First attempt at policies for FabLabs

In 2010, in USA the representative Bill Foster (D-IL14) introduced a bill before congress called National Fab Lab Network Act, that unfortunately was unsuccessful, as no policy or law was actually generated. Albeit unsuccessful, this was the first attempt at drafting policies for FabLabs.

Title: To provide for the establishment of the National Fab Lab Network to build out a network of community based, networked Fabrication Laboratories across the United States to foster a new generation with scientific and engineering skills and to provide a work force capable of producing world class individualized and traditional manufactured goods.
[...]
to seek to establish at least one Fab Lab per every 700,000 individuals in the United States in the first ten years of its operation.

FabCity: new policies for new cities and local communities around Fabbing

The FabLab network is now also expanding within cities: in some cities there will be soon more than one FabLab, and this will be a very interesting step in order to see their local impact and their interactions.
For example, the Barcelona FabCity project was first announced at Fab7 in Lima (Peru) by Toni Vives, Head of the Department the Urban Habitat in the Office of the Mayor of Barcelona and member of the IAAC Board of Directors (see the picture here below).

The project consists in expanding the number of the FabLabs within the city of Barcelona (calling them “Ateneus de Fabricació”), enabling each area of the city to be self-sustainable in the production and manufacturing. Actually, before the project was presented, there was already the plan to build a second FabLab over the mountains around the city, the Green FabLab, a FabLab centered around sustainable digital fabrication technologies for the green environment. The project has been funded by the Spanish state within the Plan Avanza initiative with 1.9 € million.
If you want to get a broader urbanistic and architectural perspective on this vision, you can read Vicente Guallart’s excellent book (in Spanish) La ciudad autosuficiente en red. Vicente Guallart has been co-founder of the Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and is now Head of Urbanism in the town council of Barcelona; you can watch (in Spanish) this interview or his TEDx presentation below.

Tomas Diez, Project Manager at FabLab Barcelona (hosted at IAAC – Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia), has been interviewed two times about the FabCity concept (and further information can be read from this interview in Spanish with the La Vanguardia newspaper or this blog post):

Right now we have two fab labs. One is in the Museum of Design which is being moved to the east of the city and another is in the old town. We are working on two more for the summer of 2012, a green fab lab in the northern outskirts of Barcelona and a second in the disadvantaged neighborhood of Ciutat Meridiana. It’s a challenge. We want to show that this model can transform production methods, as well as social bonds.

We’re going to create a foundation and we’re currently developing a brand – FabCity. We’re planning to combine both public and private sector funding to promote the project, which will be generating new economic revenue. In the medium term, our plan is to set up a fab lab in each neighborhood. Eventually they will be managed by the neighborhood’s residents. We’ll train them, and in turn they will train others.

This proposal consists on a fab city made up of an interconnected community of neighborhood fab labs. The venues’ goals would be to encourage entrepreneurship and interest in innovation that have already been present in Barcelona throughout centuries. As they see it, bringing factories back to cites will lead us through a new industrial revolution where production methods and social bonds will be transformed.

[...] cities need to be updated from the organization point of view, we need to re-envision the role of governments, and think that cities should provide commodities and platforms for people to solve their own needs. Services are associated with the consumption model, which has the service provider in one side and the consumer in the other, in the new scenarios this both ends are merged, and we need spaces and platforms for this to happen at different levels, from the neighborhood exchange, as happened in the past, to the high tech centers to bring digital fabrication to common people, as happened with web publishing, photography or video making. In the recent past we became publishers, editors and even journalists, now is the time of the makers.
Neighborhoods will be production clusters, as they did in the medieval age, we are in our way to a high tech medieval age, not only concentrated into the technocrat point of view, but with a high load of humanism and local needs perspective.

There are also similar initiatives emerging in Barcelona, including the Maker Convent (see more background in this blog post).
During the Open Knowledge Festival 2012 (which I co-organized) I moderated a panel with Tomas Diez and Peter Troxler about the policies for Digital Fabrication and Open Design, and you can watch also Tomas Diez’s presentation of the FabCity project here below (the panel starts at 6:14). Another preentation by Tomas Diez on the same topic can be watched here.

More FabCities?

While the Barcelona FabCity represents the first attempt at building a local network of FabLabs within the same city, we can expect to witness similar experiments soon. For example, in UK, FabLab Manchester now plans to open a network of 30 Labs across the UK over the next eight years, and some of them could be in the same city.
This project however seems not to be part of any public policy, as the FabLab Manchester is owned and run by The Manufacturing Institute, a charity funded by manufacturers and universities that works with companies to help improve skills and productivity.

A different experiments seems to be taking place in Russia where, after the first one, FabLab@School, opened by Stanford University in Moscow, the Russian Ministry of Economic Development is said to be financing a network of more than 20 labs in Moscow and its surroundings (and this could be another FabCity), with more than 100 others expected across Russia.

Another attempt at policies for FabLabs

During March 2013, congressman Bill Foster introduced again the National Fab Lab Network Act of 2013 to promote advanced manufacturing in the U.S. and invest in the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators. The bill is being introduced with bipartisan support from 15 original co-sponsors including Rep. Randy Hultgren, Rep. Tom Massie, Rep. Chris Van Hollen and others. The proposed legislation would create a nonprofit entity to establish a National Fab Lab network throughout the United States.
The goal of the network will be to establish at least one Fab Lab for every 700,000 people, giving students throughout the country access to the tools and skills needed to bring their ideas to life. The legislation does not provide funding to the network, but seeks to provide the project with the recognition needed to grow and establish new centers throughout the country. You can read the full legislation here.

And manufacturing left the country

Most of the policies regarding digital fabrication addresses (and try to revert) the phenomena of manufacturing industries leaving countries like USA or UK and moving to China. Let’s then start our research with an overview of the phenomena. The Insourcing Boom article by By Charles Fishman gives a great overview of the phenomena, telling the story of General Electric:

In 1951, when General Electric designed the industrial park, the company’s ambition was as big as the place itself; GE didn’t build an appliance factory so much as an appliance city. Five of the six factory buildings were part of the original plan, and early on Appliance Park had a dedicated power plant, its own fire department, and the first computer ever used in a factory. The facility was so large that it got its own ZIP code (40225). It was the headquarters for GE’s appliance division, as well as the place where just about all of the appliances were made.
[...]
Employment kept rising through the ’60s, but it peaked at 23,000 in 1973, 20 years after the facility first opened.
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Even as recently as 2000, a typical Chinese factory worker made 52 cents an hour: 20 or 30 workers overseas for what one cost in Appliance Park. Manufacturing jobs peaked in 1979 at 19.6 million.The country lost factory jobs seven times faster between 2000 and 2010 than it did between 1980 and 2000. Only 500,000 factory jobs were created between their low, in January 2010, and September 2012—a tiny fraction of the almost 6 million that were lost in the aughts.

