We’re thinking that this is our best bet for the DMS Maker-made Fair.
Thoughts? Pro? Con?
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I’ll state the obvious. That’s Thanksgiving weekend.
Pro: Anyone who is bored by Saturday might be interested in attending.
Con: Lots of people travel for Thanksgiving.
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Also, didn’t they (the board, PR, or expansion; I cant remember) say that we wont have one this year because of expansion? I personally don’t see why we cant have one (and would participate again), but I do remember someone saying it on Talk.
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We wont be doing open house.
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ah, ok, got my wires crossed.
Who is our organizer/contact person for the event?
I know this is sort of on a tangent to this but I think it sort of LinkedIn with it. When will people be able to pick up their items from the fair? Is it possible for us to get up an exhibit of their prize-winning items in the lobby before this? I think this would be a wonderful tie in to the show and well not a substitute for an open house but a good PR move.
It sounds to me like committees need to reach out more to the board and directors on things like this. We usually have open house in October so we are pretty far behind now. That said, everything is in disarray because of expansion and we opted to do the fair instead.
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I organized it last year. I assume I’m organizing it again this year.
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Thanks for doing that last year and possibly this one 
I am hopeful that PR does advertise much more robustly this year as last year I think a Facebook ad was dropped the morning of and that was it. Supposedly, 2 years ago had non-members lined up out the door.
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I believe it was decided last winter to delay the open house until we had expansion complete. At that time we thought expansion would be completed by early spring. Now that it looks like it’s going to be delayed I think we need to rethink waiting because I think we need the open house if we can get several committees move and have some sort of a definite idea on some things I think about the time of the 10th anniversary might be a good time to do an open house and we got enough a lead time to that we definitely don’t have enough for this fall.
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And the fair noted above is the State Fair of Texas - not the Maker Fair. Just to be clear.
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wait, so I was correct in my other post? Because I think @dryad2b is referring to a craft fair at DMS.
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We aren’t having an “Open House”, but James wanted people to enter the State Fair and then organize a “gallery night” of some sort to share the creativity. Check.
Separately, the topic of doing the (more or less) annual Maker Fair came up, and Beth has picked up the torch for same.
On Facebook, I floated the suggestion to see if the Board would allow the workshop in Flex to be cleared for the event. There’s a lot more floorspace, so the traffic flow would be more manageable and it is only one door away from the lobby. Whereas if it were held in Interactive, there would be more doors and the challenge of not having people get lost looking for Interactive and/or Lecture Hall. BUT, since that is technically a workspace rather than a classroom, I think the board would have to rule on whether we evict makers from that area from late Friday evening thru late Saturday afternoon. (although there seem to be unoccupied tables available regularly over in the south workshop these days, so it’s not like we’d be shutting anybody down from makery for the weekend…) Plus, if PR wanted to have a few tour guides available to offer tours to non-members coming to shop, the Lobby would be a good “catch them coming and going” location.
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ok check, I am up to speed!
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FYI for PR folks some lessons learned from past: The term Maker Made (DMS term) vs Maker Faire (Fair is so close it would be infringement) is used because the later is trade marked. Just like Rube Goldberg is - want to use those names it’ll cost you and have rules for both of these.
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Interested parties should probably keep an eye on this space, considering the current turmoil of the whole Maker brand…
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Even if bankrupt, someone will end up owning the Trade Mark as it is an asset of the bankrupt estate as it has value.
For example, I remember the KKK was sued and forced into bankruptcy. Their circle with a cross and KKK was trademarked (was news to me) and as part of estate either the NAACP or the SPLC ended up owning it so the Klan couldn’t use it.
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I agree. Interested parties right now appear to have much more financial clout than DMS, but watch that space… y’never know…