FabLab.nl

Yesterday saw a great turnout at the FabTable (held every 6 weeks). Our hosts were Thuur, Bart and Peter at the brand new FabLab Groningen.

They opened their doors March 1st (official opening on the 31st). With delegations from The Hague, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Enschede, Leuven (Belgium) and even Iceland, it was a great afternoon that stretched well into the evening over dinner in the ‘Het Paleis’ venue where the FabLab is located as well.

FabLab Groningen, Smari McArthy and Thuur Caris in conversation

The beautifully renovated 19th century former chemistry lab of the local University is a fitting environment for the newest FabLab in the Netherlands. The building is populated with lots of different companies and artists, making it into a major hub for the creative industry in the north of the Netherlands. A theater and conference venue, hotel accommodation, rooftop apartments as well as a restaurant make it a great spot in a quickly redeveloping area just a few minutes walk north of Groningen’s city center.

FabLab Groningen has a Trotec 60W laser cutter, a Zcorp 3D powder printer and a 3D full color scanner to go with it, a Modela CNC router, a vinyl cutter, as well as a home built vacuum-form (at 50 Euro!), a t-shirt press, and a rotary engraver. Of course they are also connected to the Polycom video-conferencing system (using a software based solution, not the expensive Polycom hardware). The big screen providing a window on the other labs is mounted on a wall that is painted with a world map showing the various locations of FabLabs from around the world.

Conversations, and Polycom screen and cam mounted on wall with FabLab world map

Discussions during the FabTable ranged from business models to our shared efforts around the different websites we run, legal aspects and creative commons for product development, and organizing the Fab6 conference in August. Elmine did a whole range of video interviews for both the FabLab documentary she is making, as well as the FabLab video channel the good people of 23Video provided us with. Over dinner we swapped more stories, enjoying the beer, food and hospitality of the restaurant two doors down from the FabLab in the inner court yard of this amazing facility ‘Het Paleis’.

More pictures in this photoset, and FabLab Groningen’s own photo stream.

Last Saturday Karsten Joost and Axel Grischow organized the first meet-up in Germany of people interested in FabLab. There was room for 40 people in the venue, and that number quickly filled up. In fact there was a waiting list for people who would have liked to attend as well. People came from different cities, apart von Bremen, there were people from Berlin, Hamburg, Aachen, Nürnberg and Düsseldorf, as well as from other places.

Creating the programme on the spot

Karsten and Axel had invited several of us from the Netherlands. Peter Troxler (to talk about business development), Bart Kempinga (FabLab Groningen, and how to get from idea to product), Petra Koonstra (creating a venue for the creative industry at Het Paleis in Groningen) and me (Dutch FabLabs as a network, and community building)

In true barcamp style the program of sessions was decided collectively at the start of the day. It was a good an varied programme. Talking both about organizational aspects of starting a FabLab as well hands-on topics, as well as a demo-space where different equipment was available to give a try.

I thoroughly enjoyed the day as well as the cool people. I hope that this may be the start of the emergence of a range of FabLabs in Germany.

My slides on the network effect of FabLabs and community building (partly in German, but mostly in English) can be seen below, as well as the pictures I took.

English version below.

FabTafel in Groningen
Op woensdag 10 maart is de volgende FabTafel. We gaan naar Groningen. Het FabLab Groningen gaat officieel op 31 maart open, en dat is een geweldige mijlpaal. Alle reden dus om op 10 maart alvast naar Groningen te gaan om het FabLab te bewonderen en Bart, Peter, Thuur en andere betrokkenen van harte te feliciteren.

FabTafels beginnen altijd om 15:00 uur. Laat tevoren even weten of je komt (mail ton@fablab.nl).

FabTafels gaan altijd door, ongeacht wie er komt of niet. De volgende data, na 10 maart, zijn op 21 april, 2 juni, 14 juli, 25 augustus, 6 oktober, 17 november, 5 januari (2011). Telkens vanaf 15:00 uur.

Tot ziens in Groningen!

Sneak preview, photos by Lykle de Vries.

