, building this community and being able to hang out with other nerds who build cool things is like my dream come true,” said Open Sauce founder William Osman.
The three-day festival is breaking past attendance records. Tens of thousands packed into the center.
Osman explained that there are some things you just can’t do online.
“Being in person with all these nerds building cool things is physical. You can see the thing that they’ve done. You can touch it. You can interact with it,” he said.
Those in the crowd were thrilled to hear from their heroes, and to put their hands on some pretty cool stuff. Psyonic from San Diego came to the event. The company has created the world’s first touch-sensing bionic hand.
“What we built for humans benefits robots and what we built for robots benefits humans,” said CEO Adil Akhar.
Some like Gustaf Hugol traveled from Copenhagen, Sweden, to attend. Hugol is part of A-tech, which creates modular hardware to meet every need. He told CBS News Bay Area that Open Sauce was the place to be.
“It’s the gathering of the coolest people in the world, people are truly passionate about building,” he enthused.
On hand was Tom Nicholas, who is the host of the Australian YouTube channel Explosions&Fire.
“It’s a great time for me. It’s very inspirational for me as well. I love coming here, seeing all of the great stuff that people have built and just talking to people,” Nicholas said.
What caught Tom’s eye at the Fiesta Exhibit Hall was Peninsula Precious Plastics. The San Carlos nonprofit melts down plastic waste to create new valuable products. At their exhibit, the staff demonstrated how they turn plastic caps into beautiful hair combs.
“We have a bunch of machines. We have a lot of plastic. It is very easy to get plastic waste, but we really want people who will come in and make things”, explained co-founder Nick Schick.
“It’s fantastic,” said Tom, watching the process at work.
What’s also fantastic at the festival is the Bay Area Droid Builders, who tell us they’ve traded secrets from across the galaxy to bring their favorite “Star Wars” droids to life.
As the great Yoda would say: “Do, or do not. There is no try.” That kind of feels like the motto of Open Sauce.
