Thank you all for making the day simply fantastic!

Wow, now that was fun 🙂  What a truly awesome day!!!

Thanks to everyone who came along:  you were all fantastic.  We really appreciated how you were all excellent to each other.  That made the job of the crew significantly easier.  Thanks.

A special thank you to our Contributing Sponsors Swinburne University of Technology, Uniting Church in Australia and 3D Printing Systems.  Thanks also to our assisting sponsor element14 for their support with the soldering workshops, and a special shout out to MakeDo for their wonderful system that made the Maze and partition screens possible.  Without the help we received from our sponsors, it wouldn’t have been possible to host the event.  And of course, thanks to Make and O’Reilly media for their support and encouragement.  Thank you all very much.

The day itself would not have been the intensely fun and fantastic event that it was without our wonderful family of Makers who came along to show their projects and skills.  You folks simply rocked!  And I’d particularly like to thank everyone who traveled from far away to be with us, and to John Bosua for his help with equipment.  Please check out the list of Makers on the Maker page to learn more about their work.

And last, but very much not least, I’d like to officially thank the core team and our other volunteer members of the Mini Maker Faire Melbourne crew.  Please check out the M Team page to find out a bit more about who pitched in to make the event happen.  Truly outstanding help from all of you.  Thanks for making my job a heck of a lot easier.

My thanks again to you all for helping the Connected Community HackerSpace run the first very successful Australasian Mini Maker Faire.  Call me crazy, but I’m already looking forward to doing it again soon!

Here we go! – Have an Excellent Day :)

Well, today is the big day!  I hope you’re all suitably excited – I know I am.  So many fantastic and fun things for everyone to see and take part in.

For those attending today’s event, there’s just one main thing we’d ask of you all: Please be excellent to each other today.

There are couple of other things worth mentioning that relate to the approach we’ve taken to planning and running this event.  Understanding these ideas might help you understand the style of the event a little better.

Unconferences and Open-Space Technology
The other important thing to note is that we’ve adopted in large part an “unconference” approach to running this event, using some of the main ideas behind the Open-Space Technology (OST) approach.  

The main thing to keep in mind is that the day is your day: make of it what you will.  If something isn’t working, please feel free to work with others to improve it.  If you don’t like something you’re involved in, make use the rule of two feet.  Although we have many elements of the programme pre-planned and organised, we’ve attempted to have Makers contribute to that process as much as is practical.  We’ve also left some elements of the programme open to dynamically evolve on the day, particularly with respect to presentations, talks, demonstrations, discussions and potentially even adhoc. workshops that don’t require a lot of preparation.

We’re standing on the shoulders of giants: these philosophies for running events come from a number of sources, including our friends at Noisebridge Hackerspace.  What follows is a a discussion of their Tripartite Pillars system, in the context of our Maker faire event.

Tripartite Pillars
At the core of the event, we’re applying the basic thinking behind the Noisebridge Hackerspace Tripartite Pillars, and we’re asking all our makers, volunteers and attendees to abide by and help promote this philosophy:

– Excellence: “Be excellent to each other” (yes, courtesy of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure).  Mini Maker Faire Melbourne will be a fantastic day if we all take ownership of that one simple principle.  Everything else will flow easily from there.  If you think an action you’re about to make may not be considered excellent by others, ask someone else first and avoid having someone refer you to the fundamental rule of all social spaces.

– Do-ocracy: We’ve created this event and the spaces within it to provide makers the opportunity to showcase what they do.  It’s your day and we want you to take advantage of it.  We’re running this event with volunteer help, donated facilities and services, and limited funds.  It will help us immensely if you take ownership of your needs and help to make the day a great one for yourself and everyone else.  You don’t need to ask permission to do something excellent, particularly where it won’t adversely effect others.  If you see something that needs doing, or a problem that needs to be addressed, please step in and fix it yourself.  If you’re in doubt whether your action is a good choice for others, whether it is safe or whether you can handle it alone, find a buddy and work on it together: grab another maker or a volunteer and work out a solution.

– Consensus: With a nod to “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”, we’re encouraging – as much as possible – making decisions by consensus.  Where that’s not possible, and particularly where Excellence or Do-ocracy are at risk, we’ll employ judicious use of “benevolent dictators” to keep the show moving and support the needs of as many people as we can. Also see here.

A note about the attendee ticket wait list

As you may have noticed, our first release of Mini Maker Faire Melbourne tickets went pretty quickly: within days the initial 250 ticket allocation was booked out. At that point we opened a wait list to enable others to reserve a spot if additional tickets became available.

Our main challenges with additional ticket releases were two fold:  one, we needed to ensure the volunteer team capability could support additional headcount and two, we needed to ensure sufficient makers would be available to support additional numbers.

I’m pleased to announce that we’re now at a point where we can begin releasing additional tickets in batches.

