First meeting place in Baden-Württemberg

Now the mak­er scene is meet­ing for the first time at Reut­lin­gen’s Inno­port inno­va­tion cen­ter. Tech­nol­o­gy mani­acs, inven­tors and bud­ding founders, elec­tron­ics artists, IoT experts, engi­neers and pro­gram­mers, Mak­ers who han­dle 3D print­ers, laser cut­ters and milling machines or exper­i­ment with AI — in short, Mak­ers with fas­ci­nat­ing ideas — will present their for­ward-look­ing projects togeth­er with tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies in Reut­lin­gen. This marks the start of the Mak­er Faire Baden-Württemberg.

The orga­niz­er is Make-Mag­a­zin, which has been very suc­cess­ful­ly hold­ing Mak­er Faires through­out Ger­many for sev­er­al years. Coop­er­a­tion part­ner is the Inno­port inno­va­tion cen­ter, incu­ba­tor of the 12-hectare indus­tri­al park “RTun­lim­it­ed” for indus­tri­al com­pa­nies and star­tups from the fields of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, Indus­try 4.0, smart pro­duc­tion as well as AI applications.

“The desire for a Mak­er Faire in the south has exist­ed for a long time, espe­cial­ly our read­ers from the south have asked again and again. The choice fell on Reut­lin­gen because the city is cen­tral­ly locat­ed in Baden-Würt­tem­berg and, in addi­tion, the RTun­lim­it­ed Indus­tri­al Park offers ide­al con­di­tions for us to devel­op and grow a new large-scale Mak­er Faire.”

- Daniel Bach­feld, Editor-in-Chief

“We want to build the new event as the sec­ond major flag­ship event in Ger­many for the com­mu­ni­ty,” adds Daniel Rohlf­ing, Head of Events and Prod­uct Man­age­ment. “The Mak­er Faire Han­nover in the north — in atten­dance with around 250 exhibitors and 20,000 par­tic­i­pants — and the Mak­er Faire Baden-Würt­tem­berg in the south: these are to be our cen­tral meet­ing points, where ideas are pre­sent­ed and we want to bring cre­ative and inquis­i­tive peo­ple togeth­er. For the pre­miere in Reut­lin­gen, we are expect­ing many inspir­ing projects from around 100 exhibitors and are clear­ly focus­ing on growth there­after. In addi­tion, the Mak­er Faire Han­nover will be held hybrid in the future, open­ing up even more to inter­na­tion­al guests after the event in Berlin is no longer held.”

It is a place for inno­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty and tech­nol­o­gy. This cul­ture start­ed as a grass­roots move­ment, in base­ments and garages with peo­ple who are pas­sion­ate about mak­ing things them­selves, tin­ker­ing, exper­i­ment­ing and shar­ing their ideas. Today, the com­mu­ni­ty meets pre­dom­i­nant­ly in fablabs and mak­er­spaces, which can increas­ing­ly be found in uni­ver­si­ties, libraries and com­pa­nies. The Inno­port also has a mak­er­space. Typ­i­cal top­ics include Arduino, Rasp­ber­ry Pi & Co, elec­tron­ics, pro­gram­ming, 3D printing/laser cut­ter and robotics.

The event not only pro­vides a plat­form for the grow­ing com­mu­ni­ty, but is also a place for edu­ca­tion. Espe­cial­ly the young gen­er­a­tion shall be inspired for MINT top­ics. This also indi­rect­ly pro­vides career orientation.