Opensauce 2026: Reflection

[This post was written on 9/2. I may reword it later if I find I rambled on while I write this at midnight]

In mid-July, Opensauce held its 4th annual event and as always, it has always been the event I look forward to the most every year. Filled to the brim with weird and unique projects with the sole purpose of making something that is fun and totally impractical, it was a well needed contrast for me to the viral posts of startup founder’s projects common to the Bay Area tech ecosystem.

Not to say anything is inherently wrong with it but I find the most connection with makers investing heavily into projects that serve greater purpose of educational outreach, artistic expression, and in general community building.

There are numerous videos covering the actual booths and content in the event so I will highly recommend you check out those videos. One of the unique characteristic of this event is the fact that not only does it provide a place for popular content creators to interact with their fans, it gives opportunity for new content creators to make videos covering their experience and capitalize on the fact that OpenSauce is just too damn deep to even cover in-depth over the weekend. I find it endlessly fascinating to see someone do a deep-dive on a select few booths based on their special interest that I simply walked by.

There are some takeaways I had with the event that I will talk about here though:

Behind-the-scene organization: I have close friends and essentially family that volunteered at the event (starting last year) and noted that the behind-the-scene organization had drastically improved that most visiting guests including myself were largely unaware of. — The effects of which are most definitely felt passively through the overall experience/cohesion. — I started attending OpenSauce back in 2024 when it was held at Cow Palace and although that appealed to my sense of wonder because it had a certain coating of roughness and scuff that felt very punky/hacky to me, I do believe a stress-free system is crucial to the longevity of this organization. It is not entirely my place to spill all their secrets (nor do I accurately recall them anyways) but all I can say is this, volunteers are truly the lifeblood of the event and if you want to help keep it running so that they don’t need to sell out their souls to the corporate world, there are plenty of volunteer spots! It also helps to bring genuine enthusiasm to volunteer instead of just doing it for the free ticket.

Badge design: The OpenSauce badge has evolved significantly from the years I have attended but I am unsure what is the best direction that they should continue designing them around. 2024 was a large PCB controlled by an analog 555 timer circuit to control a blinking LED placed in the robot face’s eyes. 2025 was a slightly smaller badge with an ATTiny85 controlling a row of LEDs to generate a banner text message when you wave it around, like those hologram clocks. 2026 was a even more compact badge but this time, all the complex hardware was mounted onto a separate PCB that you need to obtain from the PCB soldering station. Since all 3 years span 3 different design philosophy, it makes it easier to discuss the merits of each

From oldest to latest, the analog design was my personal favorite of the 3 and establishes a design philosophy for the badge that is fundamentally different than the more established PCB badge design tradition of DEVCON. Since DEVCON is a hacking and cybersecurity conference, it follows that the badge design is more complex and requires some skills to crack it, either from the hardware or software approach.

However, OpenSauce is a maker-focused convention and since it naturally shares the community of Makerfaire, particular focuses are placed on creative expression, educational outreach, and STEM accessibility. Designing around easily source-able components makes it more approachable for a younger or less-technical crowd to solder the badge on their own time rather than rely on provided kits during the event. — With scarcity of stock and time, unfinished badges leaves the door open for OpenSauce organizers to monetize pre-made kits after the event. An opportunity that ride a line between community altruism or needless monetization —

In my eyes, badge design should be limited to open-source Arduino programming within the Arduino IDE. 2025 used an ATTiny85, which I had to figure out on my own how to do bare metal programming and how to program fuses (both of which can be daunting and for a kid getting into robotics). Currently, I am not even sure if the 2026 daughter board is open-source yet or programmable as I was too busy looking at exhibits to wait for the badge soldering stations.

No matter how complex and crazy you make the badge, it loses the potential to empower anyone with their own mini “maker project” if components are going to be paywalled and time taken away from experiencing the exhibits in full glory. That is until the DEVCON badge hacker culture starts to sweep in.

Interactive Experience:

This is not so much a direct criticism of the event but an observation I made comparing my experience over the years. Across all events, the most memorable exhibits are often ones you interact with (makes sense) in a novel way. This can be heard during the closing panel segment and attendee’s responses into the mic. Thus, it is my highest wishes that for those who booth or in regards to the exhibitor selection process to at least incorporate some level of interactivity in your booth.

One feature I wish was more established in the OpenSauce community is incorporation of SAO designs to attach onto the PCB badges, much like DEVCON which the concept was presumably lifted from. Currently, it’s an undeveloped avenue for community engagement.

Anyways — community engagement, interactivity, take-home souvenirs, badge attachments, educational exhibits — all this will be my main driving factors in designing a project I will present as an exhibit. I honestly aim to bring a unique experience that will be remembered, not just to show off my technical talent but show what’s possible at the intersection of art and engineering. Updates will be here!