MaResMa at the Algarve Maker Show in Portimão

Last Saturday, June 4th, Portimão was a meeting point for makers from the Algarve. The Algarve Maker Show was one of the 450 events which were prepared in 28 European countries, under a framework of the European Maker Week. The European Commission and the Start-up Europe both lead this initiative, which is a celebration for makers and aims to promote the maker movement between the general public, and attract citizens to a world of making things or "Do It Yourself" (DYI), Fablabs, Hackerspaces, Makerspaces and an ecosystem of Hardware start-ups. Other objectives are to raise awareness about the importance of a maker culture to promote a creative and innovative education. The event was organized by the eLab Hackerspace, in partnership with the Câmara Municipal from Portimão, and the support of Socialgar Mediação de Seguros, Lda., Sul Informação, and the collaboration of the students of the Curso de Multimédia from Escola Secundária Poeta António Aleixo. The Algarve Maker Show presented different creations from 3D printing, robotics, electronics, digital design, art, science and technology. Some of the projects were already awarded in international contexts and at the Lisbon Maker Faire, which will be developed once again this year on June 25 and 26th, at the Pavilhão do Conhecimento in Lisbon. This initiative also presented the maker movement through talk shows that took place at the Casa Manuel Teixeira Gomes with two guest speakers, who were awarded with the distinction "Maker of Merit" at the last Lisbon Maker Faire 2015. Mário Saleiro talked about "maker movement around the world, Portugal and in the Algarve", origin, who are they, what they do and why they do it, and also making an analysis of the state of the art. "Maker since young age", PhD student in informatic engineering, He is co-founder and current director of the eLab Hackerspace, a community lab for prototyping, digital making and sharing of knowledge, located at the Campus Empresarial in Gambelas; also curator at the Lisbon Maker Faire and blogger of The BiT Bang Theory. "Towards an open source lab" was the second talked. Fernando Cánovas, veterinary and member of our team, talked about his path as maker in his attempt to create a laboratory, which was made only with open source tools both software and hardware. And because of that, it took a veterinarian to introduce himself into electronics and 3D printing, demystifying a common idea in which IT and technological formation is needed to be a maker. The maker movement is in expansion around the world and it is commonly named the "second industrial revolution", because it takes the ability to create, innovate and produce from companies to general population.