GCMakerCon

This is happening, Tampa Bay! Hillsborough County Schools - Foundation for Community Driven Innovation STEM Center at Adams Middle School. Florida FIRST Robotics Competition in Florida right here at home!

Check out our 2026 Gulf Coast MakerCon wrap up on our website, where you can find links to this year's event photo gallery and combat tournament video. We're super grateful to all our amazing sponsors - with a special shout out to CAIRE Insurance, to our event donors, community partners like PLuGHiTz Live! Radio, Tampa Bay Community Network -TBCN, Build Fight Fun , our amazing STEAM Room presenters from SOFWERX, Black Unicorn Education, Vodka Bacon Studios and the Artemis Project .

Congratulations to our GCMC 2026 Exhibitor Awards winners: Hull & Bay Cocktail Co. for taking the Most Innovative award, Two Wolves Forge for earning the Most Artistic Award and Be the Hamster Human Powered Frozen Beverages for being our Funnest Exhibitor!

Special congratulations to our 2026 GCMC Rock Star Volunteers, Jonathan Smith of Jupiter Robotics , our Combat @ MakerCon volunteer cooridinator and event tech and to Topher Hartwig, a cherished AMRoCFabLab volunteer for being there start to finish and long before and after!

Our 2027 GCMC Planning team is already assembled and our 2027 Early interest form is already launched! We've got some great new improvements and updates planned for our 2027 event and can't wait to get the next Maker show on the road. In the meantime, keep you eyes on this page, our Instagram and our website for some year round pop up Maker events.

Make on! And don't forget to check out the links in the comments for more info.

If you won some of our raffle items last Saturday, come pick them up at AMRoCFabLab and enjoy a tour while you're there!

Happy Birthday Itimpi Bookstore!

🥂Itimpi turns 3 years old today! Thank you to everyone for their support!! We have more big surprises on the way!!!✨

ICYMI yesterday, our biggest GCMC silent auction item is a 36 seat luxury suite at Raymond James stadium for one (or all if you're so inclined!) 7 University of South Florida Bulls home games!

Donated by CAIRE Insurance, this RayJay luxury suite opportunity includes 36 USF Football game tickets and 6 parking passes, and has a total estimated package value of $7000 per game.

This silent auction runs through the end of April, and like all our raffle and silent auctions items at MakerCon, benefits Foundation for Community Driven Innovation capacity building programs at AMRoCFabLab .

Full details at the link in the comments. Horns Up!

And Gulf Coast MakerCon 2026 is a wrap! A Yuengling Draft Haus Brewery tour was the finishing touch.

Thank you to everyone who helped make the event possible and congratulations to our fav exhibitors, Be the Hamster Human Powered Frozen Beverages taking our Funnest Exhibitor medal, to Hull & Bay Cocktail Co. for their Most Innovative award and to Two Wolves Forge for Most Artistic, and to our Combat tournament winners.

Look for a full event wrap-up soon and we'll see you back at Gulf Coast MakerCon 2027!

STEAM Room Talks for the win! This new addition to MakerCon is definitely a keeper! Thank you to all our speakers!

MakerCon is in full swing at Yuengling Draft Haus ! We're here till 6 pm. It's warm outside but you can cool off at Be the Hamster Human Powered Frozen Beverages , watch combat robotics, fly drones, check out some awesome DIY Fluid Dynamics with Engineers Without Borders - USF and explore all sorts of fun creative exhibits, and some pretty awesome STEAM Room presentations!