MINI MAKER FAIRE UPDATE & PLANNING MEETING
Wednesday, August 3 at 5:15 p.m.
DO YOU HAVE AN INTEREST IN BEING PART OF A MINI MAKER FAIRE?
We'll be hosting our first Mini Maker Faire community planning meeting on Wednesday evening, August 3 from 5:15 until 6:30 p.m. The meeting will be held in the Village Hall Auditorium (with parking on the south end of the building) at 9915 39th Avenue.
If you have an interest in helping to pull this event together, we would love for you to join us on the 3rd. Below is more information about Maker Faire, the work that we've completed to date, and what we hope to accomplish on August 3.
WHAT IS A MAKER FAIRE?
A Maker Faire is a community-based learning event that brings tech enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, science clubs, authors, artists, students and entrepreneurs together to "show their projects and talk about what they've learned." The event is meant to inspire "everyone to become a maker and connect people with projects in their local community." It's an exhibition with opportunities for hands on and do-it-yourself interactions.
WHY HOST A MAKER FAIRE?
Local leaders have actively worked over the last several decades to provide municipal infrastructure that supports a diverse, resilient, and sustainable community made up of those who live, work and play here. In the interest of promoting an awareness of the creative and innovative talents of the people in our community, we wanted to test a new community event - a Maker Faire.
Through the test run of a Mini Maker Faire, we hope to create a fertile environment for the sharing of ideas, the growth of entrepreneurship, and the strengthening of the innovative cultures within area families, businesses and educational institutions.
WHAT'S BEEN DONE SO FAR?
Early this year, we submitted an application to the Maker Faire organization to use their model for the event. We are in the process of signing a license agreement with Maker Faire, which means that they will help to establish a website for the event and will provide us with a logo set and additional materials to help get started.
We've picked a date and a location for this year's test event that we felt would work best around school and activity schedules in hopes of including as many folks as possible while not conflicting with too many other events/activities. The test date is just that, a test, so if we would like to consider an alternate date the following year, we are open to trying other dates. This year's event will take place Saturday, November 26 from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. at the Fieldhouse inside RecPlex.
Following are urls to the resources Maker Faire provides. Please feel free to browse through their material if you have an interest:
http://makerfaire.com/global/
http://cdn.makezine.com/uploads/2013/10/maker-faire-playbook-10jan13.pdf
WHAT WILL WE DISCUSS AT THE MEETING ON AUGUST 3?
On August 3, we'll go through a quick recap of why we want to host a Mini Maker Faire, and then we hope to learn what everyone's strengths are and where you might be interested in helping. Some areas we'll need help are:
- Finding and recruiting makers and tracking/communicating makers
- Finding and recruiting business and media sponsors
- Marketing/promotions/design
- Registration (tickets/check in)
- Operations/logistics
- Concessions (vendor/donations)
- Finding and recruiting volunteers
- Coordinating presentations, demos, workshops, etc
We're excited to get started and look forward to any help you're able to provide.