FabLab.nl

After months of preparation volunteers, the Waag Society production team and MIT are ready to welcome you to

The yearly global conference about digital fabrication and FabLab community meet-up, August 16th-20th

The ‘Stichting FabLab Nederland’, the Dutch FabLab Foundation thanks all those involved in making this event happen! Dank jullie wel!

Program
All relevant information on the program can be found at the Fab6 website of course, but we’ll highlight a few things here.

• Sunday August 15th: early bird party with the Instructables Restaurant. All the furniture, as well as the food is based on designs and recipes found at Instructables.com.
• Monday will see the official opening and a series of workshops in Amsterdam.
• Tuesday activities take place in the FabLab in Utrecht, Groningen as well as Amersfoort, where the Dutch mobile FabLab has set up camp.
• Wednesday activities take place in the FabLabs in Amsterdam, Utrecht, The Hague, Groningen and Amersfoort (mobile FabLab)
• Thursday symposium day at the Dutch Royal Academy of Sciences (KNAW) in Amsterdam. You can still join us there.
• Friday, closing sessions in Amsterdam

This year we explore the implications and consequences of personal digital fabrication for art, business, industry, culture and education. We are poised on the threshold of a new era, like that of the Industrial Revolution, emerging from access to low- cost, high-precision fabrication tools and powerful Internet-based communication capabilities which are changing the ways we think about and approach innovation, invention, intellectual property, creative processes, manufacturing and distribution, business models, and social and cultural networks. In a world where anyone can access the tools to make or create almost anything, the possibilities are limitless. This is the Industrial®Evolution, a socioeconomic and technical evolution from mechanical means of production to digital means of production and communication.

You can follow Fab6 on-line with @Fab6nl, streaming video through the Polycom video conferencing system, through the tag #fab6 and at 23Video.

We welcome you to the Netherlands and to Fab6!

Begin mei gaat op uitnodiging van het Surinaamse Ministerie van Arbeid, Technologische Ontwikkeling en Milieu (ATM) een delegatie naar Parimaribo, Suriname om daar te praten over de oprichting van een FabLab in Suriname. Een FabLab in Suriname zou een welkome versterking kunnen betekenen van de technologische en creatieve expertise en educatie in het land.

Tot de deelnemers van de delegatie behoren:

• Eddy Wijngaarde van Stichting The Back Lot, een Surinaamse non-profit organisatie die zich bezig houdt met kunst- en cultuurevenementen in Suriname, bekend van het 10 Min. Jeugdjournaal.
• Pieter van der Hijden is de oprichter van Sofos Consultancy, een management consultancy organisatie op het gebied van ICT die opereert vanuit zowel Amsterdam als Parimaribo. Sofos ondersteunt organisaties en de overheid op het gebied van ICT.
• Klaas Hernamdt, namens FabLab Nederland en Bas van Abel (creatief directeur Waag Society), beiden betrokken bij de oprichting van het FabLab Amsterdam, completeren de delegatie.

Er zal op een symposium georganiseerd door het ministerie gesproken worden met vertegenwoordigers van de overheid, bedrijfsleven en het onderwijs over wat een Fablab zou kunnen betekenen voor Suriname. Daarbij zal met name gewezen worden op het bestaande internationale netwerk van FabLabs en de wereldwijde ervaringen. Vanuit de media in Suriname is al veel belangstelling getoond voor het initiatief. Bas van Abel zal gewapend met deze flyer (pdf) informatie geven over een FabLab.

This week the SHiFT Conference will take place in Lisbon. The third edition of this conference, looking at the societal impact of technology, has DIY – Do It Yourself as a theme. That is of course a fitting place to discuss FabLab as well!

FabLab Netherlands will be well represented at the conference. Protospace’s Siert Wijnia and RepRap-Yoda Erik de Bruijn, will do a talk and a 3 hour workshop on personal production with a RepRap as well as (hopefully) a laser cutter.

Elmine Wijnia has been busy interviewing and filming us these past months for her short documentary film about the Dutch FabLabs. The english version of the final result will be premiered at the SHiFT conference. She will also give a talk on the meaning of DIY in our digital and networked age. (The Dutch version of the documentary will be screened the first time at next week’s FabTable.) She also made two virals for the conference. One of them even ran as a TV-ad on Portuguese national television. The other is set in a FabLab. After next week’s FabTable both versions will be available in the FabLab video channel hosted with our friends from 23Video.com.

Elmine Wijnia’s video ad on Portuguese TV

As last speaker of the conference Ton Zijlstra has the job of trying to tie everything discussed at the SHiFT conference together in an overarching narrative. His talk ‘Maker Households’ will discuss the opportunities full digitization bring for local resilience in the context of a resource-limited and fully networked world. Read the proposal in my blog.

Material used at the conference will of course be shared on-line and here. Follow the conference Twitter stream at @shiftconf Friday and Saturday for live updates.

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.

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.

