Dublin Maker 2023

We are already one week into our Experiment campaign! And we've been busy!

Last weekend the EnderScope took a trip to the annual Dublin Maker Festival! Dublin Maker is a festival held in (you guessed it) Dublin where makers of any kind can gather and show off the cool things they make to the public! This year was one of Dublin Maker's busiest years with over 10,000 attendees!

 

Crowds at Dublin Maker 2023 (Image from: https://www.dublinmaker.ie/) 

So last Saturday in the lovely Irish sunshine, we set up camp for the day in Richmond Barracks in Dublin. And of course we brought the EnderScope!

 

EnderScope at Dublin Maker 2023

We also brought a lot of samples of random household objects (leaves, flowers, salt, wool, a sponge) to show people how cool they look under a microscope. We didn't just want to demonstrate the EnderScope as a microplastic scanner, we also wanted to show people that microscopy is fun! We wanted people to play with the EnderScope and with microscopy. And they did!

 

Selection of samples on the EnderScope. From bottom left to right: sponge, leaves, shredded 3D printer filament. Top left to right: petri dish containing salt, wool, flowers and moss.

We had lots of interest in the EnderScope. From adults to children, people who had a 3D printer at home that they wanted to upgrade, people who had never seen a 3D printer before, physicists, teachers, people who want to look at micro-organisms in soil. My favourite was kids that wanted to ask Santa for a 3D printer and wanted to frame it as a more economically efficient present ("it's like two presents in one!").

We also shared details of our Experiment campaign. Which increased traffic to both our Github repository and Experiment page for the EnderScope!

 

Three flyers we had on display at Dublin Maker - one describing the EnderScope, one linking to the GitHub repository for the EnderScope and one linking to our Experiment page! (apologies for the terrible joke)

All in all, I think we can say the EnderScope had a successful day out! More updates to come :)