Manchester Mini Maker Faire
Attended the Manchester Mini Maker Faire last weekend (28 and 28-July-2012). It was fun! My first time in Manchester too, and what a great location for the event: the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI). I will definitely be back. Soon.
I didn't present or demonstrate at the event this time, my justification for attendance being research into the maker community and how we could reach out to individual, younger, and more innovative makers, as well as understanding their needs and wants.
From the UX tech perspective, I see the Maker Faire crowd as a ripe resource for usability research into younger users and learners, and fitting in somewhere into the Oracle Applications User Experience simplification roadmap. We should look closely at three Maker Faire fave technologies in particular, and how they could be used in the enterprise space to solve real business problems:
- Arduino
- Raspberry Pi
- Game controllers
Even small devices and apps, as I was reminded by a MOSI exhibit, offer tremendous scope of use and lots of power to users of all sortd, depending on the context of use.
This is fast moving space, exploding with creativity, and we need to keep current. Stay tuned.
I encourage you to attend the next Manchester Mini Maker Faire and watch, learn, and make too with some very interesting, varied, and helpful people.
You can find more reporting and thoughts about the Manchester Mini Maker Faire, including pictures, in my Twitter stream.
