When the future rips me off.

You guys know I pay to get into 98% of the events I go to. So I can feel free to give my unvarnished opinion without feeling like I have to play nice for my masters. Even the ones I don't pay to get into, sometimes don't fare very well. But, I always feel guilty because they let me in for free.

The Nextgen Science Faire I went to this weekend has to be hands down one of the worst events I have ever attended. And I've been to some colossal failures. This event however was the first one that has so completely oversold itself, I was shocked.

First, it was 25 bucks to get in. As much as it cost to get into Maker Faire which is a giant festival. You can see from the pictures above this venue was maybe the size of a large conference room. That wasn't the most irritating part though.

Smack dab in the middle of this room of maybe 100 people was a guy doing a presentation on microphone. People trying to hear what each booth representative was trying say had to lean in like you were having a private conversation. As you can see in this video.



It was more than that though. Half the things they said would be there - weren't. Which was surprising because they were touting the Nissan Leaf, and you can get those cars to show basically anywhere. Not that I care about seeing it anyway. No heads up display booths like they claimed. No vertical farming. No Google Xprize.

If you've been reading this blog long enough, you probably guess I was in it for the HUDs.

This is their website. So I was quite shocked when there were only about 10 booths. What did it matter though? You couldn't hear them very well anyway. The booths they did have were more on the "high school project" side of things. Which brings me back to the entry fee. 25 bucks. 50 bucks for a couple.





I mean - seriously? An LED light pad placed under a t-shirt?! Oh, you can control it with your phone though to make unique messages.





One thing I thought might be interesting was this apparel which held your devices from Alphyn Industries. But they put me off so hard with their douchey group-think literature. These shirts will protect you from harmful electromagnetic frequency radiation you know!



I've also been watching the sorts of technology that Neurosky was presenting. Where you control objects with your mind. But it was so hard to get to the front of the booths. The way the booths were set up - 10 people could close you completely out.