This is where we keep The Rotor when we’re not using him.

Wednesday night, DorkbotSF held a fab benefit for Todd Blair, a stunningly amazing artist and teacher who was in a horrible forklift accident at Robodock in Amsterdam.

We had an auction, a silent auction, and presentations by interesting misfits. We drank beer, we ate delicious experimental treats by Mark Powell and we all we absolutely soggy with adoration, family and Pier 33 fish odor by the end of the evening. The die-hards who stayed to the end called Amsterdam to send some of the love to Alex and Todd. There were tears, laughter and jumbo DIY igniter boards. We raised a pile of cash for taking care of Todd and Alex and a good time was had by all on this bittersweet occasion.

Karen Marcelo has uploaded some pictures of the event to the interwebs. Here’s her follow-up note:

hi all

thank you to kyle minor for hosting us at his great space! thank you to eric paulos for MCing and our speakers:

ken goldberg
eric paulos
johannes grenzfurthner/monochrom
steve lassovzsky
joe grand

and especially to mark pauline a great close to the evening with lots of stories of the show at robodock and todd’s contributions to SRL.

also thanks to all our donors with special appreciation to david pescovitz and our friends at boingboing for their very generous donation which is SOLD at auction! and all of you that donated your skills, time, items.

thanks to our auctioneers mike dingle and jon sarriugarte and the rest of the auction team: alan and ellen anzalone, ralf burgert, rafflers sabrina merlo and jill miller.

thanks also to marc powell for catering, hopefully he’ll post his menu - it was awesome! including his tech gourmet crew among them geo wanking guru rich gibson!

thanks to pete macomber and wendi flybutter for bartending and all the SRL crew who came toghether to help make this happen. special thanks to nina alter and david calkins.

thanks to our door queens: lori dorn and simone davalos

and thanks and congrats to tcho amazing chocolate factory by the bay for winning the grand prize auction of the night, the boingboing ad! we appreciate your generosity!

and to all of you for coming out and supporting todd! the fundraiser exceeded my expectations and this does indeed put a nice dent in the expenses todd and alex face but this is a long haul, as you all know, coma / head injury recovery is a process that takes years so stay tuned for the other events coming up. hopefully you’ll have fun while supporting todd blair who has done so much for SRL, dorkbot, CCA, and kinetic art communities.

It was one of those great night where everybody showed up 100% and restored everybody else’s faith in humanity, or at least the humanity that exist among the gear head robot kinetic art people of San Francisco.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 12th, 2007 at 10:48 am and is filed under Bill Joy Is Probably Wrong, Robot Combat, Sometimes We Deal In Kinetic Art, The Robot Blogs Will Take Over. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.