Maker Shed — A Best “DIY Project” at the Faire

Maker Shed — A Best “DIY Project” at the Faire

Popular Mechanics did a “Top 10 Coolest DIY Projects” at the Faire and they chose Maker Shed as one of the coolest things. Sweet!

Imagine a vast, tech-loving hardware store packed full of robots, gadgets, software, musical instruments and more. Take everything apart, write up some assembly instruction, and box it all back up. Now you’ve got something like Maker SHED.

Serving as a sort of gift shop for the Faire, Maker Shed is part hardware depot, part physical gateway into the DIY world. There are shelves of parts, and guides for amateur robot builders; a table of build-it-yourself guitars; and kits for creating your own 3D printer from scratch. If you’re a veteran maker, it’s a showroom for the latest DIY tech, like Internet-connected Arduino hardware. If you’re looking to get started, the entry barriers are as low as you need them to be. North Carolina’s Harris Educational, for example, demonstrated beginner-oriented kits for building vacuum-sealed incandescent bulbs from scratch.

As someone who’s witnessed the entire process of setting up, staffing, and breaking down the Sheds at most of our Faires, I can attest to the fact that it’s an absolutely staggering amount of effort — endless grunt work, logistics, stocking and merchandising, shipping and receiving, point of sales, product demoing, and on and on and on. And the fact that it’s all done by a relatively small number of staff people (and a platoon of precious volunteers) is equally impressive. Then there’s the content of the Shed itself. If there’s a Geek Heaven, its storehouses overflow with this very same merch.

Congrats to everyone on the Shed team for another command performance. We don’t call you the Shedi for nothing!

10 Coolest DIY Projects From Maker Faire 2011

10 thoughts on “Maker Shed — A Best “DIY Project” at the Faire

  1. Paul Birkmeyer says:

    Popular Science or Popular Mechanics?

    1. Anonymous says:

      MECHANICS! Fixed.

    2. Anonymous says:

      MECHANICS! Fixed.

    3. Anonymous says:

      MECHANICS! Fixed.

  2. terrefirma says:

    I hate to complain, but why is it that suddenly a post will pop up, and then I realize that it’s from several years ago? Are you all on that much of a shoestring, because I am late to the maker movement, and you seem like BIG BOYS who should have lots of current stuff to publish…Yes? Then again I did contact Radio Shack to ask about support for a developing maker space, and she was UNFAMILIAR WITH THE CONCEPT!! Although, happy to become educated about it, it just hasn’t made its way to FLA. Probably because the big bucks aren’t in evidence, and perish the thought that we’d do anything for any other motivation…. Okay. I’m done. Thank you for listening.

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Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. His free weekly-ish maker tips newsletter can be found at garstipsandtools.com.

View more articles by Gareth Branwyn

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