How the Make Digital Education program helped a busy father build a growing platform for local families

• Industry: Nonprofit & Community Services

• Use cases: Applications Management & Systems Monitoring

• Country: Germany

• Apps used: Google Sheets, OpenAI (ChatGPT, Sora, DALL-E, Whisper), HTTP

When Nico Barner moved to Lübeck in northern Germany with his family, he was eager to meet new people and get involved in the local community. But with information on family-friendly events scattered across flyers, websites, and social media, that was easier said than done.

He had the idea of creating a platform that would unify all these events into a single resource. Yet, there was an issue: maintaining it manually would take him hours that he, as a working father, didn’t have. 

Then came a breakthrough. Nico joined an automation course led by AI and Automation Trainer Karima Charles at LEEON Advanced Learning, supported by the Make Digital Education program (an education initiative that gives learners hands-on access to automation tools). There, Nico was introduced to Make. 

An idea hit him. 

Using what he learned and free access to Make, he built Hanseminis. It’s a fully automated platform that collects, filters, and publishes local family events.

The website has already become a go-to resource for families in Lübeck, and Nico is now in talks to secure funding to add more features that make parents’ lives easier.

The challenges

• Local family events were listed across dozens of scattered sources, including tens of local websites, Facebook posts, and printed flyers

• There was no single, reliable place to find out what was happening in Lübeck for kids and parents

• Creating and updating the platform manually would take an estimated 10 hours per week

• As a working parent, Nico didn’t have the time and the resources to do that

“Clicking through websites to keep a database updated would’ve taken too much time. As a parent, time’s not something I have a lot of. When I got the chance to learn about automation and AI with Make, I realised I could solve it.”

The solution

Nico joined an automation course led by AI and Automation Trainer Karima Charles at LEEON Advanced Learning, where he was introduced to Make.

With no prior automation experience, Nico began experimenting with simple no-code scenarios. It didn’t take long for him to realize he could automate almost the entire process of finding, organizing, and publishing local event information.

Soon after, he used Make to build Hanseminis – a fully automated platform that gathers children’s and family events from across Lübeck and publishes them on a single, easy-to-use website.

His setup is made up of three main steps:

Step 1: Event discovery

Make searches predefined local organizer websites and extracts URLs for individual event pages. Nico first tried open-ended searches, but found that working from known sources yielded better, more consistent results.

Step 2: Data extraction and structuring

For each event URL, Make uses HTTP modules and OpenAI to extract key details such as title, date, and location, and to create a unique description. The results are structured into JSON and stored in a Google Sheet, which acts as the platform’s backend.

Step 3: Publishing and quality control

Event data is reviewed before going live to ensure it’s accurate and family-appropriate. Nico currently does this manually to maintain trust, especially since the site is designed for parents with young children. However, he plans to automate this final step later on.

“Make made it possible for me to do this as a one-man show. I had no automation skills when I started. Four weeks later, I had a working solution to a real problem.”

Results

Hanseminis is already making life easier for families in Lübeck, giving them a straightforward place to find out what’s on for kids, without having to scroll through Facebook or check dozens of websites.

Here’s what Nico’s achieved so far:

• A portal that pulls in local family events automatically and displays them in an easy-to-navigate way, appreciated by many people in his city

• Around 10 hours saved each week on the portal maintenance by automating the tedious manual research required 

• Positive feedback from parents 

• Interest from the local government, who Nico’s now talking to about official funding

“It's still early days, but my hope is that this helps connect families and makes life a little easier for parents in Lübeck and beyond.”

What’s next

With Hanseminis up and running, Nico’s now focused on improving the platform and expanding its reach. He plans to automate social media posts and newsletters, enable user-submitted events, and replace the current Google Sheet with a more robust backend. He’s also exploring personalization features, including allowing families to save favorites and track upcoming events.

The project has already made a difference for families in Lübeck – and, with Make handling the heavy lifting, it has the potential to become a valuable resource for communities across Germany.