Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Friday November 6th thru Sunday November 8th, Barnes and Noble stores nationwide are holding Mini-Maker Faires. Our team just got an invite to our local B&N at the Walpole Mall, and it turns out Alarm Robotics may also be going. Anyone else? The back of the store spills out into the interior of the mall with plenty of space to drive around, let anyone drive, and maybe we'll have a mini competition.

For other stores in other areas, call them and see if they have the space available. If it's anything like our store, they will welcome you even at this late a date.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Team 271 got invited to the Barnes and Noble in Bay Shore NY. We'll be attending that, and from what I remember hearing I think a few other local teams will be there as well.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Team 1410 will also be at a Barnes & Noble Mini-Maker Faire November 7 & 8! We'll be at the Colorado Blvd. Store in Denver. We're very excited!

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

We were invited as well, not sure yet if we are going we have a conflict that weekend.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

(Snip found the dates) Didnt hear about this Registration closed but I am going to contact them they might have some extra room. The more FRC teams the better.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

461 will be attending one in Lafayette, IN.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Team 1708 will be attending the Mini Maker's Faire in Monroeville, Pa as we attended Pittsburgh, Pa first Maker's Faire which was a blast!

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Team 4276 will be attending on the Sunday here in Huntington Beach.
The day before we'll be at the So Cal Maker Con, too.

Busy weekend of Making It Loud.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Team 316 will be going to the Barnes and Noble in Deptford, NJ. It should be pretty fun.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

1741 is going to be at the store on the 6th, 7th, and 8th in Greenwood, IN!

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

If you look at the details it's not a mini maker faire it's a sales demo for a new product line. They've asked the STEM community to provide free labor and advertising.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Ours asked us to do a demo but I guess that's on a store by store basis.

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Team 2399 will be at the Crocker Park Barnes and Noble in Westlake, OH!

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Ours asked us to demo and is allowing us to do our own fundraiser. Win win?

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Team 5806 is going to demo as well (we're rookies this year, but yolo). We'll be at the Bay Plaza B&N in Bronx, NY.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Team 694 will be at the Lower Manhattan Barnes & Noble on Friday afternoon with "payment" of a portion of the profits from sales during that window.

Adam: Maker Media endorsed this event/publicity thing. They control the phrase "Maker Faire" so a mini-Maker Faire is whatever they say it is :)

In New York, we just finish World Maker Faire a little over a month ago so it feels odd having a mini-Maker Faire so soon. The good thing is that admission is free.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Quasics will be attending with our FIRST and VEX programs at Barnes & Noble in Monroeville Mall, just east of Pittsburgh!

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Team 694 is going to be demoing our robots at the Tribeca branch on the 6th. They're offering us 10% of the proceeds during the time that we're demoing so that's a neat bonus.

EDIT: Didn't see that Jeanne had already beaten me to the punch

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Team 5438 is attending the one in Clifton, most likely. We are bringing our robot, but cannot bring our Ekocycle, since they sell their own 3D Printers. Any ideas of what to do or what to bring???

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Robokong has the B&N in Riverside covered.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

RoboPride will be in Orland Park, IL. on Friday the 6th. (Maybe Sunday as well)

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

We're bringing our Recycle Rush robot for demos and letting almost anyone drive, plus our little demo bot for anyone to drive. We still have our frisbee-bot that's still a big hit in town, but I don't think the mall is safe enough for shooting :). Any other robot we bring will just be for show.

Rather hoping more teams will come to Walpole Mall -- 1153 and 2079 will be together Saturday afternoon, and 2079 comes back Sunday but will be with the football traffic. There is plenty of room in the mall itself, though the tile floors will make driving like Lunacy. Wheeeeee!

My team looks at these events around town as showing off the robotics team and maybe picking up a sponsor or getting some person that wants to build robots. We have gotten some sponsorship this way, so it is working.

(Seriously? You get 10% of sales? Should make inquiries....)

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4901 plans to bring Sandstorm II (and who knows, maybe Sandstorm I too...) to the B&N at Richland Mall.

We just got an invite today to demo at the East Northport store in Long island. Was wondering if any other teams are going to be there. Directly the week after we have an off-season competition with a brand new bot so we are going to use this demo time as practice time.

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Team 2521 will be doing demos at a Barnes and Noble in Eugene, OR!

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Team 107 will be attending the Barnes & Noble Mini-Maker Faire in Holland MI

Sorry for another post but I figured I would mention that you can ask your Barnes & Noble to run a "book fair" at the store on one day of the event. I assume that is how 694 is getting their kickback.

