Here is another post on a recent journal article related to my research on enabling the collaborative design of collaborative processes within my doctoral studies at the Media Lab Helsinki within the Aalto University – School of Art, Design and Architecture – Department of Media.

In a previous post I published another recent paper about the Open Meta-Design framework that was presented at the 6th International Forum of Design as a Process Systems & Design: Beyond Processes and Thinking, June 22nd – 24th, 2016 Universitat Politècnica de València.

Here instead I present an article written for the Disegno – The Journal of Design Culture for a specific call titled Copytheft – Post-disciplinary Approaches to Cultural Practices Transgressing Copyright Boundaries. Here I developed a preliminary framework for understanding all the possible intersections among Design with Open Source, P2P and Distributed (and Diffuse and Decentralized) Systems. Basically, I reorganized 10 years of research into a framework for understanding how to enable mass participation with design. It is still preliminary (and in the conclusions I outlined some possible strategies for improving it), but I’m really proud, satisfied and excited of having finally built a framework based on years of reading, browsing, discussing, travelling, experimenting and writing!

You can download the paper here on this website or from on Academia.edu and on Research Gate. You can also download the article and full journal issue on the Disegno website.

You can cite the paper as:

Menichinelli, M. (2016). A Framework for Understanding the Possible Intersections of Design with Open, P2P, Diffuse, Distributed and Decentralized Systems. Disegno – The Journal of Design Culture, III(01–02), 44–71. https://doi.org/10.21096/disegno_2016_1-2mm

And here’s the BibTeX for importing the citation inside your citation manager (Zotero, Mendeley,…):

@article{menichinelli_framework_2016,
title = {A {Framework} for {Understanding} the {Possible} {Intersections} of {Design} with {Open}, {P}2P, {Diffuse}, {Distributed} and {Decentralized} {Systems}},
volume = {III},
issn = {2416-156X},
url = {http://disegno.mome.hu/?page_id=136},
doi = {10.21096/disegno_2016_1-2mm},
number = {01-02},
journal = {Disegno – The Journal of Design Culture},
author = {Menichinelli, Massimo},
year = {2016},
pages = {44–71}
}

Note: this post is in Italian since the book is written in Italian…

Non é semplice sintetizzare anni di lavoro, insegnamento, ricerca, discussione, ma si tratta di una attività importante non solo come ricercatore, ma anche per capire meglio il percorso fatto e orientarsi verso quello futuro. Ho recentemente avuto la fortuna di sintetizzare il mio lavoro di studio, ricerca, insegnamento e consulenza nel mondo dei Fab Lab e dei maker in un libro, “Fab Lab e maker. Laboratori, progettisti, comunità e imprese in Italia” scritto per Quodlibet all’interno della sezione Design. Nel libro ho potuto raccontare cosa sia un Fab Lab, le sue tecnologie, la storia della comunità italiana, gli aspetti economici e sociali, e soprattutto la relazione tra Fab Lab, maker e design (e, ogni tanto, anche il mio percorso tra questi temi), non solo con testo ma anche con immagini. Spero che sia utile per capire il fenomeno e, per Fab Lab e Maker, raccontarlo.

Le tecnologie digitali hanno completamente rifondato il lavoro e lâ€economia, ma la portata dei cambiamenti indotti e la profondità del loro impatto sulla nostra vita non hanno ancora esaurito la loro spinta propulsiva. Il mondo digitale sta infatti trasformando progressivamente vari settori economici, soprattutto attraverso le nuove tecnologie manifatturiere, grazie alle quali la Fabbricazione Digitale (o Digital Fabrication) è ora una realtà concreta, fatta di fresature di precisione, di taglio al laser, e soprattutto di stampa 3D. Le tecnologie digitali sono sempre più uno strumento per nuovi progetti e rinnovate attività sociali ed economiche. I Fab Lab, e in generale il mondo Maker, operano in un contesto di tecnologia avanzata resa finalmente accessibile, di progettazione collaborativa e democratizzata, di manifattura rivoluzionata e riorganizzata da una ricerca continua e aperta, e hanno quindi tutte le carte in regola per espandere tale democratizzazione allâ€intera sfera sociale e produttiva; tanto più nel nostro Paese, tradizionalmente vocato alla manifattura, che a livello internazionale sta ora diventando sotto questo aspetto un vero e proprio caso di studio. Questo libro analizza esaurientemente e per la prima volta il caso italiano, non senza illustrare cosa sia la Fabbricazione Digitale e cosa sia un Fab Lab, quale sia la loro storia passata e quali siano le prospettive future di questo nuovo orizzonte economico e scientifico.

