Five Questions With: Brian Jepson

THE EIGHTH EDITION OF the RI Mini Maker Faire started off on a more modest scale, but unexpected happenings created very positive results, said co-founder Brian Jepson of the event that was held in August. / COURTESY BRIAN JEPSON
THE EIGHTH EDITION OF the RI Mini Maker Faire started off on a more modest scale, but unexpected happenings created very positive results, said co-founder Brian Jepson of the event that was held in August. / COURTESY BRIAN JEPSON

Brian Jepson talked with Providence Business News about the eighth annual Rhode Island Mini Maker Faire held in Providence last month. He said it is the second-oldest independent maker faire, noting that he and Kipp Bradford started it in 2009.

PBN: Tell me how the RI Mini Maker Faire began and how you became interested in the maker movement.
JEPSON:
I work at O’Reilly Media, where Make: magazine was started (in 2013, Make spun out of O’Reilly as a separate company). Not long after the magazine launched in 2005, the Make team began working on Maker Faire, which started in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and then spread to Austin, Texas (eventually to spread to many more cities). My friend and fellow Rhode Islander Kipp Bradford also became very involved with Make, and we began thinking about a Rhode Island version of the Faire as early as 2007. The spread of the Faire from the Bay Area to Austin was what made us realize we could scale it to Rhode Island.

After discussions with various organizations, we decided to launch the Faire with Waterfire, and we held the first RI Maker Faire as a free, outdoor event, held within Waterfire (at Financial Plaza) in 2009. It was a huge success. Thousands of people came, including a few of my colleagues from Make who were based on the East Coast (they came up from New York and also Pittsburgh). In the first year, we were known just as Maker Faire Rhode Island. This was before the Mini Maker Faire licensing program was established (to some extent, Mini Maker Faire is to Maker Faire as TEDx is to TED). Maker Faire is now a worldwide event, with licensed Mini Maker Faires such as ours all over the world.

PBN: How would you describe this year’s Faire? Were there more participants and spectators than usual?
JEPSON
: This year, we ran into some challenges raising funds early on, and decided to not go too big with the event. While we weren’t able to find any corporate sponsors for the Mini Maker Faire, individuals in the community (including some folks affiliated with companies and local organizations) donated generously to our Kickstarter fundraiser, and we raised $3,200 to cover the costs of the Faire. This, combined with the ticket sales, made it possible to put on the Faire, now in our eighth year. Although we didn’t try to make the event bigger this year, we did end up with a new type of exhibit this year that I was thrilled to have: a group of blacksmiths from the Worcshop maker space in Worcester theworcshop.com/. Because the Mini Maker Faire takes place indoors at Trinity’s Pell-Chafee Performance Center, we can’t have fire there. But because we’re part of AS220 Foo Fest, we were able to embed the Worcshop outdoors in Foo Fest, along with the Rhode Island Brewing Society, which also works with open flame. So in a way, we ended up being slightly bigger than last year and further extended our footprint into Foo Fest.

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PBN: What sort of projects were completed?
JEPSON
: We were very excited to have Mayor [Jorge O.] Elorza join us and learn to solder a wearable electronic blinky badge at our Learn to Solder workshop. This is a workshop that AS220 Labs runs continuously throughout the Faire, and it allows young and old to learn a fundamental skill in working with electronics. It’s a great way to demystify technology: you connect a battery, a switch and a couple of light emitting diodes to make a fun, interesting blinky object that you can proudly wear. One of the top attractions at the Faire was a project that Ocean State Maker Mill completed: an augmented reality sandbox. In it, attendees were invited to sculpt with sand, and a Microsoft Kinect scanned (in real-time) the height and depth of the sand while a projector changed the appearance of the sand so that high points were mountains and low points were ponds and rivers. Kelly Egan of Ocean State Maker Mill shared a time lapse of it at twitter.com/kellyegan/status/764536646217916416.

PBN: Have you already started planning for next year? Do you have the 2017 dates yet?
JEPSON
: We actually haven’t started planning for next year yet. Next up is the Rhode Island Mini Maker Faire: East Bay Edition, which we held for the first time last year in Newport. For that event, I work with Fab Newport and Tinker|Bristol. (The second annual Rhode Island Mini Maker Faire: East Bay Edition will be held Oct. 15, noon-5 p.m. at the Florence Gray Center at 1 York St., Newport.)
We don’t yet have the 2017 dates figured out. When we do, you can learn all about it at makerfaireri.com/.

PBN: What do you think is the best part about holding events such as the Mini Maker Faire?
JEPSON
: There are many things I like about holding the Faire, but there are a couple that I keep thinking about. First, it’s a pleasure to bring Rhode Island makers together with makers from all over the Northeast to share their projects and get to know each other. Most of our makers come from Rhode Island, but some are from New York and Massachusetts. In other years, we’ve had makers come from even further away. Second, and most important, is providing our young people with the opportunity to see technology inspired by art in action. So much of what we teach young people about technology seems to be technology for technology’s sake. Maker Faire shows off technology in the context of useful tools, engaging and fun projects, and learning experiences that don’t leave people asking why they just learned something. There is a lot of technology at a Maker Faire, from the old (blacksmithing) to the new (augmented reality), but the reason someone walks up to a maker’s exhibit is because it looks fun. The Rhode Island Museum of Science and Art brought a perfect example of this: a crank-driven spin art machine that lets visitors send paint spinning all over a canvas to create one-of-a-kind artworks, and teach people about centripetal force!

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