The story is quite common and therefore understandable, and the article goes one explaining the dynamics of this trend:

In the 1960s, as the consumer-product world we now live in was booming, the Harvard economist Raymond Vernon laid out his theory of the life cycle of these products, a theory that predicted with remarkable foresight the global production of goods 20 years later. The U.S. would have an advantage making new, high-value products, Vernon wrote, because of its wealth and technological prowess; it made sense, at first, for engineers, assembly workers, and marketers to work in close proximity—to each other and to consumers—the better to get quick feedback, and to tweak product design and manufacture appropriately. As the market grew, and the product became standardized, production would spread to other rich nations, and competitors would arise. And then, eventually, as the product fully matured, its manufacture would shift from rich countries to low-wage countries. Amidst intensifying competition, cost would become the predominant concern, and because the making and marketing of the product were well understood, there would be little reason to produce it in the U.S. anymore.

Over the past four decades, America has lost substantial market share of global manufacturing output. Since 1970, American share of global manufacturing output has declined to 20% from 26%. Meanwhile, China’s share has risen to 19% from just 1% in the same time frame, gaining 6 points from the U.S., 7 from Germany, 4 from the U.K. and 2 each from Italy, France and Japan. From 1970 to 1990, American manufacturing employment didn’t decline, but rather lost share to rapidly growing services jobs. Then manufacturing employment began a rapid decline – 6 million American manufacturing jobs disappeared between 1998 and 2010.

3D Printing as the future of manufacturing: USA

3D Printing is not only an interesting topic for designers, but also for businessmen and policymakers, since the Economist started writing a huge number of articles on the topic (even about organ 3D printing) and even released a number of its magazine with a cover dedicated to 3D printing in February 2011. From these articles (and many others) we can see a widespread trust in the revolutionary abilities of 3D printing that will transform and reboot traditional manufacturing processes. It is therefore a natural consequence that we are now witnessing the rise of public interest and public policies about 3D printing as a way of improving traditional manufacturing industries and therefore the country economy.

During March 2012, President Obama announced his plan to invest $1 billion to catalyze a national network of up to 15 manufacturing innovation institutes around the country that would serve as regional hubs of manufacturing excellence that will help to make our manufacturers more competitive and encourage investment in the United States. The President called on Congress to act on this proposal and create the National Network of Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI).
As part of his Administration’s We Can’t Wait initiative, President Obama also announced immediate steps to launch a pilot institute to serve as a proof-of concept for the NNMI. Five federal agencies – the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Commerce, the National Science Foundation, and NASA – jointly committed to invest $45 million in a pilot institute on additive manufacturing.
The winning consortium is led by the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining and consists of leading research universities like Carnegie Mellon and Case Western Reserve University, world-class companies like Honeywell, Boeing, and IBM, innovative small manufacturers like M7 and ExOne, and community colleges spread across Eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania.

Obama’s proposal for a National Network for Manufacturing Innovation was endorsed by his Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Steering Committee. The AMP’s final recommendations, released in the report Capturing Domestic Competitive Advantage in Advanced Manufacturing, outlined a set of actions to enable innovation, strengthen our workforce, and accelerate investment in America. Obama’s proposal for a NNMI is part of his comprehensive plan to revitalize American manufacturing, which includes providing tax incentives to encourage manufacturers to invest in America, eliminating of tax breaks for manufacturing firms that ship jobs abroad, investing in community colleges and workforce training, supporting innovation in cross-cutting manufacturing technologies, investing in the 21st century infrastructure our manufacturers need, and leveling the playing field so American workers can compete on the merit of their hard work.

During August 2012, the Obama Administration announced the launch of a new public-private institute for manufacturing innovation in Youngstown, Ohio as part of its ongoing efforts to help revitalize American manufacturing and encourage companies to invest in the United States. This new partnership, the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute (NAMII), was selected through a competitive process, led by the Department of Defense, to award an initial $30 million in federal funding, matched by $40 million from the winning consortium, which includes manufacturing firms, universities, community colleges, and non-profit organizations from the Ohio-Pennsylvania-West Virginia ‘Tech Belt.’

“This institute will help make sure that the manufacturing jobs of tomorrow take root not in places like China or India, but right here in the United States of America. That’s how we’ll put more people back to work and build an economy that lasts.”

It is not the only new center for manufacturing in the US, since in November 2011 the Wentworth Institute of Technology opened its new $3 million manufacturing center in which more than 200 students a year are expected to gain lab experience on 20 manufacturing machines. The center will introduce students to rapid prototyping, computer numerical control (CNC) and computer aided manufacturing, which they will apply to the design and manufacturing of parts in the areas of automotive, biomedical, electronics, machine tool and consumer products

Policies for Digital Fabrication: UK

The British government soon followed the same path of the USA government, by announcing to invest £7m of research and development funding into 3D printing in order to increase the country’s competitiveness and bring back manufacturing to UK. Grants for collaborative research and development projects in 3D printing, will be awarded through an open competition run by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council.

The Big Innovation Centre (an initiative from The Work Foundation and Lancaster University launched in September 2011) also published a report on the importance of 3D Printing in October 2012: “Three Dimensional Policy: Why Britain needs a policy framework for 3D” by Andrew Sissons and Spencer Thompson. According to the authors there may be big first mover advantages for countries that adopt 3D printing early, and the UK has an opportunity to lead the world in this area.
According to them, as a first steps towards seizing the 3D printing agenda, the government should:

• Create a 3D printing task force, led by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), able to bring together ideas from business and academia, while coordinating the various levers of government policy;
• Scope a review of the intellectual property implications of 3D printing, building on the work of the Hargreaves Review;
• Fund the establishment of more pilot 3D printing workshops, to enable members of the public to experiment with the technology;
• Develop models for and explore the feasibility of a digital design exchange, analogous to the mooted digital copyright exchange;
• Provide funding for competitions to develop new materials for 3D printing;
• Commission research and feasibility studies into possible methods for regulating 3D printing markets, particularly with regard to the production of dangerous items.

And UK will not be the only country to do this: on October 2012 it was known that, according to a leaked paper seen by Reuters, the European Commission is going to ask countries to invest heavily in new technologies such as 3D printing to revive the European Union’s declining manufacturing sector. Singapore as well will invest $500 million over five years to boost Singapore’s skills in advanced manufacturing, including in the rapidly emerging 3-D printing industry.

The paper which outlines the bloc’s future industrial policy said the commission wants to raise manufacturing from 16 percent to 20 percent of EU GDP by 2020 using new techniques such as 3D printing which builds objects using instructions from a printer.