Una prima presentazione è stata fatta in anteprima durante la Maker Faire Rome 2016, presto ce ne saranno altre. Dal 27 Ottobre 2016 è finalmente disponibile, anche su Amazon, la Feltrinelli, Hoepli. Per i Fab Lab che volessero distribuire delle copie del libro, la sezione commerciale di Quodlibet é disponibile ad essere contattata.

Potete citare il libro come: Menichinelli, M. (2016). Fab Lab e maker. Laboratori, progettisti, comunità e imprese in Italia. Macerata: Quodlibet.
Nel caso lo vogliate citare con software tipo Zotero o Mendeley, ecco la citazione in formato BibTeX:

@book{menichinelli_fab_2016,
address = {Macerata},
series = {Quodlibet {Studio}. {Design}},
title = {Fab {Lab} e maker. {Laboratori}, progettisti, comunità e imprese in {Italia}},
isbn = {978-88-7462-889-6},
language = {Italiano},
publisher = {Quodlibet},
author = {Menichinelli, Massimo},
year = {2016}
}

Recently, I presented it to an audience of Makers within the ViennaOpen 2016 event within Maker Faire Vienna 2016. My research started in 2005 with my MSC in Industrial Design degree on the topic of Open P2P Design, which has then been refined into the Open Meta-Design concept after a series of international workshops. The Open Meta-Design concept has been recently developed into a framework and presented as a paper in the
6th International Forum of Design as a Process Systems & Design: Beyond Processes and Thinking, June 22nd – 24th, 2016 Universitat Politècnica de València with the title The meta-design of systems: how design, data and software enable the organizing of open, distributed, and collaborative processes”, written together with Francesca Valsecchi (9 years later, we finally wrote another paper together).

You can download the paper here on this website or from on Academia.edu. You can also download the full proceedings here. A first sketch of a code for it is online on GitHub, and now the full development of an Open Meta-Design platform and its testing with start. Stay also tuned for another paper that will be published soon…

Here’s the BibTeX for importing the citation inside your citation manager (Zotero, Mendeley,…):

@inproceedings{menichinelli_meta-design_2016,
address = {Valencia},
title = {The meta-design of systems: how design, data and software enable the organizing of open, distributed, and collaborative processes},
copyright = {Creative Commons Atribution-NonCommercial-NonDetivates-4.0 International License},
isbn = {978-84-9048-440-1},
url = {https://www.academia.edu/26429284/The_meta-design_of_systems_how_design_data_and_software_enable_the_organizing_of_open_distributed_and_collaborative_processes},
doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.4995/IFDP.2016.3301},
booktitle = {6th {IFDP} – {Systems} \& {Design}: {Beyond} {Processes} and {Thinking}},
publisher = {Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València},
author = {Menichinelli, Massimo and Valsecchi, Francesca},
year = {2016},
pages = {518–537}
}

Edit: here’s the presentation of the paper:

A quick update about Open P2P Design and its related research. I was invited to present my research at ViennaOpen 2016 within Maker Faire Vienna 2016 (which gathered 6000 visitors) during April 2016. This was another great opportunity for presenting the research and getting feedback on its current status (even if more recent advancements are under review and will be published soon in conferences and journals).

For the fifth year in a row, ViennaOpen is festival that deals with contemporary changes in technology and society. ViennaOpen is a collaborative initiative of individuals, groups and projects. An open innovative process, it deals with all aspects of openness. This yearâ€s motto is how to open things. The first part of the festival is organised during the first Maker Fair Vienna.

Here’s a video overview of Maker Faire Vienna 2016:

ViennaOpen2016 @ Maker Faire Vienna from neuearbeit on Vimeo.

All the videos of the event are finally online, here in this article you can find my interview and presentation. The day before the presentation I was interviewed about Open Design and the Maker Movement:

ViennaOpen 2016 – Maker Faire – Interview with Massimo Menichinelli from neuearbeit on Vimeo.

