Pete Prodoehl, Author at Maker Faire Milwaukee

Friday Night is alright for Making! But that doesn’t mean we’ll be making on Friday night… You may have noticed that Maker Faire Milwaukee is September 28th, 29th, and 30th this year. That’s three days; Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but we won’t be going full throttle on Friday night.

The majority of Maker Faire Milwaukee will still take place on Saturday and Sunday, but we’re including Friday in our event date for a few reasons.

Field Trip Friday – We’ve been doing field trips for elementary, middle and high-school students during the day on Friday for the past few years. While this isn’t open to the public, it is an important part of our Maker Education Program.

Friday Night Market – New this year is an opportunity for Commercial Makers to sell the things they make from 5pm to 9pm on Friday. You may have noticed that Harvest Fair happens on Friday night while we are busy finishing the setup for Maker Faire. We wanted to extend the selling hours for Commercial Makers and offer them a new audience—the Harvest Fair attendees, and other makers. Note that the Friday Night Market is completely optional and only for Commercial Makers. The rest of us will be busing setting up our exhibits!

Industry, College & Career Exchange – For our inaugural Exchange we’ll be providing an opportunity for students, young talents, job-seekers and makers to explore career paths, education and work opportunities related to making and the critical STEAM fields. The Exchange will be happening on Friday as part of Field Trip Friday, as well as throughout the weekend.

So that’s the plan for Friday at Maker Faire Milwaukee. If you are not a Commercial Maker, not part of Field Trip Friday, and not involved in the Industry, College & Career Exchange, it’s business as usual. We’ll be doing setup Friday night, and preparing for Saturday morning’s opening at 10am. We’ll see you then!

Welcome, Makers! Our Call for Makers is now open! We want you to share your creativity and passion at Maker Faire Milwaukee in 2018. It’s our fifth year, and we want it to be bigger and better that ever before, and we need your help. Tell your maker friends, tell your maker neighbors, tell your teachers, tell your students, tell everyone at your makerspace to join us for another amazing year of making!

We’ve done out best to explain the different options for Commercial Makers, Companies, and other Organizations to get involved, but as always, if you have any questions, please get in touch with us. As always, if you want to join us to “Show & Tell” and not sell, you can do so for FREE.

So what are you waiting for? We can’t wait to see what you make!

Our next Maker Faire Milwaukee Planning Meeting will take place Wednesday, April 11 at 6:30pm at Brinn Labs in Bay View. If you’re interested in finding out more about the Faire, or you’d like to help out this year, please join us!

We’ll have a few updates on this year’s event, and you’ll get to meet other makers and find out what they might have planned for this year.

Brinn Labs is located at 433 E Stewart Street, Milwaukee, WI 53202 (Here’s more info and a map!)

Hard to believe, but true…our 5th Annual Faire is happening September 28-30, 2018!

We are excited to begin planning for this year’s Faire, and our Planning Group Kick Off Meeting is set for Thursday, February 8, 2018 at 6:30 pm. If you’re interested in helping this year, as a volunteer or as a maker, feel free to join us at Brinn Labs (the location for our 2018 meetings) and find out how you can help.

The Planning Group meets monthly, with smaller groups responsible for certain functions meeting separately, as needed. Please attend the Kick Off meeting if you would like to learn more about volunteering before the event, or about other ways you can support Maker Faire. If you are not able to attend the Kick Off Meeting, please contact us at info@makerfairemilwaukee.com with questions and ideas.

The holidays are coming up fast, and there are plenty of makers in the Milwaukee area are here to fill your need for unique hand-made gifts. In the next few weeks there are a number of events that promote making and supporting our makers means you’ve got a chance to make a maker happy, and make the recipient of a gift happy. Everyone wins!

We’ve got two events coming up on Saturday, November 25th, and Saturday, November 26th, 2017. Milwaukee’s Urban Garage Sale is back again and will be at the Mitchell Park Domes annex building and will bring together 65 talented local vendors, sound providers and foodies to create an alternative holiday shopping experience. Find out more on their Facebook page.

Also on the 25th & 26th is the Milwaukee Makers Market. You’ll find jewelry makers, artists, and designers. Locally-made products include ceramics, women’s clothing, leather goods, candles, and more. Find out more on their Facebook page.

If you plan things right, you’ll have plenty of time to visit both events. Who knows, you might be able to get most of your holiday shopping done in a single weekend!

If you really want an action-packed weekend, our friends at Milwaukee Makerspace are once again hosting their Holiday Make-A-Thon on Friday, November 24th, 2017 where you can get hands-on and make your own gifts. Join them for this free event from 1pm to 5pm and walk away with a laser-cut ornament, a 3D printed mini vase, a dog toy, or your first soldering project!

Finally, the Cream City Creatives will be presenting nearly 50 of Milwaukee’s finest artists and crafters on Saturday, December 16th, 2017 at Turner Hall. Cream City Creatives hopes to represent all of Milwaukee’s neighborhoods, and will offer a diverse and eclectic mixture of handmade creations. They’ll have returning artists as well as first-timers.

We look forward to joining these makers to check out the things they’ve created and support their efforts. We hope you will, too!

Wow, we did it again! And this time we set a World Record!

Let’s have a big round of applause and a huge thanks to all the makers, volunteers, attendees, and Daleks who were able to join us at Maker Faire Milwaukee this year.

This year we had nearly 250 makers and over 100 Daleks join us to make a fantastic Maker Faire!

We hope you had a good time, and that you left the Faire inspired to make something yourself, or to learn a new skill.

From the staff and volunteers at Maker Faire Milwaukee, we thank you for joining us and being a part of this amazing movement.