FabTable in Groningen
Wednesday March 10th will see a new edition of the FabTable. This time we will be meeting up in Groningen. The brand new FabLab Groningen will officially open its doors on March 31st, which is a great milestone for the Dutch FabLab community. This is an excellent reason to come to Groningen on March 10th, to get your first glimpse of the new FabLab Groningen, and congratulate Bart, Peter, Thuur and others who made it happen.

FabTables always start at 15:00hrs. Let me know if you will be attending (mail ton@fablab.nl).

FabTables always take place regardless of who is able to attend or not. The next FabTables, after March 10th will be on April 21st, June 2nd, July 14th, August 25th, October 6th, November 17th and January 5th (2011).

See you in Groningen!

Elmine Wijnia recently made a short promo-video for Protospace. During the filming she also interviewed lab-managers Joris van Tubergen and Siert Wijnia.

Today she published a first fragment from those interviews, about how open innovation works in a FabLab like Protospace.

Joris van Tubergen talks on open innovation and FabLab from Elmine Wijnia on Vimeo.

The video is in Dutch with English subtitles.

Afgelopen vrijdag heeft het Journaal op 3 een korte reportage gemaakt bij ProtoSpace over de RepRap 3D printer.

De afgelopen paar maanden heeft de masterclass RepRap plaats gevonden. Tijdens deze masterclass zijn met een groep enthousiastelingen 8 van deze machines gebouwd die nu net allemaal klaar zijn.

Voor de korte reportage zijn toch aardig wat beelden geschoten:

Het is interessant te zien hoe snel de ontwikkelingen gaan van de RepRap. Sinds de start van het RepRap project is er al een compleet nieuw ontwerp gemaakt de Mendel , een commerciele vereenvoudigde versie van op de markt ( en wordt er op MIT een college gegeven over Machines That Make

Het zal niet lang meer duren voordat een FabLab zichzelf kan reproduceren!

Op donderdag 3 februari en vrijdag 4 februari heeft in Berlijn in het kader van de Social Media Week (parallel aan de transmediale.10) de Open Design Workshop plaatsgevonden. Van Fablab was Bas van Abel aanwezig. Samen met Ronen Kadushin (Open Design), Jay Cousins (Upcycling), Philip Steffan (Bausteln), Arne Hendriks (Platform 21), Erik Nap (Waag Society), Martin Bauer (Lasern Lasern) en Michelle Thorne (Creative Commons) hebben zij zo’n 15 man begeleid in het toepassen van Open Design.

Delivered in Beta from KS12 on Vimeo.

De deelnemers kregen de opdracht om in twee dagen met behulp van verschillende technieken (o.a. Lasercutter, Makerbot, Arduino, Bioplastics) een ontwerp te maken voor een afsluitend diner met als thema “food interfaces”. Het eten als medium en toegang tot sociale interactie. Zo is er een” Twitter cook therapy”, een “strings attached table” en een drank doolhof ontworpen.

Geheel in de gedachte van open design zullen een aantal van de ontwerpen worden geplaatst op instructables.com en unlimiteddesign.nl, zodat iedereen zijn eigen exemplaar kan maken. Later meer…

Komend weekend wordt de RepRap weer goed vertegenwoordigd. Ditmaal op FOSDEM 2010 in Brussel. Zondag om 10 uur ’s ochtends is er een Main track talk gehouden door Adrian Bowyer. Verder zijn zaterdag en zondag RepRaps en Makerbots te zien in verschillende uitvoeringen.

Ben je geïnteresseerd? Kom dan langs!

— This weekend – sat. 6th and sunday the 7th – it is possible to see several people demonstrating their RepRaps at FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium. Be sure not to miss the keynote speech by Dr. Adrian Bowyer, who initiated the project around 2005!

Details on the main track talk:

http://www.fosdem.org/2010/schedule/events/reprap

http://blog.erikdebruijn.nl/categories/7-RepRap

Namens Erik de Bruijn

We, the Dutch FabLab community just released a year book for the FabLab community. The first ever year book actually. Consistent with FabLab principles the release was printing the book physically in the CabFabLab in the Hague, and sharing the digital files online so you can make your own copy. Download the FabYearBook 2010 and instructions on how to put it together.

This post is about how the year book came about, and some of the rationale behind it.

