Messages and images from Maker Faire: Kansas City

On Saturday, I made it out to the first full-blown Maker Faire put on by anyone other that Make Magazine and O’Reilly Media. O’Reilly Media developed a playbook for organizing and executing the event, and Kansas City was home to the pilot of that program, using the historic Union Station as the venue. The event…

Maker Faire: Kansas City was held at the historic Union Station. Photo courtesy of Kauffman Foundation via Flickr.

On Saturday, I made it out to the first full-blown Maker Faire put on by anyone other than Make Magazine and O’Reilly Media. O’Reilly Media developed a playbook for organizing and executing the event, and Kansas City was home to the pilot of that program, using the historic Union Station as the venue. The event brought out all kinds of makers, including the Open Source Ecology group led by former TED presenter Marcin Jakubowski, robotics of every variety you can imagine, Arc Attack playing music using Tesla coils and an organization called Boys Grow that takes young people and teaches them entrepreneurship using a farm where the kids run the business. As if that wasn’t enough, there were also people making some great painted models, others spinning their own yarn and even a guy riding around on a motorized Adirondack chair. It was really a great mix of makers from lots of different backgrounds, and, better yet, there were lots of kids there to take it all in.

Maker Faire co-founder Tim O’Reilly speaks at Maker Faire: Kansas City. Photo courtesy of Kauffman Foundation via Flickr.

Center Stage presentation – Tim O’Reilly

Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media, spoke at the event’s center stage about the history of his company, how it connects to the geek community and how innovation from maker communities fits into the broader picture of entrepreneurship. Specifically, he pointed out that most of what makers do is just for the fun of it, for the fulfillment that the individual gets from doing something he or she thinks is cool. O’Reilly pointed out that we need to remind ourselves that the discovery we get when we learn something is part of the fun and we shouldn’t just approach learning as absorbing what others have already discovered.

When talking about startups, he noted the trend to view getting funded as some sort of success, where success should instead be about getting people to pay for your product. He added, “Money is like gas in a car. You know you need to keep it full, but a road trip is not a tour of gas stations.” In other words, it is important to make money, but you should try to “create more value than you capture. In a free market system, we have to have the concept of creating value for the entire system, not just ourselves.”

Maker Faire co-founder Dale Dougherty speaks at Maker Faire: Kansas City. Photo by Willis Jackson.

Center Stage presentation – Dale Dougherty

Dale Dougherty, the publisher of “Make Magazine” at O’Reilly Media and one of the founders of Maker Faire, discussed what is special about makers, why Maker Faires draws such an eclectic crowd and the goals of the event. The real goal for Maker Faire was to bring DIY enthusiasts together. They wanted “to create a context for makers to share stories with one another.” Dougherty added that focusing on makers was a “way to bring lots of people together without drawing people that do one single type of thing.” He likened makers to garage bands, saying it is OK if you aren’t any good because you aren’t any good together, but eventually you need to make it out of the garage.

He closed by summarizing what is clear if you have ever attended a Maker Faire: “The goal of Maker Faire is to make more makers.” We can only hope that they succeed.

Below is a slide show with more pictures from Saturday, courtesy of Kauffman Foundation via Flickr:

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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