On behalf of the Western New York Regional Maker Faire, I want to thank you for visiting our website.
I am Douglas Borzynski, the current producer of the Faire. It has been almost 10 years since I first started thinking about creating a Maker Faire. With the help of the Buffalo Museum of Science and many other makers and sponsors, we held our first Buffalo Mini Maker Faire on Sat, March 1st, 2014. I would like to say things got easier each year, but I am afraid it has not. Many Faires have closed or stopped running including the US World Maker Faires. Locally, the Fredonia Faire had lost its home and Buffalo’s Faire had been postponed.
In 2020 during the covid shut down, and with the leadership of the Rochester Maker Faire, the Syracuse and Long Island Maker Faire, we held a virtual Empire State Maker Faire (https://makerfaire.com/empire-maker-faire-2020) which was a great undertaking from all the Faires across the state, I suggest you check it out and see many of the wonderful things still linked to the website.
It was out of that process that Buffalo and Fredonia Faires decided to merge into the new Western New York Regional Faire. It is our hope to reach out to all the makers from the 8 counties of WNY (Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Erie, Genesee, Niagara, Orleans, and Wyoming) and present their work at our Faire.
Although there have been some setbacks, we have seen an increase in school STE(A)M programming, and makerspaces appearing in schools. The Frontier School District located in Hamburg, New York has been developing a STEM event and we have partnered with their High School leadership to bring you a unique new experience. It is also with the student mindset that this year we will be giving out student scholarship award(s) to our some of our student makers while welcoming back some of the areas more established Makers and Startups.
I want to welcome you back to the Maker Faire, and I hope to hear from you soon,
Douglas Borzynski makewny@gmail.com