FabYearBook 2010 - The How And Why 3
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.
The First FabYearBook Is Here / Come Get It
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.
Atoms are the new Bits!
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!
Obama bezoekt een FabLab 2
Vandaag heeft President Obama het Lorain County Community College Fab Lab bezocht.
Invitation to First 2010 FabTable / FabYearBook Presentation
(Nederlandse versie verder beneden / Dutch version below)
January 27th is the date for the first FabTable in 2010. You are all invited to join us at CabFabLab in the Hague from 15:00.
We will be welcoming everybody to what surely will be a new fabulous fabrication year. A year that brings the Fab6 Conference to our shores in August (16th-20th). A year that also starts with a first in the global FabLab network: we will print the first ever FabYearBook.
The FabYearBook 2010 is a collection of stories and impressions from around the FabLab network. This first edition contains material from the Netherlands mostly, but we hope it will start a tradition, and that the 2nd edition in January 2011 will see contributions from around the globe.
At the FabTable we will print the first FabYearBook live in the CabFabLab. Afterwards we will publish the entire FabYearBook on-line for everybody to download and print as they like.
Come join us on January 27th! At CabFabLab in the Hague, starting 15:00 hrs. Please let us know if you intend to be there (so we can arrange catering): e-mail ton@fablab.nl.
A sparkling 2010, starting at the CabFabLab
Nederlandse versie:
Op 27 januari vindt de eerste FabTafel van 2010 plaats. Iedereen is van harte uitgenodigd in het CabFabLab in Den Haag vanaf 15:00 uur.
Met elkaar luiden we een nieuw jaar in. Een jaar dat belooft bijzonder te worden. In augustus (16 t/m 20) vindt namelijke de Fab6 Conferentie in Nederland plaats, en komt het wereldwijde FabLab netwerk hier samen. Als Nederlandse FabLabs zijn we trots gastland te mogen zijn dit jaar. We beginnen het jaar meteen ook al met een primeur: tijdens de FabTafel drukken we het eerste FabYearBook.
Het FabYearBook 2010 is een verzameling verhalen en impressies uit het FabLab netwerk. Deze eerste editie bevat vooral bijdragen uit Nederland, maar we hopen hiermee een traditie te starten, en dat de tweede editie begin 2011 bijdragen van over de hele wereld bevat.
Tijdens de FabTafel drukken we het eerste exemplaar van dit eerste jaarboek. Daarna komt het jaarboek on-line beschikbaar zodat iedereen het zelf kan downloaden en afdrukken.
Kom ook naar de FabTafel op 27 januari. We beginnen om 15:00 uur in het CabFabLab in Den Haag. Laat even weten of je erbij zult zijn (zodat we de catering kunnen regelen): e-mail ton@fablab.nl.
FabYearBook 2010
first printed on January 27th
Nieuwe lasersnijder bij ProtoSpace 2
Met trots neemt ProtoSpace haar nieuwe (tweede) lasersnijder in gebruik. Het mooie apparaat van het merk Laserpro heeft een bijna 2x zo groot vermogen (60 Watt) en een 3x zo groot snijoppervlak (90×60 cm) als de Epilog. De Epilog heeft zich bewezen als een enorm werkpaard van het lab, maar het is en blijft maar 1 werkpaard. Aangezien de laser het meest gebruikte apparaat is bij ProtoSpace, hebben we besloten middelen vrij te maken om er een tweede bij te kopen. De nieuwe grote laser is de dag voor kerst bezorgd, een leuk kerstcadeautje dus! Sinds afgelopen vrijdag is ook de afzuiging klaar die nodig is om dit bakbaast van voldoende frisse lucht te voorzien! Dus aan de slag ermee!
