From hosting to organizing Makers Club Rotterdam

Makers Club is a worldwide initiative to bring people who enjoy making things together. Once founded in San Francisco by Ben Barry, but the meetup quickly spread over the globe. There are currently 11 Makers Clubs, including chapters in New York, Singapore and Stockholm, that aim to unite creative minds.

But this story begins in Amsterdam, where we were attending a pre-party for The Next Web Conference. We met with Daniël van der Winden, an industry friend and host of Makers Club Amsterdam. During the conversation he asked if Awkward wanted to co-host Makers Club and bring it to Rotterdam. Without any hesitation, we accepted. After all, we’re makers right?

We began hosting the Rotterdam chapter in June of 2016. To our great surprise, the first edition was a success. Around 50 people from all over showed up for some social drinks. But it turns out that it’s hard to keep a crowd. Not every Makers Club we hosted was a grand success. After a while, we discussed the idea to adapt the classic meetup form: food, drinks and talks. We had our first try-out this October.

Making AR by Tiago & João Nascimento

We invited the Rotterdam division of digital agency Dept to one of our Makers Clubs. They responded with a rejection, but offered to host the next edition at their office. This was our chance to organize a classic meetup and Dept became the ideal host. They were very interested in giving a talk and demo about an ARKit project. To complete the program we asked the guys from creative agency Staalslagerij to give a talk as well. Their talk provided more insight in how the three-man maker collective came to be.

After the talks were done, it was time for some drinks

We’re confident that the new direction we’re taking is right for the future of Makers Club. Not only did we receive great feedback from our visitors, we also received a lot of energy from the fun night. Makers Club will return in December and we’re excited to see how this edition will turn out. Keep an eye on the website for more information on the next meetup.

If you’re looking to host or sponsor a Makers Club, then you can contact us.

Awkward - A digital product company