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

[nanogru]

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.

[jijiglobe]

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

[mastachyra]

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

[Roger]

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....)

[Billfred]

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

[tab1a]

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

[aeastet]

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

[Masterchi45]

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???

[rsisk]

Robokong has the B&N in Riverside covered.

[Sperkowsky]

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.

[Sperkowsky]

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.

[Sperkowsky]

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.

[aeastet]

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

[Foster]

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.

[rsisk]

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.