What’s new in the maker community.
- Air Rocket Works: “The Fun Aspect” March 10, 2025
(Rick’s photo courtesy of Angie Scheetle; Keith’s photo courtesy of Tanya Violette.) As Air Rocket Works Co-Founders Rick Schertle and Keith Violette discuss their work, one word keeps coming up.
“Fun”.
That’s because Rick and Keith, both passionate makers, enjoy creating cool things that fly.
And so do the teachers, students, parents and various enthusiasts who get to build and launch their rockets–and learn engineering, hands-on, while having a great time!
(California STEAM Symposium, Anaheim, 2019.) An unexpected venture
Rick and Keith’s small business, Air Rocket Works, came about almost by accident.
It all started when Rick, a middle-school teacher, dad and lifelong maker whose MAKE magazine bio says he “specialized in fun growing up”, became intrigued with the idea of making a compressed air rocket launcher.
Rick came up with a project that, unlike other launchers available at the time, was inexpensive to create, as well as durable–and a lot of fun!
About a year after publishing his project in MAKE magazine, Rick and his family assembled a few rocket kits, and offered them through the magazine. When they sold out rapidly and customers wanted more, he began exhibiting his rockets and rocket launchers at maker fairs.
Dual-coast creativity
Meanwhile, Keith, who is an engineer by profession, as well as a dad and a maker who describes himself as a “big kid”, saw Rick’s rocket launcher project and brainstormed ways to create a new working air rocket glider.
Keith and his son took videos and sent photos of their finished work to Rick–and the rest is history.
Today, Rick and Keith, who live in California and New Hampshire, respectively, have numerous rockets and launchers available on their website. They’ve developed rockets and launchers for educational programs all around the world. These include educational outreach programs by NASA, United Launch Alliance and The Tech Museum of Innovation.
Meanwhile, they continue to wow visitors at maker fairs–and may very well be coming to Maker Faire Bay Area this September!
(Like to get some hands-on experience before then? Here’s a link to Rick’s book “Planes, Gliders and Paper Rockets: Simple Flying Things Anyone Can Make” on Amazon!)
Rick and Keith shared the story of Air Rocket Works, discussed some of their favorite experiences and offered a preview of what’s next!
On this edition of Over Coffee® we cover:
- How “specializing in fun” led to Rick’s career path, as a maker teacher, entrepreneur and author;
- How Keith’s background enabled him to develop his talents for prototyping creative ideas, and led to his career as an inventor and mechanical engineer;
- The story of their partnership in their family-owned small business;
- What led Rick to create the air rocket launcher that started the whole thing!;
- Rick’s experience, exhibiting his creation at his first Maker Faire;
- How Keith came onboard, through his passion for making “cool stuff”;
- Rick and Keith’s experiences with their early collaborations;
- A “shameless plug” of some of the products on their website shop;
- How NASA Kennedy Space Center became intrigued and wound up contributing free templates!
- The “arts” aspect of what Rick and Keith are doing, with Air Rocket Works;
- Rick and Keith’s perspectives on starting their small business, and why it worked well;
- RIck and Keith’s advice to parents or educators who would like to implement maker festivals or activities at local schools;
- How you can get involved, if you’d like to!
- ILO: Robotics for All February 18, 2025
ILO is a new educational robot, created in Quimper, France.
And describing it as “highly adaptable” would be an understatement.
Designed to teach programming progressively, the ILO robot can be programmed through a mobile app by beginning students. Then, as these students continue learning, there are intermediate lessons, with block coding, through the Vittascience platform.
And for advanced students, ILO can be programmed with the Python language.
The innovations don’t stop there.
ILO can move both forward and sideways. It’s open-source, so users can create and 3D print their own accessories. It’s made for durability, so that parts are easily reparable or replaceable.
In other words, this is a robot designed to travel through the user’s learning journey.
ILO Founder Simon Le Berre shared the story of creating his innovative educational robot, explained its capabilities and discussed what may be coming next!
On this edition of Over Coffee® we cover:
- How Simon first became interested in robotics;
- The story of the ILO, and how he came to create it;
- How the robot evolved, to go from a primary-school learning tool to university-level programming instruction;
- An example of a young student’s programming learning journey, from primary school to learning programming at the university level;
- Some of the features users can create and add to the robot;
- Simon’s creative goal, with ILO;
- How a teacher who isn’t necessarily “technical” can work with the robot;
- Simon’s experience at CES® 2025;
- One of the lessons he learned, from his experience creating the robot;
- What’s next!;
- One of the most “fun” experiences of Simon’s creative journey;
- One of the design challenges of ILO.
- “Scary Creative” for Halloween October 31, 2024
An Over Coffee® special-edition podcast!
“There’s so much more to haunting than just getting a startle,” says legendary haunter Shar Mayer.
“I want you to scream. I want you to cry. But I’m going to respect you as a human…I’m not into torturing people. I just want them to scream, and be scared.”
In this 2018 interview, recorded onsite at ScareLA, Shar, who is a haunt consultant, producer, scare actor and all-round “scary creative” (she mentors and teaches aspiring haunters and workshops) shares some of her favorite insights on creating an effective and fun Halloween “scare”.
And she even offers some low-cost tips on ghoulish makeup that could work for you today–and which uses ingredients you may have in your kitchen!
Happy Halloween, be safe and stay innovative!
On this edition of Over Coffee®, we cover:
- How haunting became Shar’s passion;
- Why she sees scaring someone as a “relationship” of sorts;
- A “how-to” mini-lesson on horror makeup–and some easy scary looks to create this Halloween;
- The techniques behind successful haunting;
- Shar’s advice to scare actors as they prepare to work in a haunt (including the number-one thing to do, to succeed!);
- The psychology and boundaries of professionalism in haunting;
- How to stay safe, as a haunter;
- The ways Shar has seen the haunt industry change, over her four decades as a haunter