… and manufacturing comes back to the USA!

But while we expect 3D printing to bring back manufacturing to USA in the future, manufacturing is already coming back to USA, even without the aid of 3D Printing. But of course, 3D printing could help in this process, and that’s why it is now an issue part of the new policies for manufacturing. Let’s continue with the interesting story reported by the The Insourcing Boom article by By Charles Fishman. According to this article, on February 10 2012, Appliance Park opened an all-new assembly line to make cutting-edge, low-energy water heaters. On March 20 2012, just 39 days later, Appliance Park opened a second new assembly line to make new refrigerators (previously manufactured in Mexico). A third assembly line is under construction, to make a new stainless-steel dishwasher starting in early 2013.
Similar examples of companies that prefer to manufacture in USA rather than in China are also being reported by The Economist and Wired magazine more than once with many articles. Mexico, which has the huge advantage of bordering the United States, is increasingly attracting production destined for the Americas that would formerly have gone to China.
Apple plans to spend more than $100 million in 2013 on building Mac computers in the U.S., shifting a small portion of manufacturing away from China. Before this news, Apple’s executives believed that the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have outpaced their American counterparts.

Oil prices are three times what they were in 2000, making cargo-ship fuel much more expensive now than it was then. The natural-gas boom in the U.S. has dramatically lowered the cost for running something as energy-intensive as a factory here at home. (Natural gas now costs four times as much in Asia as it does in the U.S.). In dollars, wages in China have been growing by 12% every year and are now some five times what they were in 2000—and they are expected to keep rising 18 percent a year. Countries like Cambodia, Laos, India and Vietnam are picking up some of the cheapest labor manufacturing left by the Chinese.
U.S. labor productivity has continued its long march upward, meaning that labor costs have become a smaller and smaller proportion of the total cost of finished goods. One key difference between the U.S. economy today and that of 15 or 20 years ago is the labor environment—not just wages in factories, but the degree of flexibility displayed by unions and workers.
Sometimes the product manufactured in China have a low quality or arrive at destination damaged. By manufacturing locally, instead, it is also possible now to have designers and engineers talk with the assembly-line workers on a continuous base, making it possible for them to develop and share knowledge and ideas about designing and manufacturing new products.

GE is not alone in moving the manufacture of many of its products back to the U.S. The transformation under way at Appliance Park is mirrored in dozens of other places, with Whirlpool bringing mixer-making back from China to Ohio, Otis bringing elevator production back from Mexico to South Carolina, even Wham-O bringing Frisbee-molding back from China to California.

GE is rediscovering that how you run the factory is a technology in and of itself. Your factory is really a laboratory—and the R&D that can happen there, if you pay attention, is worth a lot more to the bottom line than the cost savings of cheap labor in someone else’s factory.

To further explain this trend, in May 2012 The Boston Company published the Potential Beneficiaries of a U.S. Manufacturing Renaissance
(May 2012) insight, written by Senior Research Analyst Shirley E. Mills. Check also this short introductory video to the report.
This report outlines the reasons why this phenomena is now different from the event from the past:

1. The dollar has weakened: The decline of the U.S. dollar has reduced the relative cost of U.S. wages and inputs in comparison with other locations.
2. Wage differentials have narrowed between U.S. and key manufacturing economies: Wages are an important factor for companies when deciding where to locate production. In 2000, Chinese wages were 3% of American levels, but by 2015 the labor cost
   savings will narrow from 65% to 39%.
3. Natural gas prices have declined in America relative to global price levels: electricity and material costs (for some companies) are decreasing.
4. Global supply chains have become slower and more expensive: due to higher fuel prices, port delays, container lines’ implementation of slower speeds to minimize fuel costs, and the use of larger ships that take longer to load and unload. Longer transport times further increase
   costs by requiring excess stocks to be held or airfreight to be employed to rush goods to market.
5. Various forms of volatility have become more apparent and thus a larger concern: From fuel prices to financial markets, volatility has been the story of the past decade. This has made management teams much less willing to believe that factors such as wages, currency, and transportation costs and time will remain predictable.
6. Miscellaneous other factors point in the same direction: “nearsourcing”: Intellectual Property, Quality Control are among these factors.

The conclusions from this report are then:

Our perspective is that due to the strong multiplier effect of manufacturing jobs, the beneficiaries of a U.S. manufacturing renaissance will be found in small and midsize, U.S.-focused industrial suppliers and in other sectors of the economy. These include U.S.-based component suppliers, transportation companies, raw material producers, retailers and banks. Potential beneficiaries even include state and local government budgets: Michigan recently announced a surprise $500 million budget surplus due to unanticipated revenue growth, after a decade of decline.

Manufacturing activity that occurs within North America could drive growth in U.S. freight volumes, because such activity tends to involve more intranational movements as components are transported around the country. This could benefit trucking companies that move more onshore freight than imports, railroads that move raw materials and long-haul shipments, and suppliers to those industries.

… and manufacturing comes back to the UK as well!

Again, the same thing is happening in UK, and Wired UK took the example of the Raspberry Pi (a credit-card-sized single-board computer that will soon be popular in FabLabs as well) for telling this story. The decision by British component supplier Premier Farnell (which owns the licence to build and market the Raspberry Pi worldwide) and the Raspberry Pi Foundation to bring part of the production of the microcomputer to UK was evidence of the beginning of a trend that insiders in the industry have been aware of for a while, certainly at the SME (small and medium enterprise) level. The Economist, however, is arguing that Europe will benefit much less than USA from this reshoring of manufacturing.

Sony’s Kelly agrees with Upton and Buffham and says that “China’s manufacturing base appears to work well if the product is mature and mass-produced. However, if the product is in development and needs enhancement this significantly interrupts the manufacturing process and the added value China can offer is potentially lost or at least threatened.”

For Evans, though, the key issue for many SMEs is the “flexibility” that manufacturing in the UK gives them, especially for those who have a “customisation strategy for their product”. Or even the loss of control over IP that can result from outsourcing. “The element of fear,” he says.

Policies and the future of 3D Printing

Manufacturing, in some ways and to some extent, is already coming back home, but in any case 3D Printing could speed up this trend, that’s why it is so interesting right now.
The Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies (Source: Shapeways) graphic has been used since 1995 to highlight the common pattern of overenthusiasm, disillusionment and eventual realism that accompanies each new technology and innovation. The Hype Cycle Special Report is released annually to track ‘emerging’ technologies along this cycle and provide guidance on when organizations should adopt them for maximum impact and value.

