#makerfest2014

[technomugs]

How India’s first Maker Fest caught people’s attention online?

India’s first Maker Fest brought to the city by Silicon Valley based, Venture Capitalist and founder of the Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation (MJFF), Asha Jadeja Motwani turned out to be a successful Indian derivative of California’s wildly popular “Maker Faire”.

#MakerFest2014 saw over 80 Indian innovators rub shoulders with many foreign makers around the world. But building a social online buzz leading up to the event was what puzzled the team at MJFF. It didn’t take them much effort to recognise Jetbro's social media presence online and how we could devise intelligent and well thought-out digital strategies that is bound to generate a response and make them the talk of the town, which they soon were, even before the actual fest started.

Our blogs on every Maker attending the fest and about the pre-event meet-ups found a connect among the participant, makers and also garnered interests among locals in Ahmedabad who decided to visit the event to meet some fun innovators and also enrolled themselves and their kids for several Do-It-Yourself workshops.

The Facebook pages were set abuzz with our team posting live updates along with pictures. Posts and pictures caught the imagination of those who couldn’t make it on the first day and made sure they didn’t miss the second and final day of the fest.

The LIVE tweets were an equal hit among the makers and participants during the fest as well. Through the tweets, they knew which workshop was being held where and which eminent guest or Maker just joined the fest. Makers continued to tweet to us throughout the event and some of those who found themselves through our twitter page made sure they met each other at the fest.

All in all, we built happy connections be it through our blogs, Facebook or Twitter, the ones that MJFF will again benefit from when they host yet another Maker Fest next year.

If you wish to build a connection like that, with your audience for your venture, drop us a line at [email protected]

[makerfest]

From building an Eye loupe to making a battery less remote

A team of Makers, including Nidhi Sharma, Rohit Gupta, Ritika Malik, Ishan Pardesi, Netal Yadav, Saral Aggarwal and Priyanshi Jain came to #MakerFest2014 as a team who offered 5 different workshops on products they had developed at Texas Instruments Center for Embedded Product Design(TI-CEPD), Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology(NSIT), Delhi; under the mentorship of Prof. Dhananjay V. Gadre.

The workshops offered were unique, in the sense that they were actually developed from scratch by their entire lab team. Similar was the intention when they came to deliver them to the participants at #MakerFest, to teach them to build things from scratch.

Their team made sure that every participant made devices on their own and ensured that the participants built successful makes. All participants, got to take home fully functional products that they made with their own hands at the end of the workshop.

Some of these products can be found here.

[makerfest]

Maker Fest Recap!

India's first Maker Fest brought to the city by Silicon Valley based, Venture Capitalist and founder of the Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation, Asha Jadeja Motwani turned out to be a successful Indian derivative of California's wildly popular "Maker Faire".

#MakerFest2014 saw over 80 Indian innovators rub shoulders with many foreign makers around the world. Some of the makers who exhibited at the fest included child prodigy- Susant Pattnaik- famous for designing a wheel chair which functions on breath sensor, a team that created Rural Utility Vehichle (Evomo) among many others.

The Maker nation took notice as India's eminent innovation entrepreneur and tech guru Sam Pitroda, chairman of the National Innovation Council and Adviser to the Prime Minister, inaugurated the fest.

The two day long fest, which was an open public faire hosted several school kids across the city, who got to learn and make something of their own with our makers.

India's first Maker Fest was also India's first brush with Google Glass. Google hackathon witnessed selected programmers from the country, being introduced to this wearable computer technology and were invited to devise application for the Glass that is yet to hit the market.

The fest also saw the likes of Pranav Mistry, the Indian scientist best known for his works on Sixth Sense and Samsung Galaxy Gear and Anand Gandhi, the Director of the critically acclaimed Indian film, Ship of Theseus.

The fest drew closure with a panel discussion and a promise to return soon with yet another Maker Fest, celebrating innovations and DIY culture among a community of makers and learners across India. 

[makerfest]

Blind Hackathon by E4D as a part of Maker Fest 2014 at Blind People's Association, Ahmedabad!