And here is finally my presentation about Open P2P Design, Open Meta-Design and the design of collaborative processes.

ViennaOpen 2016 – Lecture by MASSIMO MENICHINELLI Open Innovation: design of collaborative processes from neuearbeit on Vimeo.

Have you ever wondered how is the global community of Fab Labs, Makerspaces and Hackerspaces structured?
Which kind of community do they form?
Who has more trust in the community?

Well, here’s the short answer in just a picture:

The long explanation can be found in a paper I wrote last year. I first presented it as a poster at the Twitter for Research conference in Lyon, then transformed it into a paper, and here it is now ready! You can find the book with all the proceedings in paper and Kindle version or as open access. Or just my paper here in high resolution or here in low resolution or on Academia.edu. This research started as an exercise, but the gathered data was very interesting and there are interesting insights on how the global community of Fab Labs, Makerspaces and Hackerspaces is structured, where trust and influence can be localized and so on. Probably one of the first maps of the global community of Maker laboratories.

You can cite the article as:

Menichinelli, M. (2016). Mapping the structure of the global maker laboratories community through Twitter connections. In C. Levallois, M. Marchand, T. Mata, & A. Panisson (Eds.), Twitter for Research Handbook 2015 – 2016 (pp. 47–62). Lyon: EMLYON Press. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.44882

Here’s the BibTeX for importing the citation inside your citation manager (Zotero, Mendeley,…):

@incollection{levallois_mapping_2016,
address = {Lyon},
title = {Mapping the structure of the global maker laboratories community through {Twitter} connections},
isbn = {978-1-5232-6339-4},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.44882},
language = {English},
booktitle = {Twitter for {Research} {Handbook} 2015 – 2016},
publisher = {EMLYON Press},
author = {Menichinelli, Massimo},
editor = {Levallois, Clement and Marchand, Morgane and Mata, Tiago and Panisson, Andre},
month = jan,
year = {2016},
pages = {47–62}
}

Here’s the DOI:

Here’s a video presentation of the book from Clément Levallois, one of the editors:

This website has been quite inactive recently, because I’ve been very busy on other fronts: I’ve been lecturing Open Design at SUPSI in Lugano, Switzerland (within the Master in Advanced Studies in Interaction Design); I’ve been lecturing Digital Fabrication in Helsinki at Aalto University (within the Media Lab Helsinki). I’ve been writing for the CheFuturo magazine and for the Make in Italy CDB Foundation (where I’m working as director). And many more things! But research has been progressing, and among many forthcoming publications, I managed to write a book chapter about the previous experiences of Open P2P Design workshops in Helsinki in 2011 and Seoul and Singapore in 2009. The chapter was published in the “Empowering Users through Design” book (edited by David Bihanic) with the title “Open Meta-Design: Tools for Designing Collaborative Processes”. This is therefore the most updated version of Open P2P Design (now simplified into Open Meta-design):

The experience of the Open Source and P2P distributed systems represent a promising direction for the organization of collaborative networks, since their processes and organizational forms have been applied in fields other than the software development industry including biotechnology, pharmaceutical drug research, education, micro-credit financial services and also design. Until now, almost all of these cases have been designed and brought to the users focusing more on the technologies than on the users†needs and their possible active role, and almost none of them has analyzed in depth the methodologies that could be used. There is a strong opportunity for the design discipline to have an important role in designing such distributed systems with open, collaborative and peer-to-peer dynamics starting from users, their communities and localities. This chapter focuses on an open source meta-design methodology aimed at co-designing distributed systems that show open, peer-to-peer and collaborative dynamics with users and their communities, visualizing and managing their nature of complex social and technological systems. In order to organize collaborative design processes between multiple and distributed actors, an activity-centered meta-design approach is introduced in the discussion, thus further advancing the possibilities of organizing open and peer-to-peer design systems and networks. This chapter reports the experiences of planning and facilitating three workshops in Seoul (South Korea), Singapore, Helsinki (Finland), for the experimentation of such meta-design approach.

