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Drone claws for disaster relief, bird feeders that photograph and tweet images of birds and a smart tracking device for wandering kids took home top honors earlier this month at the first Triangle-area Maker Startup Weekend.

And all three projects will continue on in the weeks and months to follow.

Organizers of the event consider it a success—140 people participated and few were repeat Startup Weekend attendees. There were 13-year-old kids and 65-year-old adults all learning about 3-D printing and design thinking. They roamed the streets of downtown Raleigh interviewing people and demoing prototypes for products they dreamt up over the weekend.

The weekend also was a successful test of BetaBox, a hackerspace inside an old shipping container that founder and Startup Weekend co-organizer Sean Maroni hopes to rent to universities, schools and corporations around the nation.

Videographer Nick Sailer captured the experience on film, and produced this short video titled Betabox: Mobile Learning-by-Doing. Check it out:

The next Startup Weekend has a focus on health, and is happening August 8-10 at American Underground @Main in Durham.

Laura Baverman

Editor

Laura Baverman manages the day-to-day at ExitEvent, writing and editing stories, lining up contributors and representing us in the community. She also works as a USA Today columnist, writing the Startups and Entrepreneurs column every other week in print and online. Laura has spent a decade in journalism, most of those years as a business reporter in her hometown Cincinnati. Her Ohio roots run deep, but she's learning to love the South. Especially sun, all months of the year.

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