Frank, Sammy & Dean were a great team known as the “Rat Pack”. What’s true for these fellows is also true for Sinatra, Ruby and Arduino: put them together for instant awesomeness. Awesomeness as in: turn plain objects into social objects, a.k.a. the Internet Of Things ™. But what is the much quoted IoT exactly, and: how does it work? To answer these questions Sven will give you some birds eye view insights concerning what the IoT is followed by presenting a simple technical approach with free and open source tools to get things going yourself. This alone should be inspiring enough to discuss questions and ideas provoked by the talk, but here’s a little hint anyways: asking Sven what IoT maker artifacts are in his bag that day usually results in a little life demo.