Aggiungo inoltre che ho iniziato a scrivere per CheFuturo! con un articolo sulle differenti piattaforme ed organizzazioni per la facilitazione e coordinazione dei FabLab. Lo riposto qui sotto la stessa licenza Creative Commons

I FabLab sono nati quasi per caso grazie al Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA) presso il MIT, con un primo laboratorio a Boston, e poi con una costante crescita non pianifcata: spesso sono nati per una richiesta locale, vista l’utilità di questi laboratori. Si possono trovare FabLab in ogni continente, non solo negli Stati Uniti: da San Paolo in Brasile a Lima in Perú nell’America Latina, da Helsinki in Finlandia a Siviglia in Spagna in Europa, dal Ghana o Sud Africa in Africa, dall’Afghanistan all’India od Indonesia in Asia. Sono passati più di 10 anni dal primo FabLab, e 10 anni dalla prima conferenza mondiale dei FabLab (Fab10, la prossima conferenza annuale, si terra nel Luglio 2014 a Barcellona). La stessa organizzazione della rete dei FabLab si é sviluppata ed evoluta nel corso degli anni, dato che i FabLab sono nati quasi per caso: non c’é stato un progetto definito sin dall’inizio, ma un progetto aperto in costante sviluppo in equilibrio tra il Center for Bits and Atoms prima e la Fab Foundation poi, e la comunità dei FabLab. Le piattaforme online che sono state sviluppate per la mappatura e la facilitazione della rete dei FabLab rappresentano differenti approcci alla gestione e organizzazione della rete dei FabLab: risulta quindi interessante analizzarle per capire non solo il passato e il presente ma anche il futuro della rete.

Dato che la rete dei FabLab é nata con le attività del Center for Bits and Atoms, fu naturale conseguenza che per i primi anni la mappatura dei FabLab venisse fatta dal CBA. Sul sito del CBA é quindi presente una lista aggiornata solo sino al 6 Maggio 2012, con 128 FabLab realizzati e altri 27 pianificati per il futuro. Si tratta quindi di una lista centralizzata ma molto informale: per essere inseriti nella lista bastava inviare una e-mail con i dettagli del proprio lab, e di conseguenza il CBA inseriva il laboratorio nella lista senza effettuare controlli o specificare criteri.

Con il tempo si é affiancata un’altra lista, questa volta proveniente dal basso, dalla comunità dei FabLab e ospitata nel wiki del Fab Lab Vestmannaeyjar presso l’Innovation Center Iceland, in Islanda.
L’elenco é ancora attivo e presenta 262 laboratori in tutto il mondo. Essendo un wiki, chiunque può aggiungere il proprio lab, per cui il controllo della qualità del FabLab viene lasciato all’utente stesso (o ad altri utenti), che deve certificare che il proprio laboratorio segua un FabLab conformity rating, un sistema di analisi dei FabLab. Questo sistema prevede una votazione su tre livelli, partendo da C e arrivando ad A, sul livello di implementazione delle 4 condizioni per potersi definire un FabLab, che sono:

1. il FabLab deve essere pubblicamente accessibile;
2. il FabLab deve seguire e mostrare la FabCharter, il manifesto dei FabLab redatto dal prof. Neil Gershenfeld del CBA;
3. il FabLab deve garantire la disponibilità di un insieme di strumenti e processi condiviso con gli altri FabLab;
4. il FabLab deve essere attivo e partecipare alla rete di tutti i FabLab.

Sono quindi possibili tre valutazioni per ogni criterio, A, B e C, che specificano nel presente momento lo stato di sviluppo del FabLab, partendo da un CCCC fino ad arrivare ad un AAAA. Si tratta quindi di un primo strumento condiviso per definire cosa sia e cosa debba fare un FabLab.


Nel frattempo in Italia, la comunità dei makers e dei FabLab italiani si é via via raccolta all’interno del gruppo Fabber in Italia su Facebook. All’interno del gruppo é nata una mappatura dei FabLab (e, più generalmente, dei laboratori di fabbricazione digitale condivisi) con un documento editabile dai membri del gruppo. Al momento conta 36 laboratori (ma non tutti sono propriamente dei FabLab). Per potersi meglio strutturare e comunicare, dal gruppo é nata l’associazione Make in Italy, che si presenta come luogo di ricerca e coordinamento di iniziative volte a favorire la nascita di una cultura della personal fabrication attraverso la condivisione di conoscenze e connessioni. All’interno del sito dell’associazione é presente una mappatura dei laboratori italiani, sviluppata a partire dall’elenco generato su Fabber in Italia. La conversione del documento in mappa non é automatica, infatti al momento la mappa segnala 24 laboratori (sui 36 presenti sul documento editabile su Facebook). Si tratta di una mappatura dal basso (su Facebook) che viene poi filtrata dall’Associazione.

