My first fair on Saturday

[TobyCWood]

They are starting a yearly mini-Maker fair here and for the first time I will have a booth showing samples of the freakin mountain of stuff I've made during the past 10 months. I'll also have the FF ditto printing all sorts of give-aways. I'll have lots of biz cards and Halloween candy. Any advice??? Yes, attributions will be made accordingly.

[Kurt @ VR-FX]

My Advice:

1) Have an assistant or 2 who can watch over you booth - allowing you to
get a chance to walk around and see stuff. I had assistants with me at
mine - but, I still didn't make it work right - and I didn't see enough
of the Faire!

2) DAMN IT - Go Have Fun - I Demand it of you!!!

Really - the Maker Faires are very cool stuff!

:-)
-K-

[Darrell jan]

Good idea, maybe you can hire one of those reprap guys to assist you ;)

[TobyCWood]

LOL!

[TobyCWood]

I have been to the San Mateo Faire many times... it's the Grand daddy of them all.  I actually have been involved with making it happen for a couple of the years... and once i actually podcasted the entire event. This mini faire is the first time i actually have a maker booth. I figure anything I can do to make the needed critical mass to bootstrap it as a regular thing for my area i will do.

Next May for the San Mateo faire I would really like to try to help make the 3D printing area up to the level of the Faire in NY. I was with the Make Media people last night at our new Maker Space and we are talking about it.

On Thursday, October 17, 2013 4:10:48 PM UTC-7, vrfx wrote:

[Joseph Chiu]

That would be nice - especially if they can keep the 3D printing indoors.  The NY MF 3D Printing Village was outdoors - the conditions were challenging, to say the least!

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[TobyCWood]

Actually the San Mateo Fair grounds location usually has all maker exhibits, except the the real big ones, inside. I doubt it will be a problem. 

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[TobyCWood]

Well that was crazy! The organizers of the event know my shop well and put us right at the show entrance.

3 or 4 people deep from 10 till 4. My voice was gone well before the end of the day. Over 150 biz cards were grabbed by potential customers. Even met a couple of MakeXYZ clients too who want alot more printing from me. We had dozens of our most impressive thing samples... but I got to say... the one thing which always got the biggest reaction was the geared tardis from our wing commander. Way to go Doc!

There were other 3D Printing booths too including one from a company offering the same kinds of services as myself... accept they came in as a vendor while we got the booth for free as a maker. They made sales pitches... we simply gave out our biz cards and answered the hundreds of questions about 3D printing. They had current model TAMs that looked fresh out of the box. Nice PLA only machine which uses scrap book vinyl backed paper on the BP.  His samples were simple and no giveaways. We ditto printed with our FF all day giving the small toys such as the Maker robot and the celtic skull away to the delight of the lucky kids who stood, watched and waited. We were opposite the Maker of the Perplexus puzzle toys and we got a chance to talk afterward. I may try to prototype his channel designs for him. If you've never seen a Perplexus you should check it out. Then there was the Lego store guy... we'll be printing custom blocks for him.

The organizers told me afterward that they have outgrown the current facility and next year they may use the fair grounds. As such I may try to organize a much larger 3D printing presence. In the meantime I talked again to Make Media and next May i may get the chance to try to increase the San Mateo 3D printer presence as well. They felt it will never get to the size of the NY fair, but we will see!

[Wingcommander (whpthomas)]

> We had dozens of our most impressive thing samples... but I got to say... the one thing which always got the biggest reaction was the geared tardis from our wing commander. Way to go Doc!

You are most welcome. I am glad it went so well for you - I really wish we had something like that over here, but I am yet to find it. There is a 3d printing conference planned for Townsville next year, but it looks like it's been hijacked by the big vendors so not really very interesting. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place...

[Joseph Chiu]

Doc, on the train back from NY WMF, I met an organizing committee member for an Australian Mini-MakerFaire.  (It was first organized out of a hackerspace group that she is a part of.)  I don't remember what city, but I think it was Sydney.  She said that the first MMF didn't get a lot of vendor traction, but after the first one, many of vendors big and small have become very interested.  So even if the big guys dominate, you might still find enough of the little guys, and the non-vendors contributing to an even better event than before.

On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 7:25 AM, Wingcommander (whpthomas) <m...@henri.net> wrote:

> We had dozens of our most impressive thing samples... but I got to say... the one thing which always got the biggest reaction was the geared tardis from our wing commander. Way to go Doc!

You are most welcome. I am glad it went so well for you - I really wish we had something like that over here, but I am yet to find it. There is a 3d printing conference planned for Townsville next year, but it looks like it's been hijacked by the big vendors so not really very interesting. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place...

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