(English version below)

Op maandag 7 december opent Jan Borchers, hoofd van de Media Computing Group het eerste Fablab in Duitsland. In een Fablab kan iedereen snel van een idee tot een prototype komen. Zo krijg je een glimp van wat straks heel gewoon is in personal fabrication.
Het Fablab wordt gehost door de RWTH Aachen Universiteit mogelijk gemaakt door de stichting B-IT.

Klik voor meer informatie

ENGLISH:
On Monday, Dec 7, Prof. Jan Borchers, head of the B-IT-endowed Media Computing Group, will open Germany’s first Fab Lab. These labs let anybody get from an idea for a new device to a prototype quickly, offering a glimpse of the future of personal fabrication in which, for example, 3d printers will let you print out your personal plastic cell phone cover at home – greatly impacting how we will think about mobile devices in the future.

Fab Labs recently started at the MIT Media Lab, and are being set up in many countries – thanks to RWTH Aachen University and the B-IT Foundation now also in Germany. From soldering stations and Arduino microcontroller boards, to a PCB mill, 3D printer and laser cutter, the Media Computing Group’s Fab Lab offers a set of tools to turn ideas into prototypes in new ways. The opening ceremony begins at 6 pm; for more information see the Fab Lab page at http://fablab.rwth-aachen.de.

January 2010 will see the release of the first FabYearBook ever. The FabYearBook won’t be a regular book of course, but a book consistent with the FabLab concept: every FabLab that wants to can contribute a part of the whole, and the resulting design file for the complete book will be distributed. Every FabLab then can print the FabYearBook in the way it sees fit, using the materials they have at hand. It is entirely imaginable that the FabYearBook will be a salon table glossy in the Netherlands, a wooden etching in Costa Rica, or a calendar in Afghanistan.

With the FabYearBook we want to highlight the diversity, inventivity and creativity of the worldwide FabLab network, and make our unity more tangible at the same time.

We invite all of you to contribute to the FabYearBook. Would you like to add a page (text, images, lasercut design, instructable etc.) or more to the FabYearBook? Let us know (ton@fablab.nl)! Contributions can be in English, Dutch or any other language (as long as you state in which language it is, and adding an English summary would be great!)

The date the FabYearBook will first be issued is January 27th, at the New Years Meetup of FabLab Netherlands. We will print the first hardcopy live at the event, and will send out the digital files to all contributors and FabLabs worldwide. The printing of the first hard copy will be streamed live on the FabLab video conferencing system, as well as on Qik/Youtube.

Please make sure your contribution, in any shape or form, reaches us before December 25th 2009 at ton@fablab.nl

In januari verschijnt het eerste FabYearBook. Het FabYearBook is niet een gewoon boek, maar een boek in lijn met het FabLab concept: ieder FabLab dat wil levert een onderdeel aan, en het ontwerp van het geheel wordt weer digitaal naar iedereen verspreid. Uiteindelijk kan elk FabLab het FabYearBook printen en vermenigvuldigen op de manier en met de materialen die men zelf wil. Zo zou het FabYearBook zomaar zowel een scheurkalender in Afghanistan kunnen worden, een houtgravure in Costa Rica, als een salontafelboek in Groningen.

Met het FabYearBook willen we de diversiteit, veelzijdigheid, inventiviteit en creativiteit van het wereldwijde FabLab netwerk tastbaar maken. Daarbij is ook jouw bijdrage welkom! Heb je een pagina (tekst, beeld, gelasercut ontwerp, instructable etc.) of meerdere om toe te voegen? Laat het weten (ton@fablab.nl)! Inzendingen mogen in het Nederlands, Engels of elke andere taal (als je er maar bij zegt welke taal het is, en een Engelse samenvatting geeft)

De verschijningsdatum voor het FabYearBook is 27 januari, de nieuwjaarsreceptie van FabLab Nederland. Dan wordt het eerste exemplaar live geprint, en het ontwerp digitaal aan alle andere labs ter beschikking gesteld. Het printen van het eerste exemplaar zal per video live worden getoond in het FabLab videoconferencing systeem, en eveneens live op Qik/Youtube te volgen zijn.

Het FabYearBook is als concept bedacht door studenten van de Saxion Hogeschool voor de zomer, in het kader van het versterken van de FabLab community.

Lever je bijdrage in welke vorm dan ook voor 25 december 2009 aan. Mail ton@fablab.nl.

De Fab Academy bestaat uit een lesprogramma in de principes en toepassingen van digitale fabricage, ontwikkeld door het Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) van het MIT. De Fab Academy Faculty staat onder leiding van Neil Gershenfeld, bedenker en oprichter van Fablabs, werkplaatsen met digitale apparatuur.

Binnen het 9 maanden durende lesprogramma kunnen deelcertificaten voor specifieke technische onderdelen worden behaald of een algeheel diploma als alle onderdelen worden gevolgd.

Deelnemers uit Nederland kunnen bij het Fablab Amsterdam inschrijven—nog korte tijd met een korting van 75 %.