Nel frattempo, il CBA ha mostrato l’intenzione di dedicarsi solo a ricerca e formazione, comunicando che la gestione della rete dei FabLab non debba essere una sua funzione. Nata dall’MIT, la rete dei FabLab si é affrancata dall’MIT, anche se i fondatori quali Neil Gershenfeld hanno ancora un ruolo importante. Si é quindi assistito allo spostamento della gestione della rete dei FabLab dal CBA verso due direzioni. Da un lato, con la nascita nel 2011 della International FabLab Association (basata in Olanda), una associazione internazionale della rete dei FabLab che, senza molto successo fino ad ora, sta tentando di fornire un unico punto di accesso e facilitazione alla rete dei FabLab. Di fatto, l’associazione non propone nessuna piattaforma diretta né per la mappatura né per la facilitazione dei FabLab. Dall’altro lato, con maggior successo con la fondazione della Fab Foundation nel 2009 (basata negli Stati Uniti) che facilita la creazione di FabLab e fornisce loro servizi focalizzandosi su tre direzioni: educazione (.edu), organizzazione e servizi (.org) e opportunità di business (.com).
La FabFoundation ha quindi sviluppato recentemente un proprio nuovo sito e la piattaforma fablabs.io per la mappatura e la facilitazione dei FabLab. Si tratta in questo caso di un mix dei precedenti meccanismi: la segnalazione dei laboratori avviene dal basso direttamente sulla piattaforma, ma la presenza dei laboratori viene confermata da altri FabLab e dagli amministratori del sito. Si cerca quindi di sviluppare la mappatura dal basso con anche un feedback dal basso da parte dei FabLab esistenti e con dei curatori all’interno della piattaforma. La piattaforma é ancora in fase di sviluppo, e presto fornirà non solo strumenti per la comunicazione di orari, eventi e macchinari dei laboratori, ma anche per la comunicazione tra i laboratori (che ora avviene solo tramite videoconferenza). Al momento, all’interno della piattaforma sono elencati 214 laboratori, di cui 11 italiani.

La piattaforma é stata sviluppata all’interno del FabLab Barcelona (uno dei più rilevanti nella rete) da Tomas Diez (direttore del FabLab) e dal programmatore John Rees in maniera open source su GitHub, e rilasciata con licenza MIT, per cui é possibile partecipare al suo sviluppo, segnalare errori e problemi e suggerire nuove funzionalità. La piattaforma verrà dotata di API REST (una prima versione é disponibile all’indirizzo https://api.fablabs.io), per cui sarà possibile costruire applicazioni e visualizzazioni e analisi con i dati presenti nella piattaforma, rendendola ancora maggiormente aperta verso futuri sviluppi.

Si é passati quindi da una gestione centralizzata della rete da parte del CBA ad una senza CBA in equilibrio tra FabFoundation globale e FabLab locali in reti, associazioni e fondazioni regionali e nazionali. Non solo dal punto di vista delle piattaforme, ma anche dal punto di vista organizzativo: il funzionamento delle piattaforme riflette e indica la natura organizzativa della rete. Come detto precedentemente, questa é una organizzazione emergente, per cui la situazione potrebbe evolvere in differenti direzioni.
E per un singolo FabLab che desidera costruire il proprio sito? Di fatto, ogni FabLab sviluppa autonomamente il proprio sito, che sia con WordPress o con Drupal. Nel 2013 ho lavorato allo sviluppo del MUSE FabLab (qui su fablabs.io) a Trento (ne ho già parlato su CheFuturo! qui), e tra gli elementi che ho progettato c’é stato anche il sito web, che é ora in fase di ultimazione da parte di Matteo Perini e Sabina Barcucci che gestiscono il laboratorio (il mio compito di sviluppo e lancio del laboratorio é oramai concluso). Presto sarà online a questo indirizzo: http://fablab.muse.it. Ho approfittato dell’occasione per costruire un sito base denominato FabDrupal (tecnicamente é infatti una distribuzione Drupal) che possa essere usato, dopo una customizzazione, da ogni FabLab. Il sito prevede la costruzione di una comunità, l’archiviazione dei progetti, la descrizione del laboratorio, una gestione degli eventi, una mappatura dei partner e fornitori nel territorio (per poter capire il ruolo del territorio nella vita del FabLab): il tutto con API aperte REST per poter accedere ai dati del sito e quindi creare analisi, visualizzazioni e applicazioni apposite. La distribuzione FabDrupal é quindi accessibile su GitHub sotto licenza MIT: chiunque la può installare e adattare alle proprie esigenze e contribuire al suo sviluppo.

