FabLab.nl

I really like the idea of a credit system. That is to say that I especially believe in a FabLab ‘global’ trade exchange system. In that way you introduce a new complementary ‘currency’ without the disadvantage of scarcity which could strengthen the relationships between the FabLabs. It can/will enable ‘transactions’ between different FabLabs and stimulate real distributed innovation. However, it will not be easy to implement this.

The other ideas are mainly in the line of content sharing (as much as possible and in different forms), which is of course important. There is already a lot out there, but it is difficult to find. Maybe the challenge is in aggregating this content to one ‘entrance/portal’, in that way every local initiative can do it in their ‘own’ way but their content can be made available (or indexed) by a central service. The Dutch FabLab landscape may be interesting for a proof-of-concept.

I’m not sure that global single sign-on would make a real difference, but maybe open-id authentication would be the way to go. In that way every local CMS, blog, Wiki or other web-application could implement their own open-id access. (It would be cool to have our own open-id fablab server and it would not be very difficult to setup).

I think in all these matters it is vital to stay as much as possible out the way of a local initiatives, so the FabLab network can grow organically in all different shapes and forms (diversity is a big asset).

@Frank I totally agree, diversity is a huge asset. It is a prerequisite to be able to change and innovate on ideas and designs.

As to the global single sign-in, I need to clarify the idea a bit. It’s not about authentication (OpenID would be good for that I agree), but meant as a way to have your project stuff available when you go to a different FabLab. Say, I created a project workspace at FabLab Amsterdam, but then for the next step of it I use the FabLab in Barcelona or Utrecht. It would be great if you could have access to the same material regardless of location. My choice of words in the posting is cause for confusion.

As to the credit system, I already started calling them ‘FabCreds’ in my mind (creds meaning credibility/reputation first, credits second). LETS came to my mind too. I know a few things about designing system params for currency in a way it builds community rather than monetizes interaction. Having something that isn’t based on scarcity, and has the same ‘buying power’ throughout the whole FabLab network can indeed strengthen relationships, as it puts everybody in the network at the same level of ‘economic power’. Will send you some of the notes I quickly jotted down. Hard to implement? Perhaps not. If we start it small (with the working labs here in NL), we can scale it up afterwards. The tricky bit is having one or more functioning clearing houses, if we need them.

@Ton, I’m confused about the global single sign-in. As long as you have web based access to your local ‘repository/workspace’ then you have global sign-in. So local FabLabs should be able to provide that. But still how many cosmopolitan fabbers (=some one who works some time in Norway, some time in India, some time in Amsterdam) are there?

I have read your notes about FabCred (maybe you should share them here?). I was involved in the start up of a LETS circle here on Texel. My experience is that because all transactions are available to each member, everybody knows who is very active, who is a big consumer etc. In other words because of the transparency every member can determine the so-called credibility of someone. Personally I prefer it this way, because now the focus will be more on trust and the (possible) transaction itself instead of status and it leaves room for personal assessment.

The thing I don’t understand yet is that in your ‘model’ a FabLab is more or less a bank, because it gives a starting credit to a new member and each member still has to earn its credits. That is a big difference with the LETS model. Every member can spend first without having credit first. Consuming in a LETS is seen as positive because it stimulates other transactions. The total sum of all transactions will always be null. Of course you have to set some rules to prevent members only spending and not giving something back to the community. In a LETS system there is in my opinion no need for a clearing house.

Although it would be interesting to establish a relationship between the global FabCred and a global currency (USD and/or EUR) through some sort of clearing mechanism. Sponsors or ‘customers’ will then be able to exchange their hard currency into FabCreds. Or for example someone designs and builds snap fit furniture which can be sold outside the FabLab community.

