We’ve been receiving a lot of questions and feel an update is in order! To that end, we are very pleased to announce that Toronto’s next Mini Maker Faire will be held in 2013.

The support that’s come from various members of the Maker community, both local and from farther afield, has been much appreciated. Putting on a Mini Maker Faire involves a great deal of work, time and expense, and an enthusiastic response from the community is extremely gratifying.

Last year’s event was put together in just over three months with extremely limited resources, which meant that we just didn’t have the capacity to do a lot of things the way we wanted.

Thankfully we are now equipped with not only experience and relationships with a wide range of amazing individuals and organizations, but also greater help from Make. The popularity of the Mini Maker Faires has spurred Make/Maker Faire to streamline the application process, put in place a (very helpful & friendly) liaison for Mini Maker Faire producers, and create a Playbook that provides step-by-step instructions on how to put an event together. They have also created a lot of forms so that applicants don’t need to do everything from scratch.

So, with all of this in mind, what is the situation re: the 2013 Mini Maker Faire?

At the moment we are actively looking into venues and sponsorships, and welcome feedback about potential partnerships. These are the most important components, and need to be looked after before anything else can be done. This kind of event can be incredibly expensive and the right venue/partners are key. Once these components have been sorted out, we will be free to discuss things like promotion, programming, participants, etc.

What can you do?

If you’re interested in helping us out in any way, or have any suggestions/comments, please contact us at info@makerfairetoronto.ca. In the initial stages it’s easiest if there’s a smaller core team, but as the event gains momentum we’ll definitely need more hands on deck. We’d also like to get feedback from Makers as we get the programming sorted, and if you’d like to be a part of that process we’d love to hear from you.

In the meantime, we’ll be keeping people up to date here on our website, and on our Twitter Feed.

We are very excited to see the next event unfold and cannot wait for 2013!

Lindsay & Team MMF T.O.

Friday night we’re hosting a party + lightning talks at Site 3 for SoOnCon attendees. If you don’t have a ticket, you can get one at the party, or you can get an “evening pass” for just the lightning talks.

The party goes from 6pm to midnight, lightning talks are 7pm to 9pm, and cover topics such as quad copters, small-run book publishing, microcontroller circuit design, musical shoes and more!

(As for the “more”: we can’t have fire projects at the Lightbox, so they have to go somewhere…)

Saturday we’re going to be in the TIFF Bell Lightbox. Talks, demos, soldering workshop, project gallery. We will have space for your projects, so bring them and show them off! A schedule is posted on the SoOnCon website.

Some of the the other things happening with our community on Saturday night as part of Nuit Blanche include:
Chiptunes Orchestra – A video game music performance at the TIFF Bell Lightbox
Shannon’s Fireflies – An interactive light grid that visualizes and distorts speech
The Heart Machine – A large interactive heart sculpture that reacts to participants by shooting large blasts of fire

The participant badges for SoOnCon have always been hackable microcontroller development platforms. Everyone who attends gets one of these badges, and we provide tools and assistance for badge hacking. For this year’s design, let’s just say we are going to be ordering thousands of LEDs:

Which leads us to the next point: in order to buy thousands of LEDs, have enough for everyone, and not go completely broke, we need to know how many to buy. You should buy your ticket, so we know how many badges to produce!

http://sooncon3.eventbrite.com/

At SoOnCon, everyone is a contributor, everyone is a participant. Please help spread the word and make this event even more awesome.

We’re most of the way through Day One and it’s been just amazing; thanks so much to everyone who’s come out.

Want to find out what’s been happening? If you’re on Twitter just search for @MakerFaire_TO (or Maker Faire Toronto, or any combination thereof) and check out what people have been saying. There really is *so* much to examine and look at in the space – we can’t wait til we start seeing all the photos people have taken!