Dale Dougherty, publisher and editor of MAKE wrote a nice little account of accidentally meeting a maker in his neighborhood.
I noticed a blueprint of some sort on his clipboard. "Are you doing some kind of engineering?" I asked. He smiled broadly.
"Well, I'm designing a toy airplane," he replied and showed me his drawing. He was shy about it, like a kid.
"Really," I said. "That's what you're working on?"
"Yes," he said. "I've got a shop where I like to work."
"I do MAKE magazine," I said. "Have you heard of it?"
"Wow. I'm a subscriber. I love MAKE," he said with a big smile. "I've been to Maker Faire each year. It's wonderful. MAKE's a national treasure." I smiled back.
I introduced myself and he told me his name was Mike. He's a physicist who works at Agilent (a company that was split off from HP). "We're neighbors," I said. "I just live around the corner."
"You know, there's a maker right over there," Mike said, pointing to another house. Mike told me that the man makes a widget to monitor home hot water usage. It learns about when you use hot water and then regulates the production of hot water so that you're not running your water heater all the time.
