Connecting ideas and people unlocks Maker Faire Rome

Connecting ideas and people in the spirit of sharing with dialogue on common ground with the goal of the common good: this is the recipe for innovation according to several international guests at the inaugural conference of Maker Faire Rome, one of the most important events in the world. A world dedicated to innovation from below, which will take place in Rome from 7-9 October.

Kenneth Mikkelsen, founder of Future Shifts and the first of many Italian and international guests who took turns on stage to tell their new ideas and perspectives on the need to understand innovation as a common good. He added, “For decades we have codified the complexity of the world into labels and pushed knowledge toward hyper-specialization. Instead, it is necessary to decipher this trend and promote participation and multidisciplinarity, what we call the new generalism.” The spirit that has always been shared by Maker Faire Rome, organized by the Chamber of Commerce of Rome, which this year celebrates its tenth candle and which in recent years has allowed hundreds of thousands of people and many ideas to come together.

“It is precisely, in this case, that sharing the computing power of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, including HPC5 – added Monica Spada, Head of Research and Technology Innovation at Eni – has allowed us to study and develop new molecules capable of counteracting Covid-19 and thus saving many of lives through vaccine development.” Several other guests took turns on stage, such as Julia Stojanovic, of New York University who is active in promoting equality in data governance, and Mathias Meyer, director of the European office of iFixit, a site that sells components, publishes and promotes a kind of free online wiki of repair manuals for electronics and consumables, Or Massimo Banzi, one of the fathers of the maker movement and founder of Arduino: We did this event here in Rome 10 years ago – he commented – and it’s amazing that Maker Faire continues to be such an important event for the world of innovation and for the audience that it attracts.”