As we can see from this graphic, 3D Printing is clearly reaching the top of the peak of expectations (of course: it is now a theme that even the Economist talks about!), and therefore it is natural that we expect that it may bring back manufacturing to the countries that have lost it. It is so popular that it is normal that it is now part of public policies: whould a widely unknown topic be part of a public policy, if there isn’t enough public discussion about it?
However, this graphic should remind us that there are 5-10 years before 3D Printing will reach the Plateau of Productivity and it will affect us in the everyday life. This means that it is exactly the right moment to invest energy and financial resources in it (there is enough time to do research before we can finally get the outcomes). Therefore, it is exactly the right moment for developing public policies for 3D Printing even if (or maybe also because) manufacturing jobs are starting to come back.

Questo é il trailer di presentazione del MuSe:

Mentre nei due seguenti video potete capire meglio il progetto architettonico e urbanistico del MuSe in riferimento alla cittá di Trento (dato che non solo il FabLab costruirá una comunitá, ma anche lo stesso intervento architettonico e urbanistico avrá un impatto sulla comunitá esistente e costruirá una comunitá locale ben connessa con altre localitá):

Inoltre, qualche settimana fa sono stato invitato a parlare di Open Design e FabLab a Trento, nell’evento ICT Days 2013 (qui trovate maggiori informazioni). Il mio intervento si é svolto sabato 23 Marzo con il titolo Spazi fisici e digitali per la collaborazione. Le dinamiche di Open Design all’interno dei FabLab:

Il mondo digitale si sta sovrapponendo al mondo fisico con tecnologie che interagiscono con materiali secondo processi digitali. Stiamo assistendo all’adozione di processi Open Source anche nello sviluppo di oggetti fisici, attraverso la collaborazione di una comunitá sia online che locale. Infatti, i progetti di Open Hardware e Open Design spesso vengono sviluppati attraverso le tecnologie di fabbricazione digitale in spazi quali i FabLab. Cosa é possibile fabbricare in un FabLab? Cosa sono i processi Open Source? Come collaborare? Parleremo di questi temi pensando al futuro FabLab di Trento.

Lo streaming dell’evento é stato archiviato e puó essere consultato qui (di seguito trovate anche la presentazione). Si é trattato inoltre anche di un modo per presentare il futuro FabLab e le sue potenzialitá alla cittá di Trento: come potete notare, non ci sono state domande sui temi presentati ma suggerimenti su persone ed iniziative da coinvolgere nel progetto. Un ulteriore segno che la cittá é pronta per un FabLab e lo accoglie con favore (e che ormai questi temi siano molto piú comprensibili e interessanti per il pubblico generale).

É stato finalmente pubblicato (in italiano) il capitolo “Il societing come pratica collaborativa: tecnologie, spazi e processi di Open Design” che scrissi un anno fa sulla importanza che FabLab (e altri simili spazi) e l’Open Design che in esso si sviluppa abbiano per la innovazione sociale. Digital Fabrication e processi collaborativi non in una ottica di innovazione tecnologica, ma di come queste innovazioni tecnologiche diano luogo a processi innovativi dal punto di vista sociale. L’articolo inoltre fa il punto della situazione per quanto riguarda lo sviluppo dell’Open Design e sull’ecosistema di spazi quali FabLab, Hackerspaces, Living Lab. L’articolo é stato pubblicato (assieme a molti altri interessanti contributi sulle innovazioni sociali portate da monete alternative, social media, smart city, culture underground) nel libro Societing Reloaded (a cura di Alex Giordano e Adam Arvidsson) (Arvidsson, A. G. A. (2013). Societing reloaded. Pubblici produttivi e innovazione sociale. EGEA.). Gli altri contributi sono di Caterina Bandinelli, Michel Bauwens, Francesca Buttara, Anna Cossetta, Bernard Cova, John Grant, Salvattore Iaconesi, Oriana Persico, Jaromil, Riccardo Maiolini, Vincenzo Moretti Bertram Niessen, Irenangela Smargiassi e Barret Stanboulin.

L’economia corporate è in crisi. E’ ormai sempre più evidente che, per sopravvivere, il sistema deve cambiare radicalmente. Il problema più grande non è la scarsità di idee né di proposte concrete e nemmeno di persone disposte a impegnarsi per un cambiamento concreto. Quello che manca è un nuovo modello organizzativo: una nuova filosofia d’impresa capace di capitalizzare le risorse e dar loro una nuova direzione.

Tutto ciò implica la necessità di una nuova filosofia, non solo di mercato, ma degli attori sociali nella loro totalità: societing.

Il societing è un tentativo di assecondare la socializzazione dei processi produttivi, in atto da qualche decennio, con una nuova filosofia d’impresa che riconosca il ruolo sempre più attivo dei consumatori e degli altri stakeholder, e che si apre a una loro partecipazione attiva anche nella determinazione del valore della ricchezza prodotta.

Maggiori informazioni sul libro le potete trovare alla pagina dell’editore qui o in questi due articoli.
Il libro lo potete trovare anche in formato digitale oltre che cartaceo, qui. Di seguito il video promozionale del libro:

Co-design of the new design policies

The European Design Leadership Board for the European Design Innovation Initiative (EDII) was established in early 2011 by Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani, responsible for Enterprise and Industry. It comprises fifteen members drawn from a wide-ranging and representative cross-section of design, industry and academia as well as regional and national agencies promoting design and innovation. It is supported by a Secretariat based in Aalto University, Helsinki (the same University where I am lecturing, working and studying).
Vice President Tajani invited the Leadership Board to provide recommendations on how to enhance the role of design in innovation policy in Europe at the national, regional or local level and to develop a joint vision, priorities and actions to enable design to become an integral part of innovation policy at the European level, in line with the Innovation Union.
In March 2012, the Design Leadership Board took the unique step, (in the context of European policy-making), of bringing together end-users and other design stakeholders into a facilitated, one-day, co-design workshop in Brussels. The workshop enabled the introduction of expertise, insight and ideas from end-users into the deliberations of the European Design Leadership Board.
I was invited to the workshop in order to bring my experience and knowledge of the emerging fields of digital fabrication, DIY design and Open Design; in particular, I was in the working group of small and medium sized companies (don’t forget, most of the Open Hardware or Digital Fabrication companies are small ones, and especially small ones can thrive from them). It was a very interesting experience, that enabled me to understand how these processes run and how so many conflicting interests exist (the workshop was long enough in order to give insights and feedback to some draft proposals, but short enough in order not to start conflicts among the stakeholders).

It turned out that, while digital fabrication was present in many drafts, FabLabs were considered still not a reality or controversial by some participants, while there were at least two more proponents of Open Design beside me (so probably that’s why we managed to push Open Design to the final recommendations!). There was, however, some criticism of Open Design and DIY Design (as expected), so I tried to divide the big topics of Open Design, DIY and digital fabrication into smaller elements and incorporate them into the discussion).

