A few weeksI attended two different events that as an inventor / product developer I thought I would pass along. The first was the Yankee Invention Exposition and the second was the Harvard Square Oktoberfest.
These are two wildly different events, one geared strictly towards inventors and one with a broad market appeal. The Yankee Invention Expo featured 55 or so booths containing inventions while the Harvard Square event had well over 500 booths featuring everything including artists, food and local businesses.
My upfront position is that if you are looking to bring your idea anywhere, you should do as much as possible to get exposre. You can never tell where your next product champion, investor or key team member will come from.
A big question I always ask inventors at exhibits is WHAT DO YOU WANT OUT OF THIS, or in other words what is your MOTIVATION. You could want to sell / license your idea, get investment, get a trial for get customer feedback, most want something along these lines. These are all gets, and I always wonder about giving, give a great presentation, give inventors inspiration, give your vision to the public.
The nice feature of the invention focused show is that you can make better educated guesses about your potential audience. They will be product scouts, fellow inventors, service providers and people looking for some fun over the weekend. However, at the Yankee Invention Expo on their weekend day mid afternoon (should be the busiest) there was maybe a hundred people there.
The nice feature of the general show or festival is the amount of traffic. There were thousands of people there and I would want high traffic over a focused and small group. Of course this festival was named for beer, but it was instead filled with artists, food and music. It was a great area of creativity, just not product based but I would expect that a great invention would have fit in nicely.