As more makers register and volunteers get involved to help us run the event, we’ll release additional allocations. If you are currently on the wait list for tickets, keep an eye out for an email over the next week inviting you to book your tickets. And again, if you’re a maker, we still have room for additional exhibitors, presenters, activity hosts and workshop organisers. Joining the Maker Faire as a Maker doesn’t require an attendee ticket. If you have maker skills or creations that you’d like to share, please register you interest via the Maker Entry Form

We’ve started announcing Makers

This update confirms that we’ve started the process of vetting Maker applications.  If you’ve submitted one via our web form, you will be hearing from us via email in the next few days.  We’ll also be doing some profiling of makers on the blog and other parts of the website.

If you haven’t submitted a Maker application yet, there’s still time but we’d encourage you to do so quickly.  This will give you much more option in terms of the available ways in which you can be involved, and will help us a lot with planning and logistics.

Remember that as a maker with scheduled involvement in the event, you don’t need to book an attendee ticket:  your involvement gives you entry to Maker Faire.  So, if you’re a maker currently wait listed for an attendee ticket, please consider submitting a Maker proposal and be involved in the event directly.  There are many ways that you can be involved, including:

• having an exhibitors booth
• running a workshop or activity
• giving a prepared talk, demonstration or performance
• hosting a discussion group

This gives you the ability to commit to as little as say a 5 minute lightning talk, through to manning your own exhibitors booth for the day.

So, while we still have spaces left, we encourage you to submit a Maker application form, as soon as possible.

Tickets are now available for Mini Maker Faire Melbourne on Saturday 14th Jan 2012!

We’ll, if you weren’t excited enough by the venue announcement, we’re guessing you’ll start a stampede now !

Bookings are now open for the first tickets for Mini Maker Faire Melbourne for general public admission!.  The eventbrite booking site is up and the first 50 keen folks who beat the official announcement have already rushed in and reserved their places.

Book Your Tickets Now!

Tickets are free of charge, however we need you to register online as numbers are strictly limited.  We’ll use your personal ticket to help us manage attendance volumes, so keep it in a safe place and please bring it with you on the day.

Note that these tickets are for general admission by attendees, and aren’t needed if you are attending as a Maker exhibitor, workshop host, demonstrator or presenter.

Note also that we’ve asked you for a few bits of information as part of registering your ticket to help us plan and manage the event.  This information is optional, but if you can give us feedback, that will really help us out.

Maker Faire venue announced! Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC

We’re very pleased to announce that we’ll be holding Mini Maker Faire Melbourne at the wonderful Swinburne University of Technology in Hawthorn, Victoria!

Swinburne have graciously partnered with us for this first Australian Maker Faire, and we think it’s a fantastic location and a wonderful site for the event.

So a big “Thank You!” to Swinburne from all of us here on Mini Maker Faire Melbourne team

Check out the Attend page of the website for further details.

The Call for Makers is Open!

We’re pleased to announce that the call for Makers for the Mini Maker Faire Melbourne event is officially open!

We’re especially keen to receive submissions from Makers interested in:

• demonstrating or presenting things they have made.
• running workshops to show others how to make things or use tools.
• exhibiting products or services they can offer the community.

For those Maker’s who have already indicated their interest and have been waiting for the green light from us, we thank you for your patience and welcome you submissions.

Entry Form for Makers

Note also that we’ll be making the announcement of the venue and opening the ticket registration process tomorrow, Friday 16th December 2011.

Makers, please provide as much information as you can on the entry form to help us understand your requirements and to balance the event with a good range of projects. If you’d like to submit more than one proposal — for example, an exhibit table and a workshop or presentation — it would help us out if you could submit one entry form per proposal.

Please have a read of the content on the Maker page to better understand some of things we’re looking for from submissions.

If you aren’t sure about your submission, please feel free to ask questions on your submission, or drop us an email at: info (at) makerfairemelbourne (dot) com.

Welcome to Mini Maker Faire Melbourne!

Thanks for stopping by, and welcome to the Mini Maker Faire Melbourne site!

At the moment, we’re still developing the site, so stay tuned for further pages and regular updates as the event organisation ramps up.

We’ll be officially announcing the venue soon.  Our primary venue choice is confirmed – pending final checks and approvals.

You’ll also have a number of other channels beside this website from which you can get updates: Twitter, Google Plus, a mailing list and possibly even Facebook.  We’ll follow up with an official post about those channels soon.

If you’re a “Maker”, start thinking about what you’d like to exhibit or what you’d like to show or teach others.  Check out the Maker page for registration details.

We’re really excited about hosting this event on Saturday January 14th, 2012, and we’d love you to be part of it.  Mark the date in your calendar now, and drop by regularly over the next few weeks to see how things are shaping up!