I was lucky enough to attend the Maker Faire in New York this year, and it was amazing. You can view the Flickr set on my Flickr page, or just watch the slideshow below:
I got a lot of free stuff (mostly promotional material, officially upgraded to “stuff” since it’s interesting.) The only actual “thing” I got was a bag from LionsBrand.com. I also consider the small booklets from the US Patent Office to be “things”. Here’s the list of promotional stuff I grabbed:
- An Instructables business card. Useful? No. Necessary to pick up? Yes. They’re great people and I’ve posted my laptop bubble mailer case guide there.
- Pamphlet: “Indoor Composting with a Worm Bin – A Guide to Composting in New York City Apartments“
- A guide about urban planting from verticaltheory.tumblr.com
- A discount card for Mathematica for Students. If anyone is interested, let me know and I’ll give out the code.
- A card with a link to book scanner instructions at: copybooks.childrenofmay.org
- A page for the NYC group nycresistor.com
- Information about silk worms at silkwormsnyc.blogspot.com
- Information about makerprojects.com and Makerbots (3-d printers)
- More promotional materials from widgetworksunlimited.com and TechShop, a cool group that lets people work on projects.
Lastly, I’d like to point out the “TouristBot“, a Lego robot that took pictures all day. The owners lived up to their promise by uploading all of these photos to Flickr, and amazingly, they did it right after the event! There could be a blog post on its own about how great of a marketing tactic this would be, since it’s the only thing I went out of my way to remember without being given anything. Here’s our picture!
In the future, Lego robots will take our pictures.
I didn’t even mention the Jet swings, the life-sized Mouse Trap, or even half of the things that made Maker Faire 2010 amazing. Thanks to everyone that went and showed off what they made!