Garage48 Hardware & Arts – the very first hardware hackathon in Baltics

Hardware & Arts will be one of its kind Garage48 hackathon bringing together the communities of hardware and software engineers, product designers, and marketers in Tartu, Estonia, on February 7-9, 2014.

People who already know Garage48, know it as an event where ideas are turned into working prototypes in 48 hours. Usually the teams are formed from software engineers, designers, visionaries and marketing specialists with ideas tending to fall into the field of internet and mobile.

This is not always the case – we have had robots crawling around at Garage48. Thus, Hardware & Arts will introduce something new to the format.

There have been small hackathons with couple of guys sitting in a garage, combining solder with chips and transistors; gluing with lines of code and healthy dosage of black magic.

We have also seen product designers or architects working on their concepts with a string of hot wire and pieces of Styrofoam or more lucky ones with 3D CAD programs and printers.

We want to bring that feel of magic to Garage48 and introduce Garage48 to creative minds of electronics and mechatronics engineers, artists and product designers. And not only that! We are inviting our usual suspects – software engineers, UI/UX designers, and marketers to join in as well.

This will be a truly amazing hackathon where we expect people to work on crazy ideas with a target for participants to have fun while developing something cool and REAL – something you can hold in your hands.

No matter your skillset – everybody is welcome! We want to engage people from different levels of experience: from students to experienced electronics engineers and startup entrepreneurs.

Hardware & Arts – Why?

In Garage48 we believe that devoted teams can turn an idea into a working prototype within a single weekend.

We believe that a successful team has to have all of the following competencies: engineering, design, vision and ability to market the solution.

We have seen that it works in software startups amongst the highlights of Garage48 alumni and we believe it can also work with hardware startups.

We are trying to fundraise sufficient support to pre-order necessary electronics and provide all the soldering and measurement equipment the teams would need.

We need your help making Garage48 Hardware & Arts a reality. Any kind of support – financial, electronics kits, measurement equipment, and contacts – are much appreciated.

Call for participants and ideas

• If you happen to be a mechanical, electronics, or a software engineer – we want you on our event!
• If you happen to be a product, UI, UX, or a fashion designer – we want you on Garage48!
• If you happen to be an architect, interior designer or a crazy artist – we want you at our Garage48 Hardware & Arts.
• Or if you are a person who has ideas, who knows how to market and sell like hell – we want you to come!
• You all have to come because it will be the startup event in 2014!

About organizers

Garage48 is a series of international startup events for turning ideas into working prototypes in 48 hours. Garage48 brings together people with different skills to pitch ideas, form teams, and build real products and services under “blood & sweat” intensity. With origins in Estonia, so far 26 Garage48 events have taken place in 12 countries from South Africa to Russia with 2200 participants, 300 finished prototypes and 15+ successful startups created.

The Estonian Academy of Arts (EAA) is providing education in art, design, architecture, and art culture at three levels of higher education which unites innovative studies, creative work, research and development at the highest level of the fields of visual culture. We believe that art, design, architecture and technology are subjects that can help us to understand and give meaning to the world we live in. EAA is to modelling the future of the cultural and artistic landscape of Estonia.

The University of Tartu (UT) was founded in 1632 by the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus. UT is Estonia’s leading centre of research and training. As Estonia’s national university, UT stresses the importance of co-operation and partnerships. In this event two institutes will play major role: Institute of Technology is the young research institute focusing on high level multidisciplinary research including biotechnology, materials science, computer engineering and robotics. Institute of Physics focuses on physics and materials science and technologies based on these basic disciplines.
We believe that startup companies can be started with a lean budget and great team.

Additional information and registration http://garage48.org/hardware/registration