The co-design wokshop was facilitated by MindLab, a cross-ministerial innovation unit from Denmark which involves citizens and businesses in creating new solutions for society. MindLab is instrumental in helping the Danish Ministry of Business and Growth, the Ministry of Taxation and the Ministry of Employment view their efforts from the outside-in, to see them from a citizen’s perspective. MindLab is one of the emerging initiatives linking service and strategic design to the public sector, such as ThinkPublic and Participle in the UK, Helsinki Design Lab in Finland, La 27e Région in France. It is an emerging trend (taking place especially in Northern Europe) that is very important to consider because it is a very promising direction for developing new public services together with the citizens (and the Open P2P Design methodology could be applied there in co-designing open source public services tailored to the local communities characteristics).
It is by no accident that most of this initiative has been organized by institutions from Northern Europe: the main idea behind this project is to start from a vision of design as a driver of user-centered innovation, a direction that has been more researched and applied in Northern Europe.
For example, in 2009 the European Commission published a working document on Design as a driver of user-centered innovation that provides an analysis of the rationale for making design an integral part of European innovation policy, starting from user-centered design.

After some months, on September 17 and 18 in Helsinki, as part of the Helsinki World Design Capital 2012 program, the work done during the co-design workshop has been published in a final report (released under a Creative Commons license!) with the final recommendations for the future design policies for the European Union.

This is not a single project, but it has six more projects: linked to the work carried out under the EDII, the European Commission launched a call for proposals under Competitiveness & Innovation Programme (CIP) in 2011. The overall objective of this call was to improve the impact of innovation policies by speeding up the take-up of design as a user-centred innovation tool in national, regional and EU innovation policies. Within this call, 6 selected projects were funded with € 4.808.000 (€ 3.116.000 from 2011 budget and € 1.692.000 from 2012 budget). Here you can read more about these projects and download all the related documentation.
For example, the Design in European Policy project aims at creating an understanding of the impact of design innovation policies by building frameworks and indicators to evaluate these actions both at a macro (regional, national, European) and micro (specific initiative) level.
The DeEP project wants to develop and test theoretical frameworks and practical tools aimed at evaluating the impact of design innovation policies both at a macro level (regional, national, European) and at a micro level (i.e., the direct impact of specific initiatives on the innovation process of SMEs).
The resulting DeEP Evaluation Tool can become an instrument for policy makers, enterprises and other stakeholders involved in design innovation policy to evaluate the impact of these policies and will allow policy makers to strategically develop new design innovation policies across Europe.

Open Design, a recommendation for European designers and public policies

With the co-design workshop and the final report, taking a broad-based view of design, the Leadership Board identified twenty-one policy recommendations, grouped according to six areas for strategic design action that can be summarised as follows:

1. European Design on the global stage
2. Design in Europe’s Innovation System
3. Design in Europe’s Enterprises
4. Design in Europe’s Public Sector
5. Design in Europe’s Research System
6. Design in Europe’s Education

Especifically, for us these are the most important recommendations, since they are more linked to the issues of intellectual property, Open Design, digital fabrication and FabLabs:

3. Work towards zero tolerance of infringement. This requires legislative revision, through the inclusion of a ‘Duty of Care’ for shared responsibilities on IPR protection across the digital value chain. Set up a specific EU Tribunal /Court for European IP cases and promote and increase the training of judges in national courts, in relation to the protection of Intellectual Property Rights in the physical world and online.

Ok, we could have expected something like this: it is what many designers and company want, since they believe it will stop piracy (I think that piracy, and more generally copying, is a very complex issue that won’t be completely addressed by creating a specific police against it). There is, however, a very important point even for Open Design: the intellectual property regime for Design is very fragmented (each country has its own laws even in Europe), not clear and widely understood by designers and companies, and very incomplete. Having a better structured and shared system for intellectual property protection is very important for having a common system for Open Design. If you think about GPL and Creative Commons licenses, they exploit copyright in order to license content and enable the sharing of it: they are not destroying copyright, they are extending it by using its same tools.

7. Include design within innovation and business incubators and their networks

This is a very clever recommendation, and it could even point (in the future) to bringing also digital fabrication and FabLabs inside innovation and business incubators (FabLabs are also actually a kind of incubator!).

8. Create guidelines, codes of practice, legal frameworks and experimental spaces to promote the use of Open Design.

This is the single, most important point of all the recommendations: Open Design is officially a recommendation for the design policies and for the designers and companies. In case it will be transformed into a policy and then a law, it will be easier to adopt it and develop Open Design projects. It is very important to note the complete overview of Open Design, involving guidelines, codes of practices and so on; here “experimental spaces” can be read as “FabLabs” as well!

16. Increase the use of design/designers in public sector innovation:
[...]
Through supporting designers’ greater involvement in ‘living labs’ where social innovation and public services are critical challenges.

This is important not only for the involvement of designers in the public sector (which is critical for redesigning current services and co-designing them with citizens), but also for their involvement in living labs (that, again, are somehow related to FabLabs since both are spaces where co-design processes happen or where they can be enabled in an easier way, and that could work together in the future: both are in fact spaces where product and services are co-developed with users!).

20. Raise the level of design literacy for all the citizens of Europe by fostering a culture of design learning for all at every level of the education system.

Again, this is very important not just for making people aware of what design is and how it could be better adopted by everybody, it will be important for Open Design as well, since the more people have knowledge about design, the easier it will be for them to participate in Open Design projects, and easier the design processes and the better the design outcomes will be. Everyone, then, will be really a designer, it is through education of design that we will achieve a true democratization of design, not just with fancy technologies!

If you want to read all the final publication, regarding all the other recommendations and the strategies for implementing them, here you can download the full report (Source), published under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Here below you can read it directly from this page:

Open Design: a scenario for Europe

Within the final report, there is also a scenario for Europe in 2020, where all the recommendations take part. Let’s consider the sections that are more interesting for Open Design:

In 2020, design is fully embedded in the European innovation system and is recognised as a significant factor in enabling sustainable growth for increased prosperity, well-being and competitiveness. Sophisticated design innovation behaviour and practice is prevalent in the societies and economies of Europe and contributes at a fundamental level to quality of life.

[...] many companies relocate their (industrial) production in Europe, thereby fostering more highly-qualified jobs within Member States. Across all sectors, many enterprises and organisations apply innovative Open Design methods.

