Is a maker conference actually worth it? The money, the travel, closing the shop for a few days? We put that question to the two guys who built one.
This week Kristen and I hang with Mark Collier and Will Louie from Next Level Maker Events to talk about Next Level Maker Conference 2026, "REFRESHED", and the honest version of what you actually get out of an event like this. We get into how they fell into laser design, how they teamed up, and why they'd rather build a room for makers than just sit in someone else's.
It turns into a real conversation about why making stuff can get lonely, what happens when you finally get in a room with people who do what you do, and why the hallway is sometimes worth more than the sessions. Plus the vendor room, the Creator's Corner, giving back through Wipeout Kids Cancer, and a healthy amount of complaining about social media algorithms.
Grab a seat. This one's a good hang.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
What we get into
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• How Mark and Will got into laser design (and into business together)
• What REFRESHED actually is, and who it's really for
• The "is it worth the ticket" question, answered straight
• Why the vendor room and Creator's Corner are more than a sales floor
• Making stuff is isolating. A room full of makers fixes that.
• Giving back with Wipeout Kids Cancer
• The usual gripes: algorithms, and why we can't have nice things
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Takeaways
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
• The laser world is better when makers build together instead of guarding secrets
• A conference isn't the sessions, it's the people. That's where the value hides.
• Getting out of your own shop and around other makers beats grinding alone
• The right room can change how you think about your business, fast
• Supporting a cause like Wipeout Kids Cancer makes the whole thing mean more
• And yes, the algorithm is out to get all of us
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Chapters
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
00:00 Introductions and background
01:06 Falling into laser design
02:30 How Mark and Will teamed up
07:07 The Next Level Maker Conference
19:07 Is it actually worth it?
20:59 Why "Refreshed"
24:01 Inside the vendor room
25:44 The heart of REFRESHED
27:19 Making stuff can get lonely
28:12 Getting in the room and growing
34:23 Vendor Room and Creator's Corner
36:22 Learning and making connections
47:51 Supporting Wipeout Kids Cancer
51:11 Getting ready for the event
52:11 Community and showing up
59:00 The social media gripe session
01:00:28 What we're each fired up about
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Learn more about REFRESHED / Next Level Maker Events:
https://nextlevelmakerevents.com/
Afterburn - Maker Talk After Dark. New episodes every week.
