Makers Festival

With a good night's sleep under their belts, the Global Navigators geared up for another action-packed weekend! After three days in Westport we reimmersed ourselves into the events happening in Dublin.  First up was a visit to the Maker's Festival on Saturday afternoon.  A mainstay of Dublin's entrepreneurial scene since 2012, Makers is a gathering of people who have good ideas and want to share them with the world.  It is here that the students had the opportunity to interact with professionals from a variety of different fields: robotics, craft making, and writing just to name a few.  We met with one of the coordinators of the festival and got the chance to learn about why Dublin is one of the best places in Europe to go start something new.

With over an hour and a half to interact with the various booths, our students worked on their networking skills and were able to find something suited to whatever it was that interested them.  This writer can confidently say that everyone seemed to be in their element and was more than comfortable speaking about the issues facing a young entrepreneur in today's world.   We left the festival with many a business card and interesting conversation between us.  There was an opportunity afterward for the students to visit some of the many museums in the city, all of which are free.  It was here that they learned about art, about Irish history, and about natural history as well.  Of course, there is always some extra time to go shopping and many more souvenirs were brought home at the end of the day

 After a day full of culture and conversation the students headed back to campus.  With how busy they had been over the past few days an afternoon to do laundry and maybe get some sun in the local park presented the perfect evening.  After a dinner full of laughter and card tricks we headed to bed a little earlier than normal.  Obviously, they knew that there was another busy day in store for them.