I made a Maker Faire

Derby Mini Makerfaire from Barney Livingston on Vimeo.

So I probably owe the Nottingham Hackspace about £150 in "I'm going to blog once a week or pay Hackspace £50." money. However I think as I was busy organising a Mini Maker Faire that I should be let off the hook. 


The faire was awesome and I'd like to thank all those who worked so hard on it especially Hannah Fox, Kim Miller, Emma Hallam, Amanda McLaren, Jonathan Wallis and the staff at the Derby Silk Mill museum particularly Alan and Andy who where brilliant! The Maker Faire was a great success for a number of reasons. 


The event started on Saturday 2nd June with a Maker's only day. I think the Maker's only day worked well and I was particularly pleased with the talks by Tim Hunkin and Andrew Harsley. Tim was very enthused by Jonathan's behind the scene tour of the Derby Museum and Art Gallery and gave a short talk on the History of Electricity Research which he sort of gave on the fly but had some excellent slides ready to show us. Andrew really surprised a few people with his talk. Everyone who went to it felt they'd got a treat really as it wasn't a well advertised part of the day. 

We had makers from all over the country and a particularly strong representation from Hackerspaces. London Hackspace brought along their giant “Ridiculous Mini Golf” course which took quite a long time to set up. If you ever organise an event and they offer to bring it, say yes as it’s very good. Make sure you set aside about 30m2 of space though as it’s gargantuan. I was a little worried we’d not fit it all in and I was forced to move both Ciseco (sorry boys) and HACMan out of the room to accommodate the craziness. Matt Edwards from Build Brighton brought along the excellent RoBoXylo which annoyed everyone all day. We put Martin Raynsford and his laser in with the superb Rolls Royce RB211 engine. Martin was able to bring his laser and was cutting all day which was exactly what I was hoping we'd have at the Faire. At one point Jake from Instructables was working with Martin on a Raspberry Pi case. 

I was really pleased to see so many visitors. There were about 550 in total and about 70 Makers and their hangers on. It was a super weekend and I was delighted with all the Makers. Same again next year?