Throwing a Maker Party can be a little intimidating. Some people wonder if their coding skills are strong enough, while others worry about managing the details that help an event run smoothly. Even the pros can get a little nervous, as we learned on this week’s community call when Webmaker’s very own Cassie McDaniel filled us in on a Maker Party she recently hosted in Toronto.


Cassie is Webmaker’s user experience lead. She makes sure that when you visit webmaker.org, things look good and—more importantly—that they work the way you want them to. It’s safe to say that Cassie is pretty handy with a computer and yet when it came to hosting a Maker Party, she started to doubt her own skills:
“Being a designer, I had never taught anything technical or code-related before. I did a lot of research so I could answer questions if necessary, although I didn’t end up needing to. The questions were very basic and I was well-equipped to answer them. It always seems worse in your head, doesn’t it?”
Cassie decided to focus her event around a personal theme that’s quite meaningful to her: babies. She’s currently 8 months pregnant and thought it would be fun to invite other parents-to-be (along with grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters…) to learn how to remix and create baby-related web pages with HTML and CSS.

“I decided to do something close to my heart. Making it a personal theme was part of the fun.”
Participants at the Babymaker event learned basic webmaking by creating their own baby and child-themed websites:


Cassie recruited several people to help her at the event, which ended up being one of the best parts of the experience:
“My husband took event photos and one of the mentors had never helped out at a workshop before. That was actually really cool. It was an opportunity for lots of people to try out new things: not just the participants but the mentors, too.”
Check out Cassie’s beautiful birth announcement. Click on the image below and hit the Remix button in the top right corner to alter it and make it your own.

Inspired? There’s still time to host your own Maker Party. Choose a theme that’s meaningful to you, invite a few friends over and spend a couple hours mucking around on Thimble. Like Cassie, you might be surprised by what you learn:
“Focusing on remixing a make using Thimble made the process of teaching code easy. I’ve always heard that teaching was a great way to learn but I’ve never experienced it firsthand like I did with this event”

Get Involved:

• Learn more about the Maker Party.
• Interested in hosting an event? We’ve got guides to show your how.
• Check out photos from the Babymaker event.
• Here’s the slidedeck Cassie used to teach her workshop. Feel free to remix it and make it your own.
• Remember to tag your work with #makerparty so other webmakers can find it and be inspired.