The Technological Humanism of Maker Faire Rome – The European Edition
Maker Faire Rome takes place October 17-19 this year and we’re stoked! The biggest Maker Faire in Europe, it’s a mind-blowing extravaganza of creativity and technology, featuring hundreds of amazing indie makers, smart startup ideas, favorite vendors like Arduino and Raspberry Pi, young engineers from universities all over Italy and Europe, and a heightened sense of art, style, and storytelling. I was lucky to attend for the first time last year with my co-editor David Groom, and it took us three days to see it all. If you get the chance, go! Here’s an early preview from the Maker Faire Rome team explaining that European flavor. —Keith Hammond, Editor-in-Chief, Make:
Some events are uniquely capable of narrating the deep transformations shaping our society. Maker Faire Rome is one of them. Each year, it gathers thousands of people from across the globe in the heart of the Italian capital: students and teachers, makers and researchers, small enterprises and major international partners. But above all, it is the place where a powerful idea takes shape: technology can be human.
In 2025, Maker Faire Rome celebrates its thirteenth edition with over 1,500 projects submitted from more than 40 countries, currently under final review. The striking post-industrial setting of the Gazometro Ostiense welcomes an ever-expanding ecosystem of tangible innovation – the kind you can touch, test, discuss, and share.
The collective intelligence the event has nurtured over more than a decade stems from this openness – to people, to regions, to complexity. Here, technology is empathetic: every prototype tells a story, every stand becomes a space for dialogue, every maker is a witness to innovation that connects rather than divides.
While a segment of Silicon Valley envisions an economy detached from society and driven solely by disembodied efficiency, Maker Faire Rome presents a European model of inclusive innovation: schools collaborating with universities and multinationals, families engaging with researchers, institutions working alongside visionaries.
The European path to innovation
At a time when Europe is seeking its voice in the global conversation on artificial intelligence, energy, and sustainability, Maker Faire Rome offers a powerful and alternative narrative: not of algorithms deciding for us, but of communities experimenting together; not technology as an end in itself, but technique transformed into culture.
This is why, year after year, thousands of applications pour into Rome from more than 40 countries. Maker Faire Rome is not simply a local event – it is a genuine European laboratory of empathetic innovation: a place where one can prototype, fail, restart. Where problems become solutions, and ideas – when shared and well told – turn into enterprises, research, and futures.
In an era when innovation is often experienced as an overwhelming force, Maker Faire Rome reminds us that we can still build together.
A living manifesto of technological humanism
Maker Faire Rome is a living manifesto of a new idea of technology: not machines replacing humans, but tools that enhance human capabilities. From sensors for sustainable agriculture to smart prosthetics for sport, inclusive communication apps to tactile maps for accessible museums – technology here is a relational tool, one that builds connections, solves problems, and makes the future more just.
It is no coincidence that such a wide variety of realities find space here: from students repairing vintage telephones to large stands hosted by multinational corporations, universities, and independent makers. This coexistence – far from discordant – faithfully reflects the modern world. The boldest ideas often emerge at the intersection of large and small, formal and informal, centre and periphery.
Maker Faire is also the meeting point between making and storytelling. Explaining a project requires clarity and empathy. It takes action, but also narration. In this sense, it is an antidote to the dehumanisation of the digital age. While some high-tech cultures view empathy with suspicion, here, we cultivate an innovation that speaks to emotions, to stories, to real needs.
The stories that emerge at Maker Faire are powerful because they are rooted in everyday life: a teacher creating a STEM lab for neurodivergent children; a mother building inclusive dolls; a retired man automating a school greenhouse; a group of girls founding a carpentry and robotics workshop. Stories that speak of Italy, but also of a future in which technology is an ally to humanity.
Another model is possible
Perhaps the most important lesson Maker Faire Rome teaches is this: innovation is never neutral. It can serve the community or remain self-referential. It can exclude or include. It can concentrate in a few hubs or spread through a network of grassroots laboratories. Maker Faire Rome demonstrates that another model is not only possible – it already exists – where collective intelligence is the true driver of change.
Thanks to the Rome Chamber of Commerce, which has promoted and organised the event since 2013 with a public-spirited and systemic vision, Maker Faire has become an international point of reference for those who believe in ethical, open, and creative innovation. Innovation that doesn’t fear dirty hands, imperfect projects, or ideas born in a garage or a classroom – because that is often where the future begins.
And so, between an educational robot and a digital guide, a smart energy ecosystem and a food printer, a student-built rocket and an AI system for healthcare, what is truly celebrated at Maker Faire Rome is a festival of technological humanity. A technology that doesn’t steal our soul – but gives it back to us: amplified, shared, and conscious.
Maker Faire Rome will happen October 17-19, 2025. Find out more on Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Threads, TikTok, and YouTube.
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