FabLab.nl

Today the FabLab Arnhem officially opened. FabLab Arnhem is housed at the HAN, university for applied sciences in Arnhem. With great enthusiasm a large group of people at the HAN worked to make it happen, and today that effort came to fruition.

In the presence of Glorianna Davenport, of MIT’s Medialab, the birthplace of the FabLab concept, Ella Hueting and Titia Bredee, directors of the faculty for technology and education respectively signed the license of the Dutch FabLab Foundation, that is connected to using the FabLab name. For the Dutch FabLab Foundation I had the honor of signing the license granting Arnhem FabLab status. Sadly I could not be present in person, as I was just returning from presenting FabLab at Lift 10 in Marseille. But immediately after landing in Amsterdam I connected with FabLab Arnhem through Skype, so I could see the proceedings in the FabLab, and they could see me sign the license in front of the camera.

Glorianna Davenport talking, Titia Bredee showing the signed license, me doing the same on the screen.

FabLab Arnhem will open to the public five days a week in September. They will be busy finishing the installation of all necessary machines and equipment until then. But today was the official opening with a lot of people attending. More pictures are available.

Toasting the new FabLab Arnhem, ltr Ella Hueting (director of technology), Inez Kohlmann (FabLab project leader), Glorianna Davenport (MIT Medialab), Titia Bredee (director of education)

FabLab Arnhem is the fifth FabLab in the Netherlands, and combined with the two FabLabs in Belgium, and the mobile FabLab, the eighth FabLab in the BeNeLux. We are happy to welcome the FabLab Arnhem at the HAN into the network!

(all pictures in this posting by Hans Mestrum)

(English version below)

Woensdag 2 juni is er weer een FabTafel. We zijn te gast bij FabLab De Waag in Amsterdam. Tijd dus om weer eens met elkaar bij te praten, en ervaringen uit te wisselen. Je bent vanaf 15:00 van harte welkom in het gebouw Pakhuis de Zwijger.

Naast elkaar bijpraten over de laatste ontwikkelingen in de labs, en de Fab6 conferentie, is er ook gelegenheid te kijken naar de eind-presentaties van de deelnemers aan de FabAcademy. Alex Schaub heeft vanuit Amsterdam de FabAcademy begeleid. Verder staan de ontwikkeling van de FabLab modules en community voor de website ter discussie, en is er informatie (ook om mee te nemen!) over de nieuwe Unlimited Design Contest die gaat beginnen.

Laat even weten of je komt (mail ton@fablab.nl), zodat we daar in catering rekening mee kunnen houden.

FabTafels vinden elke zes weken plaats bij een van de FabLabs in Nederland. FabTafels beginnen om 15:00 en gaan altijd door ongeacht het aantal deelnemers. De volgende data zijn 14 juli, 25 augustus, 6 oktober, 17 november, 5 januari (2011). Telkens vanaf 15:00 uur.

English version


Wednesday June 2nd will see another edition of the FabTables. FabLab Amsterdam at The Waag Society is our host. A good opportunity to catch up, share stories and experiences. We’ll start at 15:00, location ‘Pakhuis de Zwijger’.

Next to catching up with eachother and hear the latest info on the Fab6 conference, you can also be witness to the final presentations of the participants in the FabAcademy. Alex Schaub was the one at FabLab Amsterdam, helping facilitate FabAcademy. Also the development of the FabLab website and community modules will be discussed, and there is more information (also to take back to your own FabLab) about the new Unlimited Design Contest that is about to start!

Let me know if you will attend the FabTable (mail ton@fablab.nl), so we can make sure we have enough drinks and snacks.

FabTables take place every six weeks, regardless of who is or isn’t coming. We start at 15:00hrs. The next FabTables will take place on July 14th, August 25th, October 6th, November 17th and January 5th (2011).

As described earlier there was a large FabLab presence at the SHiFT conference in Lisbon last week. Part of that was a documentary about FabLab. This 14 minute film was made by Elmine Wijnia, based on 2 days of filming in 2 FabLabs, and doing interviews with both visitors and staff of the labs.

The documentary was shown twice during the SHiFT conference, once as part of the FabLab workshop, and once as the official premiere in the main room. Now that it has been also shown to the FabLab community at the FabTable today, it is time to reveal it to the wider world.

It’s a documentary, not a clip, so do take the 14 minutes of time to watch it all. Enjoy.

See FabLab video channel at 23video for more video material on FabLab.

Last week the SHiFT conference took place in Portugal. FabLab and personal production were a large part of the program, as you can read in a previous posting.

My talk ‘Maker Households’ was the closing key-note of the SHiFT conference last Saturday. This posting gives you the slides (with text) and the video of my talk (made by Siert Wijnia with his iPhone. Thanks!). The video starts about a minute after the beginning of my presentation.

This is the text that goes before the start of the video: I am here today to do two things: Pedro and his team asked me to try and bring everything that happened in the past 2 days together under one notion: ‘Maker Households’. And the second thing I want to do is to talk to you about how we can start looking at DIY not just as a skill or skillset, but also as a literacy. So we can live in these what I call ‘Maker Households’.

So let’s start with the detour leading up to this story that I created over the past two days. And the detour starts with something you are probably familiar with. In the past 15 yrs we mainstreamed 2 new infrastructures and connected people in the furthest regions of our globe to it: Internet, and mobile communications. These infrastructures are unique compared to any other infrastructure that went before. First of all. Conventional infrastructures basically always connect two geographic locations. Your bathroom to the sea..

Now hit play :)

Ton Zijlstra on Maker Households – SHiFT 2010 from Elmine Wijnia on Vimeo.

Closing key-note of the SHiFT 2010 Conference

These are the slides (with the text below the slides)

A great illustration of my talk, made by Bauke Schildt / @bschildt

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.

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.

English version below

Woensdag 21 april is er weer een FabTafel. We zijn te gast bij FabLab De Waag in Amsterdam. Tijd dus om weer eens met elkaar bij te praten, en ervaringen uit te wisselen. Je bent vanaf 15:00 van harte welkom in Pakhuis de Zwijger.

Op het programma staat de Nederlandse premiere van de korte documentaire film die Elmine Wijnia heeft gemaakt over de FabLabs in Nederland. Deze week vindt de eerste vertoning van Engelse versie van de film plaats op de SHiFT conferentie in Lissabon. Deze conferentie heeft DIY als thema.

Laat even weten of je komt (mail ton@fablab.nl), zodat we daar in catering rekening mee kunnen houden.

FabTafels vinden elke zes weken plaats bij een van de FabLabs in Nederland. FabTafels beginnen om 15:00 en gaan altijd door ongeacht het aantal deelnemers. De volgende data zijn 2 juni, 14 juli, 25 augustus, 6 oktober, 17 november, 5 januari (2011). Telkens vanaf 15:00 uur.

English version
Wednesday April 21st will see another edition of the FabTables. FabLab Amsterdam at The Waag Society is our host. A good opportunity to catch up, share stories and experiences. We’ll start at 15:00, location Pakhuis de Zwijger.

Part of the program will be the first ever screening of the Dutch short documentary movie by Elmine Wijnia about the FabLabs in the Netherlands. This week the English version of this short movie will be shown at the SHiFT conference in Lisbon, Portugal. The conference has DIY as a theme.

Let me know if you will attend the FabTable (mail ton@fablab.nl), so we can make sure we have enough drinks and snacks.

FabTables take place every six weeks, regardless of who is or isn’t coming. We start at 15:00hrs. The next FabTables will take place on June 2nd, July 14th, August 25th, October 6th, November 17th and January 5th (2011).

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.