If you want to be alerted to any maker-related events in the near future, or just want to know about the next Maker Faire before everyone else, sign up for our email list!

If you missed the last two installments of “What Kids Want to See”, check out the previous post and the first one to see what kids at Betty Brinn’s Be A Maker space drew when we gave them some paper and crayons and asked the question “What would you like to see at Maker Faire this year?”

The pyramids were built by humans, and they are awesome feats of engineering! We don’t have any pyramids, but we do have geodesic domes, and a tiny house made from Construx. We’ve even got Blacksmithing and Fun with Fire, but that’s more “pyrotechnic” than “pyramid”… it’s close, right?

“Purple Bonfire” (as interpreted by an adult helper) isn’t exactly something you’ll see at Maker Faire Milwaukee, but we do have Game of Fire, which will definitely have fire, and we’ve also got Firefly Electronix, which isn’t fire at all, unless you do it wrong. And speaking of doing it wrong, watching The Power Racing Series is always a good chance to see an electrical fire…

Wow, I don’t even… This looks amazing, I mean, there’s a trampoline, a pool, and a 20 foot tall basketball hoop. None of our Makers have proposed anything like this, but we do have the South Milwaukee SeaPerch underwater ROV building, which uses a pool, so all we really need to add is a trampoline and a 20 foot tall basketball hoop.

Rumor has it our friends at the Betty Brinn Children’s Museum will have a castle at Maker Faire… cool! If you want to find your want to the castle, perhaps you need to see the Medieval Mapmaker, and if your quest is perilous and you need assistance, maybe the Larpcraft of Milwaukee crew can help you out.

I don’t know what “Pizza Cat” is, but I want to see it at Maker Faire, too! If we don’t have a “Pizza Cat” at least we’ve got Frankie Flood (who makes amazing pizza cutters) and Red Cat Racer, which is a race car built by Bay View High School students. Pizza + Cat = Awesome!

Besides all these awesome things, what we really want to see at the Faire is you! (But please, leave your cat at home!) Make sure you pre-register for tickets so we can see you at State Fair Park on September 23rd & 24th, 2017!

If you’ve attended Maker Faire Milwaukee in the past you may have seen a few projects that use an Arduino microcontroller. Or you may have seen things you didn’t even know had an Arduino microcontroller inside of them! The Arduino is an open source electronic prototyping platform that makes it easy to get started with all sorts of projects. They are used in robots, drones, 3D printers, CNC machines, toys, props, museum exhibits, and more!

And right now you’re thinking… “Hey, maybe I should get one of these Arduino things!” Well, we’ve got you covered! Okay, not all of you, but one lucky attendee will win an Arduino Beginner Kit!

What’s the catch? There’s always a catch, right? It’s easy, all you have to do is pre-register for a ticket to Maker Faire Milwaukee. That’s it. One lucky ticket holder will win this DFRobot Beginner Kit for Arduino, valued at $50. So don’t wait, get your ticket before September 23rd, 2017 in order to be eligible!

The kit comes with everything you need to get started and build over a dozen projects. (You will need a computer to program the Arduino, but everything else is in the box.) You’ll be flashing LEDs and controlling a servo in no time!

Don’t waste time standing in line! Pre-register for tickets and you just might win this Arduino kit and kickstart your own adventure in making! GET YOUR TICKETS BEFORE SEPTEMBER 23, 2017 and we’ll see you at Maker Faire Milwaukee on September 23rd & 24th, 2017!

Our Call for Makers is now closed! We’ve got a few more applications to go through, but we’ve got over 200 Makers ready to go for Maker Faire Milwaukee 2017! You may want to browse through our Makers and Exhibits so you know what you’ll see, and you’ll probably want to check out the Schedule so you know what to do. (And yes, we’re still looking for people to volunteer at the event.)

After you’ve done all those things, there’s one thing left to do… Get Your Tickets! If you are not a Maker or a Volunteer, you’ll need to get tickets to the event. We want you to pre-register for tickets because it makes things easier for you, and for us! Tickets are FREE, but we do ask you to register. (And if you love the Faire, you can opt to be a supporter by purchasing a ticket or making a donation. Everything goes towards help us make sure we can return next year for another Faire.)

When you get your ticket, you can consider it a special “MakerPass” that will allow you to skip the long lines and get into the Faire fast! Why waste time standing in line when you can get into the Faire and start making things, seeing things, being amazed, and learning new things. GET YOUR TICKETS NOW and we’ll see you at Maker Faire Milwaukee on September 23rd & 24th, 2017!

We’ve accepted over 175 Makers and today is final day to apply for the Call for Makers! You’ve got a little bit of time left to apply, but don’t delay. Friday, September 1st, 2017 at 11:59pm is the deadline! What happens if you apply after the deadline? You’ll be added to the waiting list, and if there is a cancellation or some other change that allows more Makers, we’ll get in touch with you… but don’t rely on that. Apply TODAY!

If your project just didn’t come together, or your couldn’t find booth helpers, you can always help out and apply to Volunteer at the event. We need volunteers to help everything run smoothly. Did you know Milwaukee puts on the largest FREE Maker Faire in North America? It’s a lot of work, but when you’re part of the team, everything is awesome!

And finally, if you can’t make it as a Maker or a Volunteer, please come as an attendee, and check out the amazing things people have made. But please, make sure you pre-register for your tickets! When you get tickets ahead of time it’s like a special “MakerPass” that allows you to skip the long lines and get into the Faire fast! (And it makes life much easier for our volunteers.) GET YOUR TICKETS NOW so we can see you at Maker Faire Milwaukee on September 23rd & 24th, 2017!

« Previous Page — Next Page »