In May 2013 I was invited to OuiShare Fest in Paris, where I gave a short workshop about setting up a FabLab. Here below you can see the presentation. Meanwhile, the workshop has evolved to an article for Shareable that you can find originally here, and that I’m reposting here below. It is a short article, there is material enough for writing a book… maybe it could be an idea for another project!

How to build a FabLab, from Shareable

FabLabs are a global network of local labs, enabling invention by providing access to tools for digital fabrication. This is the definition of FabLab according to the Fab Charter, the manifesto that expresses the principles and values behind FabLabs. Started by accident by the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, the FabLabs movement is now 10 years old and is continuously evolving, with the number of new labs doubling every year and half.

FabLabs can be understood from different perspectives. I’ve already written on this topic, so here I will just recap the main concepts. A FabLab can be understood as a physical space with tools and machines for digital fabrication; a community of people that collaborate and share some values and capabilities; and a node in a global network that seeks a balance between being completely independent and local and being completely coordinated and global. Each of these three different natures is important and cannot be taken alone.

Though it may also be a space for developing prototypes or building final working products, the main goal of a FabLab is to be a space for experimenting at the intersection of bits and atoms, information and matter. This is one of the most important features of a FabLab: to let you experiment with digital information and physical representation with materials. Therefore FabLabs are very important for education and more. They can foster collaboration in the local community, they can initiate the development of new projects and businesses, and they represent a testbed for the future of manufacturing; a future that revolves around locally-distributed manufacturing, co-design and collaboration.
I previously detailed 10 things that should be done when starting a FabLab. Here, I will elaborate more on the process of starting a FabLab (another resource can be found at FabFoundation.org). There are other possible processes and you might have to modify the process for achieving specific results, or within your specific context. The photos are of the Muse FabLab in Trento, Italy, which I recently developed inside the Muse Science Museum. I also worked on the Aalto FabLab inside the Media Factory of Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland. I hope to start more FabLabs soon!

01. Look for local resources

The first step is to look for the resources and people that are necessary for developing the lab. Both are important. The resources can be of any kind: time, money, spaces for the lab, facilities that may be used by the lab, public and private institutions, businesses and services. The idea is that all these resources must be connected to form a local ecosystem that supports the development and life of the lab. Be prepared to have around $100k-200k and 6-12 months available. If you need to start a FabLab in less time, you can ask other labs or people to help you develop the lab. This is why I helped the Muse develop the Muse FabLab.

02. Look for the right people

Then focus on the necessary people. This may even be your first starting point; it depends on the specific situation. You might start by looking for other people to develop a low-cost, grassroots FabLab, or you might hire people for the development of the FabLab. The necessary people can have many different roles: they may develop the lab, they may bring education to the people developing the lab, they may form important partnerships, they may run short workshops, they may bring specific knowledge, they may develop the first projects, and so on.

03. Design activities, services and features

After you have found the right resources and people for starting a lab, it’s time to design all the activities, features and services offered by the lab. It is now important to shape the specificities of your lab. The local context of your lab will need specifics activities and services, so it is always important to adapt the global concept to the local context. There’s a lot of work to be done during this step!

04. Design the business model

As soon as you have a first draft version of your lab’s activities and services, you can start designing the business model and then, later, the business plan. You cannot start a business model without a specific product or service, therefore it is important to have a first version of the project of the lab. You can then further improve both the design of services and activities and the design of the business model in parallel.

After the business model is ready, you can start developing the business plan. This is the document where you will check the balance between revenues and the costs of developing and running the FabLab. Refining the business plan is an activity that will continue throughout the life of the lab. The first 6-12 months will be a testbed for the first version of the business plan, where you will discover if the hypothesis you made while designing the lab were true, and what the real expectations from the users and the local community are. There is no single business model or business plan for FabLabs, but many different revenue models can be connected in order to make sustainable all the value, both social and economic, that is generated by the lab.

