“Maker Faire is a celebration of invention, creativity, and curiosity showcasing the very best of the global Maker Movement. People of all ages and backgrounds gather to learn, share, play and make” – this is how Maker Faire is self-described on its website and we couldn’t agree more.
We’ve been attending Shenzhen Maker Faire as visitors in the last couple of years, but this year, time² being one of the chosen projects to participate with a “scholarship” from Chaihuo Makers Community, we had the opportunity to exhibit time² on our own booth. It was our first ever experience on a fair and what an amazing experience it was indeed!
SeaWorld Culture & Arts Center, the new venue for 2018, was a great choice and it was overwhelmingly packed with visitors from day one. I think attendance in 2018 broke all records!
We can say that visitor response for time² was extremely positive and still be modest! We estimate that more than 1000 visitors stopped by our booth (B07) in the 3 days of the fair while more than 150 people, disappointed that time² wasn’t market ready yet, left us their contacts to be notified when it will be available.
Visitor feedback was very useful. They were interested in more languages and sizes. Most of them were interested to get time² to decorate public spaces, like cafes, restaurants, hotels – there were even a couple of visitors that wanted to use time² in schools to teach Chinese students how to tell time in English! Quite a few told us that time² 45x45cm size is quite big for the average Chinese home and requested smaller models.
And this being Maker Faire, a lot of the visitors were fellow makers. We loved having interesting conversations explaining how time² works and why we made those choices while having interesting feedback and suggestions from like-minded people. We felt so proud when members of the Arduino team came by our booth to tell us how much they like time².
We want to thank everyone – visitors who honored us with their visit, as well as organizers who did a great job at organizing the event! We are looking forward for next year!