Maker Faire 2012

Community General Discussions
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1

Let's go to Maker Faire!

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Organization and volutneers

I plan to go to the New York event for certain.

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I'd like to see LMR at some of the other venues too. Post a comment below or send me an email if you are interested in helping to represent LMR in some way at any of the locations. If would be wonderful if someone stepped forward to help organize at one or more other faires.

So far, LMR will be at the following locations for Maker Faire this year:

Last Year

Last year, LMR had our first offical presence at Maker Faire, which was hugely successful. If you missed the action last year, I posted a summary. There's a great video produced by LMR member flummer showing some of the action around the faire last year.

I had a lot of help from a dedicated few, and lots of LMR members stopped by or sent robots.

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This year, I'd love to see us expand our presence and have even more of us involved. The Bay Area Maker Faire has already put out their "Call for Makers" and one of the mini Maker Faires starts in February. So I'm starting the call for volunteers and participants now.

What's Maker Faire, you ask?

From the makerfaire.com website: "A two-day, family-friendly festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement."

Where is it?

Maker Faires scheduled all over this year. The big ones are produced by or in partnership with MAKE.

In addition, there are "mini" Maker Faires organized by communities around the world. There's even one in China! If there's not one near you, maybe you can help get one going.

Commercial Makers and Sponsors

Maker Fair allows individual's to register for the event as a Commerical Maker, which allows you to sell product. So if any of our entepreneurial LMRians wanted to come and sell kits, that could be done. There's an additional set up fee for Commercial Makers.

Companies and commerical entities are supposed to register as Sponsors, rather than Commerical Makers. I'm not 100% clear on the rules around this. If anyone is interested, I can do some digging. 

I have exchanged emails with the organizers of Maker Faire, and they are cool with LMR working with one or more commercial sponsors. They will need to approve the sponsor, because they want to avoid any conflict with companies sponsoring the event in general as opposed to sponsoring a specific group's presence at Maker Faire. They also want to approve all signage and logos which may be included in our booth based on a companies support.

Donations?

I've also wondered about collecting some cash to help give our presence some real splash, and to cover some expenses. Would people be willing to donate a few bucks to a central fund to help support our efforts? I'm not asking for any money at this time, just floating the idea.

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2

As I am somewhat the master

As I am somewhat the master decider on LMR’s money tank (it’s held by rik), I am happy to inform you that I remember how I last year told you tat LMR would like to support this project.

However, I am sad to announce that as a business we are not very well running. At all :slight_smile: As I write this, I have just put up a “please donate-button” on the front page, because we need means to make v4.

We do have some money, but we are also about to move the site to an Amazon server. That is the plan, anyway. And then we need to be able to pay the bills. And so I’d truly hate it if we had spend them on the faire…

So, I am sorry, but this will have to go without the official pool to support.

HOWEVER! I think we are not too cool to get SPONSORS! Are we? What would you need, Andrew?

Here’s a brain storm; If one company would donate something, then perhaps we could post a public bidding on it - Sell stuff for the highest price, or something…

What I CAN do, is to offer any kind of exposure on the front page - and we’ll do that - just PM me :wink:

May you guys have a good trip. If you can go, you should - meeting up is reall, really cool, trus me!!

3

No worries, Frits. We did it

No worries, Frits. We did it last year and we’ll do it again. 

4

I am going to go again.

I had a great time last year and will definately have one this year if I go.  I will be their pretty much for sure, and I will see if I can even volunteer if only for a day.  If you want I can probally let you borrow a robot like my Rover if you need bots.

5

Awesome!Having robots from

Awesome!

Having robots from members from all over was great last year, and I think we should do that again. So definitely bring your bot!

This year I want to do a scheduled time for robot building, and have people sign up ahead of time. So as we get closer, I should have specific times and days when I will need help. 

BTW, I’m sorry I never sent you the iron on to make a LMR MakerFaire shirt! The trouble is, as flummer pointed out, they are darn difficult to work with. Very time consuming. The small ones are so bad you are almost certainly going to mess up the first one. (I did.) I could still send it to you, or just give it to you when I see you at MakerFaire. 

6

I’m in. I will be happy to

I’m in.  I will be happy to man the table if you promise to spend some of that time at the fair with your family.

7

The iron on is no big deal.

I can just pick one up at the fair this year.  I can’t wait to see you there.

8

Thanks, that is definitely

Thanks, that is definitely the plan. You and your lovely wife were so helpful last year!

The more people we get to come help, the easier that will be. A bit more organization on my part will help too. ; j

For those that don’t know robotgoldfish, here’s a quick profile video from Maker Faire last year.

9

WOOOOOOO MAKER FAIRE! I’m so

WOOOOOOO MAKER FAIRE! I’m so excited! See all you robots there! :smiley:

It would be fun to organize a LIVE Robot Party!

10

Hey RG, are you coming to

Hey RG, are you coming to New York again or one of the other locations? 

Your robots were a huge hit last year!

11

Just got word that guibot

Just got word that guibot will send one of his telepresence Magabots to me for Maker Faire. That should make virtual attendance much cooler. 

12

I am soooo doomed :frowning: Would

I am soooo doomed :frowning: Would love to come to NY but it’s a quite long way…I even can not join the Shenzhen Mini Maker Faire :-( 

So please try to setup the telepresence bot and maybe even a webcam with live stream of your booth.

13

We’ll try! We’ll try!

We’ll try! We’ll try!