To my dearest Makers! We need you! Hackerspaces from across the Midwest have joined together to race children’s toys. At first we did this because it was fun, but we continue to do this because it helps send message to the public: making is fun. What better message to send than to encourage young and old to tear apart a stock Power Wheels and build at home or at a hackerspace something that is both fun and educational. It is the SoapBox Derby for the 21st Century; a race that is amusing yet enlightening. The pressures of competitions are removed with the open nature of team sharing. Teams get together to celebrate their creations and race for fun. No monetary prizes are given, just the pride of building something, setting it out in the real world and working with others who tackled the same project.

For the first time ever, Pumping Station: One hosted a Summit to discuss new rules and talk shop for the 2012 PPPRS season. Four hackerspacs showed up with representatives from i3 Detroit, LVL1, Milwaukee Makerspace and Sector 67. The teams shared ideas to improve the series, discussed new prizes and new angles to develop the series from. Click the break below to see a full list of the new concepts discussed:

If there’s a word for near perfection in Power Racing, it begins with an S. Sector 67, the upstart hackerspace from Madison Wisconsin set out to show the world what they were capable of. In less than 10 months since their grand opening, they can now call themselves champions. The team worked for an astonishing 3 days to create the frame of the machine, and only a couple weeks to assemble the components together. These were not easy times though, as the team faced numerous technical challenges, and faced quite a few late evenings preparing their car for the season. With confidence they pulled up to Maker Faire, and immediately silenced anyone who doubted the capability of a new team amongst veterans.