MINECON 2016 Post Mortem

Phew, what a wild ride it was last weekend at MINECON 2016 in Anaheim! The CraftMaster booth was located in the exhibit hall, right next to the Mesa Biome and not far from the MINECON Store, which had a huge line most of the weekend (something about a purple sheep!).

Our booth was crowded pretty much the whole time. We had live demos of CraftMaster and a new demo video on display (check it out on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/CraftMasterSoftware).

Visitors were quite impressed with the cool stuff you can build using CraftMaster, and the ability to share their creations via Sketchfab to Facebook and Twitter. "Wowwww!" was a common reaction—especially from kids who saw how easy it was to build iconic structures by importing 3D models into their Minecraft worlds. Michael Calvert, the gaming evangelist from Sketchfab, was on-hand and brought free buttons and stickers.

What an amazing crowd MINECON attracts! People of all ages and backgrounds - adults and kids, girls and boys alike. We met people from all over the United States and around the globe - as far away as Australia and New Zealand and even a couple of folks from Spain! What's most memorable, though, is the energy of the show - so positive, such a high level of enthusiasm, and fun! Anyone who thinks that Minecraft is your typical video game needs to go to a MINECON show.

The highlights from the weekend included our two drawings for Xbox One game consoles with Minecraft. The Saturday winner was Mark Glotfelty from New York City, who attended the show with his son. When he found out he won, Mark's e-mail response was: "I can't believe it!! This is very exciting. I hope you are not pulling my leg." And, on Sunday the winner was Jody Novakosky, founder of GamED Academy. You can read her heartwarming Minecraft story here: http://gamedacademy.com/our-story/.

All in all it was a great weekend for CraftMaster Software. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hello!!

What did you think of the show? We'd love to hear your comments...

Hello and welcome to the CraftMaster Software blog! Here we'll share our observations, talk about what we're currently working on, offer some sneak peaks, and generally engage with you, our users. First some background on who we are…

CraftMaster Software officially came into being in September of 2015. But the genesis of the company was earlier than that. CraftMaster grew out of the joy we experienced playing Minecraft™ together and with our kids, not to mention Pete's tinkering with various custom Minecraft extensions, which has been going on for years.

As you probably know, Minecraft is a global phenomenon, with over 100M users and the momentum keeps going strong. You may also know that Minecraft is not your typical video game - rather, an open-ended platform to explore, solve problems, be creative, and much more. In April of 2016 the New York Times Magazine published an extensive article that profiled the Minecraft phenomenon with a particular emphasis on its usage in education settings. It’s a good overview and definitely worth reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/17/magazine/the-minecraft-generation.html

Since we come out of the broader 3D technology industry, we like to think of Minecraft as the most pervasive 3D modeling tool in the world. Within this context, we've long believed that if we could create a portal that allowed content to flow freely between Minecraft and the broader 3D technology ecosystem, both communities would benefit enormously.

This is our goal for CraftMaster. And our vision is starting to come into focus. In fact, we're getting ready to launch the beta versions of our first products at Minecon 2016. So, the next phase of our journey is about to begin.

In the meantime, please visit our web site (www.craftmastersoftware.com) to sign up for our beta program, or just to get on our e-mail newsletter list.

We're looking forward to sharing that experience with you!

Pete, Andy, and Kevin
Co-founders, CraftMaster Software