After the participation to the 2017 event, professor Giacomo Barbieri came back to Gran Canaria for the third edition of the Smart Green Island Makeathon 2018. The exponential growth of the event is impressive as the numbers can witness. They started on 2016 with 45 participants, while last year were 83 and 167 during this edition. Students from 39 universities from 7 different countries formed multidisciplinary and multicultural groups for the design and implementation of a prototype in 3 days. Smart home and agriculture prototypes were designed along with clean energy, internet of things and autonomous driving projects.
The impression is that something big is being born due to participation and sponsorship of more than 30 companies of the European automation elite as AMK, B&R and Tetra Pak. The objective is the organization on 2020 of a Makeathon in Munich with more than 1000 participants. For professor Barbieri is a proud be part of this network and collaborate on innovative projects. Last January, a former los Andes students joined the company ITQ organizer of the event. We are planning interchange of students and the collaboration on projects of automation and smart farming. Moreover, we open the student group Mi5 Bogotá which was funded for the Mechanical Engineering department of los Andes and is working on the topic of automatic coffee harvesting and on the implementation of a Food Computer. Finally, the participation to the event has been the chance to announce the second edition of the Smart Farming Makeathon Colombia 2018 that will be from 1st to 3rd of August.
The main massage from the event and the professionals who joined the event is that the word is quickly changing, and university must change on a place in which people learn how to learn. Nowadays, it is no more realistic to finish the university with a knowledge that will be sufficient for the whole professional career. More and more there is the need of this kind of events in order to experiment new ways of learning and working.
