It’s
kind of hard to succinctly sum up Maker
Faire. It’s part carnival, part technology showcase. I like to think of it
as an open forum, DIY technology party. Like HP’s founders, Bill Hewlett and
Dave Packard, people are creating innovations in their garages every day. And every year, when the weekend-long
festival for the Do-It-Yourself-set comes to the bay area, I make sure to mark Maker
Faire on my calendar. It’s here that I’m surrounded by like-minded thinkers. In
fact, I’d wager that if you’re looking for tomorrow’s killer innovations, they
can be found by roaming the San Mateo County Expo Center on May 21 and 22.
I’m assuming that if you’re reading this, you’re also a fan of seeing where DIY tech can be taken. While I hear that Darren will share some of his experiences at the show this weekend, you should come on over and experience it firsthand. I’m making a presentation in the Meeting Pavilion on Saturday at 1:30 where I’m planning to share some thoughts on the future of killer apps.
The term “Killer App” is used often these days, but wouldn’t it be cool if you could create an application that helps you ace your next test or make that perfect stock buy? Dreaming up and then creating the next great app may be simpler than you think. In this session, I plan to share how the barrier to creating killer apps is quickly coming down. I don’t want to go into too many details here and spoil the surprise, but I plan to demonstrate some really neat apps HP’s innovation team currently has in development. And I’ll go over my “wish list” of apps that I can only hope will inspire and challenge the DIY community to continue pushing boundaries.
The best preview I can give you for now, comes out of a video interview I recently shot with Forbes called, “Where Will HP Be in 5 Years?”
What do you think are the next – or desperately needed – killer apps? What are you hoping to see come to pass in the next five years? I’d love to hear in the comment box below. In the meantime, I hope to see some of you this weekend!

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