Innovation processes are no longer connected solely to traditional business models of innovation. They are now influenced and shaped by wider, social-based developments both in technology, (such as Wikis and the other peer-to-peer phenomena of Web 2.0), and in the growth of novel approaches to manufacturing, including ‘FabLabs’, ‘Future Factories’, Micro-Factories and ‘Living Labs’.
The role of these new software and culturally-based eco-systems are being fostered and embraced by a new generation of innovators. The Open Design method is an example of how practice and relationships are changing in the field. Open Design seeks to restructure the relationship between the actors involved in a design process utilising the advantages offered by new approaches to intellectual property protection and the new ways of working enabled by technology. A freer kind of collaboration is able to take place within networks of designers and stakeholders. These flexible networks are short-term, change according to current needs and do not have a fixed structure.
The core principles of Open Design prove successful in cultures that embrace diversity, support low power distance and nurture democracy. As Open Design is based upon European values, it provides an opportunity for European design to stand out. However, in order to be successful, it requires supportive guidelines, a shared code of practice and appropriate legal frameworks. There is, therefore, a requirement at the European level to remove or mitigate obstacles and barriers hindering the spread of Open Design as a valuable form of innovation.
The emergence and application of new technologies and methods are opening up new and often experimental ways of working. As a result, the nature of the relationship between designer, producer and consumer is changing, thereby enabling new forms of innovation such as co-design. Co-design methods bring the user closer to the design creation process and a user-centred approach is increasingly a common characteristic of European innovation.
Overall, these new forms of design innovation are building on Europe’s expertise in exploiting originality and ideas to create new products and services. Our recommendations seek to amplify these valuable new approaches whilst, at the same time, building on the existing fundamental practices already creating world-class European design innovation.

1. subscribing to our mailing list
2. creating an user in GitHub with the free open source plan and sending to the mailing list your username (so that we can add you to the group on GitHub)
3. just leaving a comment on this post (I will then bring your ideas to the main discussion)

If you are not familiar with Git and GitHub don’t worry, just send e-mails with your ideas to the mailing list and I will take care of the work on GitHub.
Here’s the first draft then:

The Open Design Definition v. 0.1

License

This document is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

Introduction

This document is the result of the collaborative discussion that has been taking place in the Open Design Working Group of the Open Knowledge Foundation. Please join the conversation about the definition on the Open Design Definition repository and on the Open Design Working Group mailing list (past archives are available here)

This document represents a shared agreement about the definition of Open Design, and should not be understood as a license for Design content. The purpose of this document is to foster discussion, collaboration and community building around the concept and the practice of Open Design.

Open Source and Open Content regarding Open Design

Here we should develop our understanding of Open Source / Open Content of Open Design. Should be short and clarify the framework.

If we feel that we need to clarify something about Freedom vs. Openness it should be done here

Branches of Open Design

Here we should discuss all the kinds of Design (Product Design, Graphic Design) that can be Open Design and what is the source code for them and the binary code

The Open Data of Open Design

Here we should discuss the issue of all the knowledge and related data for Open Design projects. For example: supply chain, material processes, how to repair / reproduce / manufacture a project, the carbon footprint of the manufacturing and distribution processes and so on

Hacking Open Design: Redesign

Here we should clarify wether redesigning closed design projects can make them open

The process of Open Design

Here we should discuss if there’s anything more that we can add about the processes around the development of Open Design projects

 Open Design and necessary software

Here we should discuss the relationship between Open Design and the necessary software for opening / designing / making it real

Open Design and Intellectual Property

Here we should clarify the relationships between different branches and entities for Design projects and the intellectual property laws developed for them. It should not be a license but should be a starting point for clarifying any issue with licenses or patenting

1. Fab 1.0: we connected manufacturing machines to computers, having thus CNC (computer numerically controlled) manufacturing machines.
2. Fab 2.0: we developed manufacturing machines that are able to replicate themselves or part of themselves like the RepRap (this is the phase where we are now).
3. Fab 3.0: the material will have some embedded code that will help the manufacturing process take places (for example: a set of coordinates like the LEGO bricks).
4. Fab 4.0: the material will have embedded code and “software” that will enable it to take automatically the desired shape (the material itself will be a computer and a microfactory, able to produce the shape itself, like a ribosome transforms the information of the RNA in proteins).

Therefore, we are increasingly embedding information and the processing of information inside the materials, basing manufacturing more and more on nanotechnology and biotechnology solutions. You can check where the researches are going in this direction, with this TED video by Skylar Tibbits from MIT:

While within FabLabs we are now democratizing access and education to the first two phases, it won’t be long before also the movement of DIY Bio will join the FabLab (for example, there is already a DIY Bio group at MadLab, the Manchester hackerspace) and will be present in the world of Design. It is by no accident that I’ve started collaborating with biotechnology researchers as well.
For example, researchers recently discovered how to build electrical circuits with live bacteria. It is by no accident that Autodesk, the software house behind AutoCAD and many other 3D / 2D Design software is now releasing a biotechnology software, Clotho. One year and half ago the same Autodesk bought Instructable, jumping in the Maker field beside the traditional professional world.

This is not a revolution that will take place some time in the far future: even design companies like IDEO are now already working on it. Now designers at IDEO have teamed up with scientists at the Lim Lab at the University of California, San Francisco inside the University of Edinburgh’s Synthetic Aesthetics project to research how to exploit known properties of microorganisms to literally “grow” the products we use every day.

Specifically, the team explored the idea of engineering synthetic organisms capable of forming structurally complex materials similar to plant tissue, chitin exoskeletons, or calcified marine structures. Two “living” concept designs resulted: 1) personal microbial culture, and 2) packaging that creates its own contents.

Personal Microbial Culture: A personalized skin care product secreted by a living microbial culture housed in a vessel. This engineered organism lives off the cotton balls that are used to apply it to the skin and produces fragrance, soap, oil molecules, and vitamins, in a combination most appropriate for the individual’s unique skin.
“Personal Microbial Culture” has disruptive implications for cosmetics brands. The method that consumers use to select skincare products is shifting away from reliance on experts at department-store counters and toward individualized routines and video tips, hinting at latent demand for a more bespoke, high-touch experience. Integrating synthetic biology into the production of cosmetics could force a brand to understand how it relates to its consumers in a deeper, more literal way.

Packaging That Creates Its Contents: An extreme probiotic drink that relies on bacteria to morph into a physical, cup when exposed to a specific light wavelength. During shipping and storage, these light-molded cups remain alive but dormant until water is poured inside, creating an effervescent, healthy drink. After several uses, the cup’s walls begin to degrade and it can be composted.

Another great explanation of this shift in the design professions comes therefore from Rodrigo Martinez from IDEO (here on Twitter) at TEDxBeaconStreet. As Life Sciences Chief Strategist at IDEO and member of the Health & Wellness practice, he tackles some of the most interesting challenges in health care, life sciences, and the emerging wellness space. With his colleagues in Boston, Rodrigo is also experimenting different approaches to design with living organisms. Here you can find his blog about the intersections between design and biology.