Basically if you get parents/supporters to spend sub 2,000 dollars at B&N that day you earn 10% of the profits. From 2k to 10k you get 15% and from 10k and up you get 20%.

I don't think we are going to earn a huge amount of money but for every $1000 we will get $100 so it certainly doesn't hurt.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

We are attending we got an invite from our local Tucson B&N we will showing off our 7 VEX teams and our FRC team as well as other STEM activities.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

358 plans to be at the Smith Haven Barnes & Noble.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

If you live in the Houston area. I am coordinating with the 14 different B&N stores in the area.
Please let me know if you want to stop by your location and drop off flyers.

We are working to promote the Houston Maker Faire on Nov 14th.
http://www.houstonmakerfaire.com/

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Any post-"maker faire" feedback?

Our BN "mini maker faire" was a flop. There were three or four tables set up with demos of toys. And almost no customers. :confused:

We spent two hours driving our robot around book shelves pretty much undisturbed by humans.

Ours was a flop also imo. There was a decent amount of traffic since it is a pretty active Barnes and noble (with a very active Starbucks inside).

But, none of it was for the "Makerfaire" there was a few product tables but really they were just trying to sell products nothing really screams Makerfaire. There was another frc team one day for half of the day and an Fll team. But, other then that there was nothing else. On Friday and Sunday we were the only makers there. There were some positives. To start we made friends of the Barnes and Noble staff and they offered us a good spot in a gift wrapping fundraiser. We also got to stress test our new robot and it gave our programmer time to work everything out before next week's off-season event. Overall in NY it felt unnecessary as the real world Makerfaire happened a month ago.

I doubt they will do it again but if they do we probably will go.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

Hello all,

I am happy to report that in Holland Michigan our mini maker faire was amazing. I was sitting at a table where we were showing kids how to solder a circuit board. We had two solder stations set up and we had people waiting in line from the time I got there until after I left. I think we ended up with close to 150 circuit boards complete from Friday to Sunday.

I was also very surprised to see that the girls really took the show for wanting to sit down and solder. I bet it was 2 to 1 girl to boy for the three hours that I was there. I never got one break and I would gladly do it again.

Tim

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

The MMF at the Concord Pike store was OK. There was all the items that B&N sells and the staff knew about them and how they worked.

There was a table of Little-Bits (must have been close to $1000 worth) that future makers were building stuff with. They had a good project handout with how the 'Bits' worked and what the goal circuit. The person running that was very good, they knew their stuff.

The Middletown DE (home to 1370 and 4954) Public Library was there showing off their 3D printer. They are one of the few places in the state you can go and print your own stuff. They had their Makerbot running most of the day. B&N has a $400 printer that they sell and they had that printing stuff all day.

My take, not a 'Maker-Faire', but B&N did a good job. Bigger and better for next year. My big takeaway is that it's important to get signed up / show interest NOW for your stuff to get represented for next year.

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We were at the B&N at the Tyler Mall in Riverside on Friday. 3 hours, 6 visitors and that was with us in a prime location, right next to the register. We did meet a grandmother of a member of 1983 Skunkworks (sorry, didn't get a name)

Like others have said, the other displays were a 3D printer pretending to print an object (object was already done, the 3D printer was running with no filament) and an COTS robot toy.

The highlight was when one of our sponsors showed up for an hour and we got time to chat.

We ended up cancelling our Sunday spots due to poor showing on Friday and other priorities.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

We were at the Walpole Mall Saturday afternoon to about 6. I was planning to stay to 7 but the crowds died down, so an early pack up. We did have plenty of space in the mall itself for driving, and we got lots of youngsters driving our test-bot. Alarm Robotics were with us Saturday, and came back for a Sunday session; I can't imagine much of a crowd then as the Patriots were playing down the street. There were several tables inside with kits to assemble, but I didn't get a chance to look.

It was about what I expected for a Mini-Maker Faire, in other words, local people showing off their crafts. I would call it a success in terms of advertising robotics in the Walpole schools.

This was definitely a corporate B&N affair. The manager can't have a Maker Faire on their own, but it sounded like there will be another next year this time.

Re: Who's going to a Barnes and Noble's Mini-Maker Faire?
 

The Barnes & Noble here in Columbia (technically, Forest Acres) is part of the notoriously-dead Richland Mall, and it was rainy, and we had the Sunday night spot. I had pretty low expectations, and while the turnout was modest those that were there seemed to have fun. :)