FabLab.nl

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.

Bart Kempinga with his ‘scrapbook’ in a still empty FabLab Groningen

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.

Presentation slide by my students

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.

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.