A great overview of the designers (or biodesigners) already experimenting this territory was done by Paola Antonelli, critic and senior curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at MoMA, for the Domus magazine in this article.

The figure of the mad scientist playing God in order to create a new being that turns into a harbinger of Armageddon does not, however, apply to most bio-designers. Some work with visible organisms such as plants and animals, others with bacteria and cells, others still tinker with DNA to create new beings, but they never work alone in an ethical vacuum, preferring instead teams that also comprise physicists, mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers, chemists and bio-ethicists, and sometimes even economists and philosophers.

Furthermore, a book on the topic has just been published by MoMA (here’s a preview). As a conclusion, here’s a video by Daisy Ginsberg, designer, artist and writer, that explores the social, ethical and cultural implications of emerging technologies, especially synthetic biology.

Notes:

1. Charny, D., & Gershenfeld, N. (2011). The Making Revolution. In Power of Making. Va.

01. The Open Design Definition workshop at Open Knowledge Festival

During the Open Knowledge Festival I also found the time for a workshop about the Open Design Definition, and it worked really well: the room was full and we started opening many issues on the GitHub repository of the definition. The discussion has improved a lot after that moment. Here below you can find my presentation that resumes the concept and the work behind the Open Design Definition:

02. Further developing the discussion on the definition

I will now try to resume the main questions that have surfaced in the mailing list, during the workshop and on GitHub. These are the main questions that we have to answer in order to further proceed with the collaborative development of the Open Design Definition.

• Are we focusing only on Product Design (i.e. something physical, and that may be 3D printed) or are we talking about any kind of design? Personally I’m trying to having a discussion on all the fields of design, since there are already many different cases of Open Source in Design in many fields (see the presentation above), but of course this means that we have to describe a generic enough definition of Design, or a definition that makes references to the different Design fields.
• Shall we start from what Intellectual Property (IP) laws consider Design, or from what designers consider Design? This choice would lead to two very different definitions, so we have to decide this together: starting from the IP laws viewpoint, it will be easier to define licenses and IP strategies; starting from designers’ viewpoint will make the definition easier to be understood by the Design community at large
• And, related to this, shall we leave the discussion about licenses out, or shall we include something in the definition?
• What about the “source files” of a design project? Shall we consider, in the definition, to ask about publishing also the source files (i.e. vector drawing and not only the exported picture, CAD files and not only the rendering pictures)
• Shall we clarify and distinguish about the definition being about Openness and/or Freedom? Or shall we include both in the definition?
• Shall start preparing a draft of a definition, in order to start the discussion to be more focused? From which existing definition should we start?

03. Working in the Open Design Working Group

I then mined the interaction on GitHub (with these open source scripts), in order to see how the discussion and work on the GitHub repository is going on. Here you can find the network of the interactions: as you can see, most of the work has been done by me, only two people (in green) have committed, and many users are not even participating in the issues publishing or commenting. We should find a way to get them more involved on the GitHub repository.

I also mined the friendships in the Organization (i.e. the way we can work as a team on GitHub), by seeing who is following whom and whom is followed by who. Again, the green nodes represents the users that are present in the team, so you can see that some users (openp2pdesign, mushon, keyboardkat) could represent a starting point for further spreading the knowledge about the repository and get new users in our repository.

I also mined the e-mails of the mailing list, and if I was the more active on GitHub, here Kat is more active in managing the discussion. Again, many nodes are not connected with anybody, that means that they have introduced themselves in the mailing list, but have not interacted more with anybody.

Good news! From the Autumn of this year I will be lecturing how to develop Open Design processes and how to manage their business models and communities at SUPSI, in Lugano, Switzerland, in their Master of Advanced Studies in Interaction Design. Here in this post you can find more information about the two courses I’m lecturing and about the scholarships that are available. Above you can see the infographic of the structure of the course, and here’s the Master program overview:

Designing Advanced Artifacts, Environments and Services
The Master in Interaction design is a program that combines design, new media, programming and physical computing in one study program addressing the realization of projects in which the interaction between the design culture and the technological development allows to generate design driven innovations.
The MAS in Interaction Design offers to students specialized knowledge and skills of Interaction Design. Analytical methods and a pragmatic problem-solving approach to design are applied in a laboratory environment where prototyping and testing various solutions qualify the students to pursue careers in industry, research or studios, wherever technological innovation and design meet.

Scholarships available!

Scholarships are available to future students of the MAS in Interaction Design SUPSI, academic year 2013/2014. The scholarships are awarded upon the evaluation of portfolios and CVs. Winners of the scholarships are entitled to a reduction in the tuition fees of 5.000 CHF.
In order to apply for the scholarships, future students must submit the application for the MAInD program 2013/2014 by Friday 1st March 2013. Here you can find more information about the scholarship.
To be updated about future opportunities follow the official Facebook page of the Master program.

01. Learn how to develop Open Design processes

I will lecture two courses in the Master, and the first one will cover all the techniques, tools and strategies for involving users and more participants in the design process: here’s the description of the Design with the user: from User-centered Design to Open Design course (in the Designing Advanced Artifacts section):

Description

This course focuses on the concepts and methods for involving the user inside the design process, from User-centered Design to Experience Design, from Co-Design to Open Design. The course covers the major methods and strategies for opening the design process and how to organize it with the proper strategies. In order to provide the basis for developing Open Design processes, the course also covers the development and the nature of Open Source Software projects, and the issues regarding the protection and the sharing of intellectual property in the design discipline.

The course also especially focuses on the tools to be used in the design process in order to involve more people in the design process. The course will cover the tools and processes for developing Open Source software that can be adopted in the design process, their limitations and their best practices. The course will end with a practical exercise of building an Open Design process with the specific tools and documentations.

Objectives

The course consists of lectures, practical exercises to be developed together with the lecturer and exercises to be completed at home. The objective of this course is to provide the students with the knowledge and the tools needed for opening the design process or including different people in the design process, when and how it is more proper for each project.

Examination

Students will be evaluated based on their ability to apply the methods to specific practical situations during the course.

