Rochester Makerspace

Our booth at the TEDxRochester event.

Yesterday the Rochester Makerspace converged at TEDx Rochester for an overwhelmingly successful event. I first need to thank the event organizers, Jennifer Indovina from TED for inviting us, and all of our new potential members who stopped by our booth. It was exciting to meet you all and I sincerely hope that we will be meeting again in the near future.

I also need to make special mention to our volunteers; Jon, Heather, Jason, and Chuck. Thank you for helping out, bringing your cool stuff along, making this fun, and appealing to newer members. An honorable mention also goes to our supporters who have helped us along the way, and to everyone who sent their images to be used in our display.

TED and TEDx Rochester are about, “Ideas Worth Spreading.” Organizers seek out speakers that have ideas, organizations, or missions that have a positive impact on their community or humanity as a whole. The TEDx Rochester differs from the big TED in that it is independently organized, and focuses on speakers who are doing those positive things right here in our own backyard.

All of the speakers we heard are trying to move this community forward with novel and reasonable approaches to problems that Rochester faces. Most if not all of the attendees also had interesting things that they were working on. The overall sense that I gained was that everyone in attendance believed that these methods were working, that change at the community level was certainly possible, and that many of these projects are already having a meaningful impact.

Jon, Rob, & Heather at our booth.

This led to a captive audience not only for the speakers, but for our booth as well. The Rochester Makerspace is trying to fulfill a need in and for our community with a fresh approach. Many of our visitors expressed their excitement for our mission, and showed an expressed desire for all of the benefits that the Makerspace will bring.

This awesome opportunity brought with it a wonderful and interesting group of supporters, who I personally look forward to working with as the Rochester Makerspace moves forward. We also made contact with people who have roots and influence in our community, that I suspect will be of great help in the coming months.

There is a lot of work to be done between now and when we get our doors open. I know however that with this momentum, there is little that we can’t handle. We are also actively searching for assistance and volunteers. If you are interested please reach out to Info@RochesterMakerspace.org, join our Google Group, or introduce yourself on our forums.

We will be looking at least one space this week and we encourage all to attend. Rob will be sending out more information on that later. Again many thanks to all those I have mentioned, and I sincerely hope there is no one I have missed. Thanks for making the TEDx Rochester event amazing, and I hope to see you all very soon.