05. Prepare the space

It is now time to prepare the space. Even if we could take it for granted, it is never an easy and short task. There are many resources and people involved, and it may take more time than expected. Financially, renovating the space might cost you even more than the machines! Between construction work, piping, electricity and data cables, there may be delays. It is therefore important to pay special attention to this step.

06. Choose, buy and set up machines

Currently, each FabLab buys its machine from vendors, but ideally, in the future, each FabLab will be able to manufacture the machines needed by new FabLabs (this will be the so-called “FabLab 2.0” version). But at the moment we still need to buy most of the machines. This step will probably bring most of the discussion between the people involved in the development of the lab. Each person has their favorite machines and tools, and it’s not always easy to find the right mix. There is one official list of machines, tools, components and materials maintained by Neil Gershenfeld himself. However, the list is not mandatory, and there are many criteria for choosing the machines and tools for your labs.

It is always a good idea to follow the official list as much as possible since there are network effects that make some machines more popular and widely tested. But considering that the list is always evolving, and that each country has its own laws and markets, it is also important to think critically about it and just provide the same kind of machines. These are some of the many criteria that might influence your choice of machines:

• Is the machine right for your activities? Some machines are nice but may not be that useful for your activities, and you might want to wait a bit before spending money on them.
• Are the specifications of the machine right for your space and activities? Sometimes you can choose between different sizes of a machine. It is therefore important to understand how the size will affect your activities. For example, I prefer a bigger laser cutter than the one on the official list, since it is the most-used machine in FabLabs and I prefer to have more flexibility with it.
• Is the machine part of the official list? It will help in making the lab more international and standard, as the list is based on many years of testing inside the most important FabLabs.
• Is the machine compatible with Fab Modules? Fab Modules is a software package that is developed by the Center for Bits and Atoms and the FabLab network. It is supposed to be at the center of the FabLab, by converting many outputs to machine inputs. It covers most of the machines of the official inventory but it is not always used yet; it may be in the future. The most important machine to be used with Fab Modules is the Roland Modela Mdx-20, if you want to fabricate PCB in the FabLab-way.
• Is the machine easy to install? Some machines may be too hard or too time consuming when it comes to install them, so it’s always good to ask other labs about it.
• Is the machine easy to run? Some machines are really well done, but are very complicated since they were designed for professional and trained users to use them, not casual users learning their way around a FabLab. Sometimes it is preferable to have less complicated and easier to use machines (this will help you save a lot of time when helping the users start their projects). For example, there are many big CNC milling machines available, but the ShopBot is a good choice for its ease of use.
• Can you afford to buy this machine? Some machines are very nice but might be too expensive, or there may be expensive custom fees for importing them in your country (as it is the case in Brazil, for example).
• Is the machine popular enough? Some machines may be nice and manufactured close to your lab, but maybe you would like to have more people in the FabLab network to help you with knowledge about the machines. Therefore it is important to understand when you can experiment with a new machine or when you just need a reliable machine fast; a machine that the FabLab network has already tested and adopted.
• Is the machine popular with the FabLabs you will be collaborating the most? If you already plan to collaborate with some specific FabLabs, it makes sense to have similar machines and components.

07. Open the space

While some FabLabs have had their inauguration before the space was really ready, I prefer to wait before opening the space. You can have only one inauguration and it’s an important moment for communicating your space and your activities. Prepare some specific activities and some flyers and posters for spreading awareness about the space and its future activities. Opening a lab seems an easy task, but it may be a very intense moment. For example, we inaugurated the Muse FabLab together with the whole Muse Museum, so we had a 24 hour, 30,000 visitors inauguration!

08. Further develop the space and machines

Most likely, the lab won’t be completely functioning when you open it, for the simple reason that you need to test it with users in order to understand what the specific needs for the space are. It is therefore important to find time and projects for further improving the space, the activities and your knowledge and expertise. For example, during the development of the Aalto FabLab, it was very useful to attend the Fab Academy, the distributed educational format of the FabLab network. Having a specific exercise each week forced us to experiment, test and refine all the machines and spaces. Furthermore, the Fab Academy is a great example of collaboration between the most advanced FabLabs. Therefore, it is always a good idea to participate in it!

