There has been a bit of a hoo-har today (Sunday 9th March) about an announcement at South-by-South-West (SXSW – a music, film and comedy festival in Austin, Texas… that as I understand it is the sort of festival working hard and doing a good job of being taken seriously by bias US media, bias as in it is not in New York or California) of a London based “flagship” Maker Faire in the summer of 2015 the announcement was carried by several media outlets but most notably “The Guardian“.
The poorly worded article which caused such a stir among the UK maker scene implies that the event will run for four weeks. Chats and emails with Sabastopol, CA based Make Media employees say this is “unlikely” no “flagship” Faire has ever been longer than a weekend, even in the USA. They find it hard to understand why UK makers are upset by the news, saying that the New York and Bay Area events have budgets in the $100k+ region and are truly huge events and the London event will be in a different league to anything staged outside of the USA before. Of course just like SXSW there is a feeling of “London” bias for all reporting and money oriented stuff in the UK…
There has been confusion too about when the event will run. Some have read “next summer” as meaning summer 2014. The event is planned for the summer of 2015 and will be held at Here East at the Olympic Park in east London. Also if I was one of the organisers of the UK Maker Faire at Newcastle, which has been running annually (with the exception of 2012) since 2009 this year being no exception, I’d be a little bit annoyed…
Whilst I think the organisers don’t at all understand the current UK Maker movement (in and out of London) or the rag-tag band of disparate UK Mini Maker Faire producers I do think they plan to bring a tremendous event to London. I’ll be there in some capacity (try and stop me). My personal hope is that this might be a big enough event that Make can bring Adam Savage of the Mythbusters (and every Bay Area Maker Faire) to the UK to speak about making as well as attracting the very best UK, European and international makers to the UK.
So I say lets get behind this super event for Europe and the UK and understand the excitement the staff at Make feel about it. Even if this press release was poorly written, researched and put out at just the wrong time. On reflection I feel the staff at Make might have held off this announcement until April’s UK Maker Faire in Newcastle, though perhaps they couldn’t have said it and looked those organisers in the eye? I wish Here East the best of luck for the event but would very much encourage them to look beyond London and spend more than a little time getting to know the maker community, after all, if it’s going to be a truly huge event, you’ll need them.
Image by Make Media.
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