Education for Development and the Blind Person's Association Of Ahmedabad conducted a workshop for the blind on the 3rd of Jan. About 30 blind students participated in the workshop. The event was planned to coincide #MakerFest2014 at NID, with the goal of including the blind youth in the emerging Indian Maker Movement.

The morning started with presentation by Govindraj, Manager of the Blind Lead Workshop in Vellore, TN, who demonstrated several blind accessible construction methods and a Braille label maker that he has helped to design. Participants were then introduced to basic electronics like buzzers, motors, vibrators and the were encouraged to consider how these component mechanisms could be put together to be helpful to them in their daily lives.

For example, a group of students came up with the idea of mounting a button controlled buzzer onto the front of his jacket to alert vehicle drivers if their presence while crossing the road.The students were introduced to simple circuits on the breadboard with buzzers, motors and switches, who then went around teaching the other students and soon there was buzzing and beeping all over the place, with blind people being able to make the simple circuits on their own. Govindraj and other members of Blind Lead showed how to emboss Braille onto soda cans and use it as strong labels for outdoors labelling such as on trees, boards.

Team E4D then, went on to have an ideation session where the students came up with real life challenges that they would wish to solve. They eventually formed teams on various projects and goals that E4D and Blind Lead will help them achieve over the coming months.

[makerfest]

Processing Workshop at Maker Fest by Shreekant Pawar

Our Maker, Shreekant Pawar, in the true spirit of "Open Source" has been wanting since a while to share his knowledge of "Processing" especially with people who have never coded before. Maker fest 2014 turned out to be the massive occasion to do just that for this maker.

The response for the Processing workshop was so much that he was forced to conduct the workshop in open space and had to project his slides on to the wall (as seen in the picture below). The result was artistically rustic and simply mind-blowing. It was a LIVE interactive and eventful workshop for both our participants and Shreekant.

Click here for the slides from his workshop, that he shared with us. You can use them to conduct your own processing workshop and share the love!

For all the updates on Maker Fest visit our website.

[makerfest]

Meet Our Maker: Sagar V Patel

Sagar is an aspiring engineer focusing on his areas of interest like Human Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence and Multimedia Systems.

He loves learning and discovering his favourite subject – Quantum Computing – all on his own. Following his passion for Human Interaction, he and his partner aimed to redefine human interaction with musical instruments – their combined focus leading to MusiTronics – three devices which change the way music is generated.

He is currently involved in projects on ‘Voice Controlled Wheelchair’ and ‘Temperature Sensing and Monitoring in Industries’ using ZigBee protocol.

Register here for #MakerFest2014 to be held in Ahmedabad on 4th and 5th January.

[makerfest]

Meet Our Maker: Saral Aggarwal

Saral Aggarwal is a third year undergraduate student pursuing Instrumentation And Control Engineering from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology in New Delhi.

He is a DIY enthusiast and loves to play with electronics.His interests include hacking old things,making electronic toys, etc.

Register here for #MakerFest2014 to be held in Ahmedabad on 4th and 5th January.

[makerfest]

Meet Our Maker: Aakash

Aakash, the founder of Aha 3D Innovations, has always been an innovator at heart. While moonlighting on R&D projects while keeping his day job as an engineer, he became painfully aware of the limitations of conventional prototyping. 

This was in 2009, and when he saw a post of wired.com about $1000 3D printer, the makerbot cupcake, he immediately ordered one, which happened to be the first makerbot in India. After putting it together and actually seeing it working, the magic of 3D printing sank in.However, soon thereafter, the then-alpha extruder of the makerbot died. Importing spares and consumables made clear the requirement and potential of a fully indigenous 3D printer. 

So, when he quit his day job to become a full-time entrepreneur in 2011, 3D printing was the natural way forward. He was joined by Dinesh, a young and energetic team member, and the Reality 3D came about, which was warmly received by several prestigious organizations and Institutions. Based on the feedback of the Reality 3D series, the team developed the ProtoCentre 999, India's first dual all-metal extruder 3D printer, and the ProtoCenter 1812, the industrial 3D printer.

Welcome to Makerfest to see the ProtoCentre 999 for yourself!

Register here for #MakerFest2014 to be held in Ahmedabad on 4th and 5th January.