We attended the 2nd Annual Maker Faire Producers’ Summit in Miami this past weekend! All weekend, Maker Faire Producers traded tips, tricks, and stories from their own faires. It is beyond inspiring meeting others like us from all over the world, including Germany, China, Nepal, France and all over the US. Below is a great summary on the events from the weekend.

2016 has been a crazy year for the Rochester Mini Maker Faire team! We attended 5 other Maker Faires, met tons of other Faires at the Maker Faire Producers Summit in SF, helped represent the NYS Maker Movement at the Nation of Makers Kickoff at the White House, participated in or first regional Burning Man event, created large art installations with the community for TEDxAllendaleColumbiaSchooland the Rochester Fringe Festival, and meet hundreds of Makers throughout the Greater Rochester area and beyond. It’s been a year beyond our wildest dreams.

The other faires we attended include: Mohawk Valley Mini Maker Faire, Troy Mini Maker Faire, World Maker Faire New York, National Maker Faire, and the Fredonia Mini Maker Faire. We also attended the Wellsville, Penfield, and Lima Primary School Maker Faires.

Huge thank you to everyone who attended the Rochester Mini Maker Faire today. From our initial numbers, it looks like we had around 2,000 people in attendance again! Here are some highlights from the 3rd Annual Rochester Mini Maker Faire.

Jimmy DiResta from the Making It Podcast, and of Discovery Channel & HGTV fame, will be returning to the Rochester Mini Maker Faire. He will be joined by Bill Grigg (TheMakersGuide.com and the CNC Router Tips Podcast) and Rory May (DirtySmith.com and DragonForgeLTD.com) to host a panel on Making.

The panel will be taking place from 11am-12pm in the Riverside Court at the faire.

We will be hosting two community meetings that will be comprised of updates, including our final list of accepted Makers, volunteer information, set up and day of the faire instructions, Q & A, and time to meet your fellow local Makers. The meetings will take place at the Rochester Makerspace (map) on:

Thursday, November 10th, 6:00 p.m.
Saturday, November 12th, 10:00 a.m.

The Makerspace does have a parking lot that can be accessed via Scramton St.

The same information will be covered at each meeting and posted online afterward, so don’t worry if you can’t make one.

We will also have postcards to give out to help spread the word about the faire.

Wow! We currently have about 120 applications. We will be adding and updating a list of Makers as we confirm their participation. We are looking at a much bigger event this year. And YES, Toothpick World will be back this year!

It is not too late to submit for the call for makers, we will continue to accept Makers as space allows, and place others on a wait list if space opens up.

We’re excited to announce that we will be redefining the concept of a “Green Room” for the 2016 Rochester Fringe Festival!We’re planning a Green Room that will be constructed of recyclables. It will be 20ft by 40ft room and constructed of almost 5,000 milk and water jugs. Inside the Green Room, you’ll be able to sit on furniture made of pallets beneath a chandelier made of recycled olive bar containers (the kind you get at Wegmans).

We’re building the walls in 4ft by 8ft sections (153 jugs per section). We’ll need 5 sections for the smaller walls, and 10 sections for the larger walls. The jugs will be held together using hot glue, nuts, bolts, and a few other surprises.

Now we need your help! Can we have your 1 gallon water and milk jugs so we can build this amazing structure? Please drop off the jugs at the Rochester Brainery near Village Gate.

We would also like to invite you to join our build crew! In late August or early September, we’ll begin building. Airigami has kindly offered up their new space, located at Made on State, as the build location. If you’re interested in helping us build the structure, or in becoming a drop off location, send us an email (rochesterfaireinfo@gmail.com) or sign up for our email list here:http://bit.ly/RMMFGreenRoom

We’re excited to announce that we will be representing the New York State Maker Movement at the White House kickoff for the National Week of Making tomorrow!

Be sure to follow all of our social media accounts as we will be posting photos throughout the weekend.

We will be staying in Washington DC for a few days after the kickoff to meet makers and other Maker Faire producers all from all over the country at the National Maker Faire. Huge thanks to our friends and mentors at NYSCATE for sending us.

Save the Date! The 3rd Annual Rochester Mini Maker Faire is November 19th, 2016.

We want to thank all of you again for attending the second annual Rochester Mini Maker Faire last year! This year’s Rochester Mini Maker Faire will be taking place on Saturday, November 19th, 2016 at the Rochester Riverside Convention Center, so save the date!

If you’re interested in being a maker in this year’s faire, our application will open in either mid-May or early June.

Photos from last year can be found on our Facebook and Flickr pages.

If you can’t wait for the Rochester Mini Maker Faire to get your maker fix, we recommend visiting our friends at neighboring New York Mini Maker Faires:

April 16th – Mohawk Valley Mini Maker Faire
May 7th – Buffalo Mini Maker Faire
June 4th – Eastern Long Island Mini Maker Faire
August 27th – Troy Mini Maker Faire
Sept 30th to Oct 2nd – NYC World Maker Faire
October 22nd – Fredonia Mini Maker Faire

Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about how to become a maker or anything about this year’s faire.

First of all, thank you for being part of the 2nd Annual Rochester Mini Maker Faire! Saturday was an was a tremendous success, far more than we could have imagined! We are so thrilled that everyone could make it out – all 3,000 of you!

Be sure to keep following our site as we will be posting some of our favorite stories from this past weekend here after Thanksgiving.

If you have any photos from the faire, feel free to share them with us! We have already started to post our photos up on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. We’ll probably have all of our photos posted within the next few days. If all goes as planned, we should also have the talks, along with other footage, up on YouTube later in the week. You can find us at:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RochesterMiniMakerFaire

Twitter: https://twitter.com/rochmakerfaire

Instagram: https://instagram.com/rochesterminimakerfaire/
Thank you once again for being a part of Rochester’s 2nd Annual Mini Maker Faire! We’re already starting to make plans for next year’s event. We should hopefully know more details within the next few months. If you would like to give us any direct feedback, feel free to reach out to us at anytime at rochesterfaireinfo@gmail.com.

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