09. Connect to local and regional networks

Last thing to do: add yourself to the list of the FabLabs on the FabLab Iceland wiki and on the new Fab Foundation website. The FabLab network has emerged without a design, so the current form of governance is still evolving. At the moment, the form of governance is a mixed, bottom-up/top-down form. There are national networks (like in Spain) and regional networks (like in Latin America) growing with the Fab Foundation as a wrapper between them. It is important to remember that the Center for Bits and Atoms and MIT just do research and education, and they are increasingly out of the management of the FabLab network. Therefore it is important for you to contact your closest regional or national network and the Fab Foundation at the same time in order to be an active part of the network.

At Maker Faire Rome 2013 I gave a short presentation about Open Design during the main opening conference, but I also gave another presentation during a small conference about FabLabs and Peer-to-Peer Economy. I preferred to wait a bit and talk about it in a separate post, since it covers a project that I started by accident in 2012 but that I would like to develop further: FABMoney.

At the beginning of 2012 I got a scholarship for attending the FabAcademy, the distributed educational format of the FabLab network. It was a hard but really interesting experience, enabling me to work even better with digital fabrication technologies and hardware. You can read all the exercises and documentation on my page here: everything has been documented, including the final project, FABMoney. It just started as an exercise (a device able to read RFID tokens and able to create a digital transaction between them, you can find all the source code here) and all the description on the FabAcademy page, but I think it has the potentiality to further strengthen the social impact of FabLabs.
I’ve already blogged about local and open currencies here, and I’ve been reading many books on the topic, and it is clear now that local and open currencies are the right direction for building specific interactions inside communities (each currency design implements different behaviors). The current concept of FABMoney is of a mutual credit currency, with demurrage (a time-based devaluation) for promoting transactions, and without interest for promoting collaboration instead of competition. Each transaction happens every time a user of a FabLab help another user, and therefore he/she receives one or more FABs (F). The online platform will map these transactions and rebuild a social network analysis of them, rendering these transactions as Open Data through Open API (probably it will be a REST system). In this way, we would reach two objectives:

• we would encourage a social collaboration inside the FabLabs, and outside of their buildings and all over the world, enabling new business initiatives;
• at the same time, we would map the social capital of the collaborations inside the FabLab community (through social network analysis), understanding both the economical and the social impact of FabLabs.

The project is still under development (there is only one Drupal module available, but maybe we can build it with Django for implementing social network analysis with NetworkX and a javascript library for visualization like D3, SigmaJS or CytoscapeJS), with its own website at fabmoney.org, and a mailing list for discussion here. If you are interested in the project, please join the mailing list and introduce yourself. The FABMoney project will succeed only if tested in more than one lab, and only if it will become a collaborative effort. We need to test it in different contexts to understand the best currency design features!

A further explanation: why not Bitcoin or one of its forks? Bitcoin has been the first great example of having a global p2p currency, but its implementation was focused mostly on its technical features and anonymity (which we have seen, through social network analysis, it’s not completely valid). The currency is not based on collaboration but on computing power, and therefore it is not suited for the goals of improving the social impact of FabLabs.
Why not LETS or similar existing systems? These are very good example, and we may probably learn and adopt a lot from them, but we need the currency to link all or most of the FabLabs, and we need to implement social network analysis and Open API at the same time, in order to give the community a map of its own self-organization.

FabMoney @ Pop Up Makers

Here you can see a presentation about the version 0.1-0.3 of the platform; in the future it will be easier to have just a central website (I would need a bit of help for having a completely p2p software) with a mobile app. However, the hardware platform can be still adapted and used with the future versions:

P2P Currencies for network collaboration

Here is the presentation regarding the background of the p2p interactions and currency design:

After many months of preparation, Italy finally had a Maker Faire, and in this case it was the main European edition: Maker Faire Rome. The event was a huge success, with many makers and exhibitors coming from all over Europe; it was also a great moment for meeting again friends in the maker community from other countries. I had already met the people from Maker Faire Rome while I was in Helsinki last spring, lecturing my digital fabrication course at Aalto University.

During the opening conference I gave a very brief and introductory speech about Open Design, The emergence of Open Design, here is the presentation:

Edit: here’s the video of my presentation!