For this recipe, put ideas coming from people willing to change the world, wait few years, organize meetings to discuss it, again and again, start small and seize the opportunities. You will get Neti Makerspace. « I call it the Darwinism of ideas ». Mara, one of the founder, put seeds in the Argentinian ecosystem, waiting for the good timing and good people to take the plunge in this collaborative project.
At the origin, as a representative of Politecnico di Milano, she recruited Janina y Alejandro who came back from their studies in Italy with respectively the idea of designing a product line and of opening a makerspace. For her part, she thought for several years to open a sustainable hotel. Together, they shared their ideas and realized that if at first sight, they seemed opposite, they could be complementary: by starting with a makerspace, Janina and Mara will have then the resources to undertake their projects.
Back to the reality, they had to face 2 main challenges: expensive rents and a maker movement barely emerging in Argentina. Fortunately, they used their perseverance and imagination to turn these difficulties into opportunities. Their idea: to organize a Netithon open for free to all citizens to learn how to design and prototype solutions with a social challenge. This proposal and the first theme (to promote sustainable nutrition) had inspired companies who participated in the financing of the event and in the purchase of the required machines. And this was just the beginning! Since then, a dozen free events have been organized in Buenos Aires to drive the maker movement and to start innovating through design and digital manufacturing.
Nowadays, Neti, which name means “No Es Todo Inventado” (It’s Not All Invented), plays an innovation-maker role in the country. Their actions enabled them to gain in experience and to sign, in 2017, their first contract with a company, Drean, to develop innovative ideas using a methodology that combines people-centered design concepts to obtain tangible results. That is how Neti Makerspace grew to support both companies, earning then enough money to also support for free citizens and entrepreneurs in their projects.
In 2019, the new challenges will be :
