Thanks to Vlad for sending this one in!

I gave a talk earlier this summer at the Blue Stamp Engineering program and saw Farhana working on the Wind Lantern project from Chapter 10. Jeremy Blum, one of the instructors there, just sent me a video of her doing her final presentation. Great work Farhana!

I had the honor of being one of 20 authors selected to give a talk about my book and have my book sold at the book fair of the USA Science and Engineering Festival this past weekend. It was a giant event with thousands of people in the biggest convention center I’ve ever seen! In case you’re interested, here are the slides I used in the talk:

I had the chance to meet several new amazing people at a lecture last week, including Anni and her wife Mary. Anni wrote this super flattering tumblr post I thought I’d share here!

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In a small world coincidence, a former student turned friend and colleague of mine, Adi Marom, was in Copenhagen last week teaching a workshop and saw a copy of my book on one of the student’s desks!

It’s so amazing to know that people around the world are (hopefully) finding the book helpful. And while pictures of your books are fun, I’d love to see some pictures or video of projects the book has helped you realize! Email them to me or post a link in the comments and I’ll post them here.

I’ve decided to keep Marketing Mondays up on my side, but due to lack of comments on the posts I figured most people just aren’t all that interested in what I’m doing on that front. But as a quick recap – I went to World Maker Faire 2011 right here in New York a couple weeks ago, and spent a couple hours on Saturday at McGraw-Hill’s booth for a meet-the-author session:

The squishy robot giveaways were a hit, and I even got to meet Hee Jung, from Make: Korea, who is part of the team that is translating my book into Korean! I also want to thank McGraw-Hilll for being gracious hosts. The blown up poster version of my book cover for the booth was great.

I spent plenty of time wandering the Faire, and this was one of my favorite sights:

Yes, that is a fire-breathing dragon trucked in from Michigan and made mostly from tires and scrap metal. If you ever get the chance to attend one of the Maker Faires, I highly recommend it!

As for other marketing activities, my efforts so far have resulted in requests for my book from several MIT professors, and an invitation to meet a few of them next time I’m in the Boston area. If you’re an educator who could used a complimentary copy of the book, please let me know in the comments or send me an email and I’ll have one sent right out to you.

I got this note from a reader last week:

I want to thank you for your wonderful book, “Making Things Move”. About three years ago I had an idea for an art piece that required motion… a very slow rotation. It was a long, painstaking, and also fun and rewarding process trying to figure out how to get there, and eventually I did.

But then my art life became so much easier: A friend of mine pointed me to your book, and it has been tremendously helpful. I learned so much that I decided to re-build the mechanism I had originally constructed and make a quiter, smoother, sturdier, battery-powered, and altogether better one. This weekend, I will be showing that piece at the Dumbo Arts Festival as one of their indoor installations. I’m adding a link below so you can see what it does.

Thank you so much for this well-written, well-organized, and altogether helpful resource!

As I told him, that’s just about the best email an author can get! The piece is pictured above, and below in detail. Yes, those are googly eyes. Thanks to reader and artist Sean Boggs for the pictures and permission to post his review! Click on this link to see his website with a video of the piece in motion.

A friend and former student of mine just pointed out to me that my book is listed on the website HackerThings: Products for the Discerning Hacker. I’m so proud! Thanks Adi.

So come on by the McGraw-Hill booth and say hi! I’ll be floating around Maker Faire the rest of the time too, so feel free to stop me and say hello any time.

In a belated marketing Monday effort (hey, it was a holiday) I managed to send the email below out to the 12 professors on my list so far.

Do you have anyone to add to the list? Are you a professor that would like an evaluation copy? Do you have ideas for making this email better? Let me know in the comments!
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Prof. XXX,

I see that you are teaching XYZ this semester, and I’d like to suggest a book I wrote as a companion text: Making Things Move: DIY Mechanisms for Inventors, Hobbyists, and Artists. If you can send me your address I would be happy to have my publisher mail you an evaluation copy. Have a great semester!

Thanks,