FabYearBook 2010
The idea for the FabYearBook came from two things. First, when visiting the then still very empty space that now is becoming the FabLab Groningen, I saw how Bart Kempinga had put together a reader with print-outs from different FabLab websites from around the world. He had placed that reader on a table in the middle of that big white empty room. Visitors and potential partners leafed through it, and it helped them paint with their imagination a vision of what the FabLab Groningen could be on the bare walls around them.

Second, I worked with a group of students at the local university in my home town in the spring of 2009. I gave a few guest lectures on knowledge management and community building. As part of their assignment I asked them to generate ideas on how to stimulate community building in the FabLab network, as well as knowledge sharing. In a bigger list of ideas, the students also came up with the FabYearBook. Marloes Wilmink, Anne Heesink, Eva Rennen and Karlein Sanders were the students that planted the year book idea firmly with me.

We put forward the idea for a year book at the global Fab5 Conference in India last August, and sent out calls for contributions in November. Actual contributions started coming in around January 15th, with the latest arriving this week Monday. Now, Wednesday we’ve printed the first FabYearBook 2010. More than 50 pages, from mostly ‘close by’ sources, but already with interesting variety and diversity.

Networks, nodes, visibility
In a network all nodes are distributed. That makes it often hard to see the breadth, depth and potential of a network from your perspective as a single node in it. For you and me to perceive the network from our individual position in it, we need to be visible to others and the others need to be visible to us. You probably know a sizable number of the contacts of your own direct contacts, but after that visibility of people/nodes brakes down quickly. To look further, over that ‘2 degrees out’-horizon from your own position, we need tools. Network visualizations are helpful. Sharing stories from the network in the network is helpful too. All this is true for the global FabLab Network as well. Some nodes are highly visible and see a lot, others are mostly dark nodes in the overall network fabric. The FabYearBook 2010 is a first attempt to share stories in a more persistent way, a beacon as it were in the FabLab landscape. So that visibility can improve, and new connections can be made.

Community, rhythm, predictability
Functioning communities show a number of characteristics that can be also purposefully used to create circumstances for community to grow and blossom. Community creates these characteristics, but the characteristics also help create community.

Rhythm is such a characteristic of community. Our society has rhythms on larger and smaller scales. They help us to feel as part of a whole, and give us predictability where there actually is none. Christmas is such a macro-rhythm in the western world. Even if you haven’t seen your family for a full year, you’ll be welcomed at Christmas. Weekends are a rhythm like that too. Morning coffees as well. For the Dutch FabLab community we’ve set a rhythm through FabTables, regular meet-ups at 6 weeks intervals with a fixed date and time. Anyone is welcome, and they always take place no matter what. I’ve done the same with my wife Elmine to get our local GeekLounges going, at a 2 month interval. Even if you have to miss out on one or two, you know you’ll be welcome at the next get-together, and when it takes place. An existing macro-rhythm for the FabLab community is the yearly Fab Conference. It’s FabLab’s Christmas so to speak. You have to travel for it, and meet up with the extended family as it were. The year book hopefully will serve as a new macro-rhythm, about half way (January) between two Fab conferences (August), and it comes to you.

Looking forward to when next year January sees the next FabYearBook coming out.

Yesterday saw the first FabTable (a 6-weekly informal and open get-together of the Dutch FabLab network) of 2010. We kicked off the new year at the CabFabLab in The Hague, with Xander and Gertjan being great hosts again.

During the FabTable we printed and released the first ever FabYearBook! With contributions from different labs, lots of photos and stories of projects made in a FabLab and some good articles on open design, the meaning of FabLab, and how to get one started, this first edition comes in at 53 pages. Mark Kizelshteyn, at home at CabFabLab, designed the cover that is created with a laser cutter.

Laser cut the cover, then connect the dots

Mark also wrote the instructable that you can use to figure out how to download and print your copy of the FabYearBook 2010, and put it together.

The FabYearBook 2010, have fun reading!

We’re counting on you to contribute to the FabYearBook 2011, which will appear in January next year. Watch your e-mail inbox in the fall for the call for contributions.

Wired magazine (Feb 2010) heeft een coverstory over de The New Industrial Revolution.

Verder is ook de laatste editie van Make magazine gewijd aan Desktop Manufacutering. Maak je eigen CNC Router!