Thanks Frank, for jumping into the discussion.

re: single sign-on

Please bear in mind I am not using single sign on as a technical term here, so your point about web based access to your material coincides with what I envision. I think I am after several other effects as well. One is ‘feeling at home’ when you visit another FabLab, meaning being able to access your own stuff within the context of the FabLab you are in. A context that can interact with your stuff.
Two is ‘feeling of belonging’, knowing you have an account that will work in every other FabLab makes you aware of being part of the whole. Even if you never go to another lab, it is an important signal that for each individual the scope is the entire FabLab network. It is a way FabLabs as organisations can signal core values like openness, sharing etc. It is ‘walking the talk’. So that individual users of labs make up the global FabLab network, not just the labs as it is mostly now.
Three is ‘sharing knowledge’. I would like it to be really easy to go into another FabLab, working on stuff I started elsewhere, and have my work in that other FabLab be turned into example projects, tutorials, help files etc at their place as well. Fitting my work seamlessly into theirs.

re: Fab Cred as status indicator

I think it is very important to have explicit acknowledgment and recognition within the network of reputation and achievement. Because of the high fragmentation of the network as it is now, and because a lot of the material that we would normally use for e.g. my/your personal assessment of your/my reputation might very well be in a language we cannot read. But also because of how important it is in human interaction in groups to have your contributions acknowledged explicitly at group level. It’s not enough to just know you love someone, you have to tell that person every now and then that you do, and be willing to tell others you do. It is an aspect of human society since forever, and doing it in a constructive way (to include people, not to exclude others, building elites) is a fundamental aspect of community building as well to my mind. Fab Cred may be one of the ways of making recognition explicit.

re: FabLabs as ‘banks’ in FabCred

Several things come into play here. Actively inviting people in, is a key aspect of community building. One of the ways you can actively invite people to engage more is by starting them out with a small number of credits. We are used to live in fiat currency systems where going below zero is ‘bad’. So telling people you can spend before you have has little effect (I’ve seen it time and again in a LETS system I was involved in). When you ‘give’ people credit they instinctively know immediately what it means (we are taking a risk first by giving something to you) and what it is an invitation for (to engage more actively). You can tell them just start spending is the same thing, which on the surface it is, but on a deeper level it is completely different.

Second, in a LETS system I was active in, I saw that the group was reluctant to ‘create’ ‘currency’ for collective things (like the board of the association ‘paying’ people for doing group focussed tasks such as making and distributing the monthly newsletter, as opposed to the usual one-on-one transactions). They started worrying (without cause) that the ‘club’ was running into ‘debt’, and in the end created budgets and LETS-contributions to cover those ‘expenses’. I see the total of what the ‘club’ brings into circulation by asking/rewarding people to work on things that benefit the group (and not just one-on-one transactions) as a measure of community effort. (Cathedral building in a number of ways is the same thing) So I am not proposing to make a FabLab the ‘bank’ but do propose it can enter into transactions for the benefit of the group/network without ever having to worry about their ‘account’. To counteract our intuitive ‘resistance’ to this, there can be some ways in which people can ‘pay’ for things towards a FabLab.

re: clearing house

A clearing house is needed insofar we need a way to establish across the entire network what number of creds are held by whom, as well as the reputation aspect of it. Every LETS system that doesn’t rely on ‘printed tokens’ of some sort (which in our setting would be impractical I think anyway) in the end needs a clearing house, not to agree transactions, but to keep track of them and people’s ‘accounts’ in a way that all those involved trust to be accurate. Another way could be having seperate LETS systems in different places that accept each others creds. But that may be more complex than the complexity it tries to solve.

I am approaching all these ideas as ways to strengthen and create community first. Based on my experience in facilitating change in complex environments I favor many small experiments above trying one big one. The former is a much more agile (and fun!) way of getting where we want to be, the latter is mostly a guarantee for failure. So let’s start a bunch of these things small within the Dutch FabLabs, see what works and what needs improvement, or what doesn’t work, and let that inform the next step and set of experiments.

Also none of these ideas are meant as ‘the one thing we do to achieve x or y’. All of them are meant as ‘one of the multiple things we do to increase the likelihood of x or y happening’. Community building is not a lineair cause and effect environment, so our actions cannot be designed that way either.

