Ford, UofMichigan, and Microsoft kick off the American Journey 2.0 Road Trip to Maker Faire today

The American Journey 2.0 road trip to from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Maker Faire in San Mateo, California, finally kicked off  today!  This day has been a long time coming (my own involvement goes back 2 years or so), but it’s certain been a fun project to be involved in.  Note: For more background on this project running a custom application platform on top of Windows 7 and Microsoft Robotics in Ford Fiestas, see my post on the Ford Fiesta and American Journey 2.0.

We left the campus today a little after 2:30pm and stopped immediately for lunch in Ann Arbor. 

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After some good mexican food, we hit the road in earnest close to 4pm.   Weather was good on the drive this afternoon, and we got into Chicago shortly before dark. 

coming into Chicago 

After showing off AjtheFiesta at Harry Caray’s Tavern, we had a bite to eat and headed to our hotel in Evanston to get ready for our event tomorrow at Northwestern University. 

A long day of driving ahead tomorrow! 

I’ll leave you with this video of Joe Ross demoing the “Road Rally”, “Post”, “Mood”, and “Local Search” applications yesterday that Ford built using the Fiestaware platform that is built on top of Windows 7 and Microsoft Robotics Studio. 

Joe Ross Demo of a American Journey 2.0 Fiesta app from John Mullinax on Vimeo.

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