A quick and dirty reaction because of a lack of time, although these matters are almost too important to give feedback without enough thought.

re: re: single sign-on

I understand the points you’re making but I still have difficulty in seeing that this will increase the likelihood of building a successful community.

re: re: Fab Cred as status indicator

Of course it is always important to have recognition and to have your contributions acknowledged explicitly, but in your description I understood that the credibility is purely based on the volume of transactions and that seems to me something different.

re: re: FabLabs as ‘banks’ in FabCred

Worrying about getting into debt in a LETS system is a sign of a fundamental misunderstanding of the system. One ‘half’ of the system is always in ‘debt’ otherwise the sum of all transactions can’t be null. It will be very beneficial if a FabLab can start transactions for the benefit of the whole, but how or from whom does a FabLab get its FabCreds? Giving new members a starting credit without an transaction seems also counter intuitive, and there is a danger for ‘inflation’. And again where do these credits come from if the fundament of your system is not based on a LETS system?

re: re: clearing house



OK if you mean you need to have a ‘global’ and independent ‘administration’ so everybody in the whole network is sure that it is a sound and trustworthy system, I agree completely.

I agree: “Community building is not a lineair cause and effect environment” that’s why I said it is not easy to implement this, although I realize implement is probably a wrong choice of words

re: re: re: single sign-on

I think it can contribute to feeling part of a bigger whole (i.e. the community), being aware this global community exists, even if you don’t travel (so saying you can go everywhere is every bit as important as actually making it technically possible). I think it can help make you feel not like a guest or a visitor when you do travel, but simply as someone using our collective infrastructure in a different place with new faces around you. The ‘return’ for the fablab visited is the sharing bit is made easy as well.

re:re:re: Fab Cred as status indicator

Yes, now I see what you mean. That is something not covered in my notes yet, we need to think that through. I had the idea of having credibility count as credit somehow. In LETS creds are created in/by transactions. Status is created by activity that could be or not be transactions. So we need to a way to combine them if we want to follow my original idea (because I think being able to translate reputation into tangible ‘benefits’ as well can be a powerful thing in a meritocratic environment). It could be that the FabLabs step in as the counterpart to make certain activities/actions into de facto transactions with the community as a whole.

re:re: re: FabLabs as ‘banks’ in FabCred

You’re precisely hitting my point. The creds are coming from nowhere (just as with normal money btw: that is conjured up out of nowhere as well, but that’s the bit hidden behind the opaque facade of the bank so we never see it that way), hence my use of the word issuer originally. In LETS the creds are created in and by the transaction itself out of nowhere. Because it happens in the transaction there is no scarcity and no impulse for inflation (no debt, no interest = no inflation that gives somebody an edge over someone else). I think we need to see FabLabs as ‘regular’ LETS members who can create creds by each of their transactions, but then without the need to limit their account to a certain bandwith around zero (ie no risk of being seen as ‘taking’ only’ as you would with a normal member), and all their transactions geared towards group-level things ( so FabLabs would be ‘giving’ only). In total everything adds up to zero then, as it should. The neg account of a FabLab seen by itself then simply is a measure for group effort, our cathedral building.
Giving new members a starting credit actually then is a normal transaction. It is the first transaction which happens to be between the FabLab looking to create group level effects and a new member coming in with a zero account. It may look different because in a way payment comes first, whereas in a transaction usually payment comes last. FabLab is exchanging their (e.g. 50) creds for the new member entering into a moral obligation to engage. And FabLab being seen as taking the first step into a new relationship is why ‘payment’ comes first. The moral obligation comes upon acceptance of those creds. I realize not every new member will feel that obligation. Then creds might remain unused, and in the end ‘disappear’ as the transaction in the end never turned out to have taken place. And if they are used, then I trust the interaction that creates with the existing community will draw that member deeper into the community. That closes the transaction: deeper engagement, being sucked into the FabLabs community gravity field in exchange for the original creds. This may happen anyway, but by making the first move FabLab shows its active welcoming gesture, and accelerates the process (also accelerates becoming not engaged if that’s the case). In the end it is not much different from established members’ transactions: Each interaction, each transaction binds a member closer to the community. It’s just the starting point to kick that interaction ball rolling.

Addendum:

Adding people to fringe of a group by inviting them in, is of benefit to the group as a whole (bringing in new perspectives, more diversity, more knowledge, more volume). Which makes it a clear task for FabLabs if we give them the role of ‘trading partner for the good of the group’ in a LETS-like system. Benefit is then not ‘calculated’ on a per transaction/person basis. (“New member X never turned up again after 3 weeks, what a waste ouf our 50 creds”) but over the whole. (“This year we had 35 active new members in our community, what a good result for ‘spending’ 2000 creds”)