Course structure

1. User-centered Design: methodologies and tools
2. User-experience design: methodologies and tools
3. Co-design: methodologies and tools
4. Intellectual property and design: laws and the design process
5. Lead users, Open Innovation and Open Source
6. Open Design: concept and development
7. Metadesign: concept and tools
8. Digital Tools for Open projects: version control systems
9. Digital Tools for Open projects: project management
10. Practice: developing an Open project metadesign
11. Practice: developing an Open project metadesign
12. Practice: developing an Open project metadesign

References

• Abel, B., Evers, L., Klaassen, R., & Troxler, P. (2011). Open Design Now : why design cannot remain exclusive. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers. Retrieved from http://opendesignnow.org/
• Acha, V. (2008). Open by design: the role of design in open innovation. Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. Retrieved from http://dera.ioe.ac.uk/8751/
• Baldwin, C. Y., & Hippel, E. A. V. (2010). Modeling a Paradigm Shift: From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation. SSRN eLibrary. Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1502864
• Caddick, R., & Cable, S. (2011). Communicating the User Experience: A Practical Guide for Creating Useful UX Documentation (1st ed.). Wiley.
• Chesbrough, H. (2011). Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era (1st ed.). Jossey-Bass.
• Chesbrough, H. W. (2003). Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology. Harvard Business School Press.
• Cottam, H., & Leadbeater, C. (2004). Design Council – Red Paper 01: Health. Design Council. Retrieved from http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/publications/Red-Paper-01-Health/
• Grudin, J., & Pruitt, J. (2002). Personas , Participatory Design and Product Development : An Infrastructure for Engagement. Design, 2002, 144–161. doi:10.1145/997078.997089
• Hippel, E. A. V. (2002). Open Source Projects as Horizontal Innovation Networks – By and For Users. SSRN eLibrary. Retrieved from http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=328900
• Menichinelli, M. (2006). Reti collaborative : il design per un’auto-organizzazione open peer-to-peer. Politecnico di Milano, Facoltà del Design (III), Milano. Retrieved from http://www.openp2pdesign.org
• Pratt, A., & Nunes, J. (2012). Interactive Design: An Introduction to the Theory and Application of User-centered Design. Rockport Publishers.
• Rizzo, F. (2009). Strategie di co-design : teorie, metodi e strumenti per progettare con gli utenti. Milano: F. Angeli.
• Sanders, E. B. (2002). From User-Centered to Participatory Design Approaches Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders SonicRim. Design, 1–8.
• Sanders, E. B.-N., & Stappers, P. J. (2008). Co-creation and the new landscapes of design. CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 4(1), 5. doi:10.1080/15710880701875068
• Stickdorn, M., & Schneider, J. (2011). This is Service Design Thinking: Basics – Tools – Cases (1st ed.). BIS Publishers.
• Tullis, T., & Albert, W. (2008). Measuring the User Experience: Collecting, Analyzing, and Presenting Usability Metrics (1st ed.). Morgan Kaufmann.
• von Hippel, E. (1988). The sources of innovation. New York: Oxford University Press.
• von Hippel, E. (2005). Democratizing innovation. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press.
• Weber, S. (2005). The Success of Open Source. Harvard University Press.

02. Learn how to manage Open Design communities and business models

The second course I will lecture will be about developing the right business model for an Open project (be it Open Design, Open Hardware, Open Source, …) and it will also be about building and analysing the online social networks and social interactions (like I did here and here) that form the community of an Open project: here’s the description of the Open Project Management: Communities and Business Models course (in the Designing Advanced Environments and Services section):

Description

This course focuses on developing the business model and the community for an Open project. The course cover the main business models of Open Source Software, Open Hardware, Open Data, Open Design, DIY Craft and Digital Fabrication, and the tools we can use for developing a business model for a specific Open project.

The course also focuses on using the proper social media services for building a community around an Open project, and on using social network analysis and open source tools like Python and Gephi for analysing the community, its interactions and social structure. The student will learn the basics of Python for extracting network data from different social media services like Twitter and Facebook, GitHub and e-mail inboxes and Gephi for analysing these networks. The course will end covering also the different strategies for visualising and communicating the networks studied.

Objectives

The course consists of lectures, practical exercises developed together with the lecturer and exercises to be completed at home. The objective of this course is, on one side, to provide an understanding of the main patterns of business models that can be adopted for Open projects, in order to enable the students to develop their own business models. Furthermore, on the other side, the objective of this course is also to provide the students with the ability to build and analyse a community around an Open project, including its discussion and its social structure.

Examination

Students will be evaluated based on their ability to apply the methods to specific practical situations during the course.

Course Structure

1. Business models for Open projects: Open Source Software, Hardware, Data
2. Business models for Open projects: DIY Crafts, Digital Fabrication and Open Design
3. Practice: designing a business model
4. Practice: designing a business model
5. Social Media for design: services, formats, strategies
6. Analysing the community: Social Network Analysis
7. Gephi and other social network analysis software
8. Facebook and e-mail analysis with Gephi
9. Introduction to Python for network analysis
10. Network analysis with Python: Twitter
11. Network analysis with Python: GitHub
12. Visualizing a community

References

• Bastian, M., Heymann, S., & Jacomy, M. (2009). Gephi: An open source software for exploring and manipulating networks. In International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (Vol. 2). Retrieved from http://gephi.org/publications/gephi-bastian-feb09.pdf
• Bohnacker, H., Gross, B., & Laub, J. (2012). Generative Design: Visualize, Program, and Create with Processing. (C. Lazzeroni, Ed.). Princeton Architectural Press.
• Downey, A. B. (2012). Think Python (1st ed.). O’Reilly Media. Retrieved from http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython/
• Easley, D., & Kleinberg, J. (2010). Networks, Crowds, and Markets: Reasoning About a Highly Connected World. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/
• Kelly, N. (2012). How to Measure Social Media: A Step-By-Step Guide to Developing and Assessing Social Media ROI (1st ed.). Que Publishing.
• Kilduff, M., & Tsai, W. (2003). Social Networks and Organizations. Sage Publications Ltd.
• Lima, M. (2011). Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information. Princeton Architectural Press.
• Menichinelli, M. (2011a, March 16). openp2pdesign.org » Business Models for Open Hardware. Retrieved November 14, 2011, from http://www.openp2pdesign.org/2011/open-design/business-models-for-open-hardware/
• Menichinelli, M. (2011b, March 23). openp2pdesign.org » Business Models for Fab Labs. Retrieved November 14, 2011, from http://www.openp2pdesign.org/2011/fabbing/business-models-for-fab-labs/
• Menichinelli, M. (2011c, March 30). openp2pdesign.org » Business Models for DIY Craft. Retrieved November 14, 2011, from http://www.openp2pdesign.org/2011/open-design/business-models-for-diy-craft/
• Osterwalder, A., & Pigneur, Y. (2010). Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers (1st ed.). Wiley.
• Paine, K. D. (2011). Measure What Matters: Online Tools For Understanding Customers, Social Media, Engagement, and Key Relationships (1st ed.). Wiley.
• Russell, M. A. (2011). Mining the Social Web: Analyzing Data from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Other Social Media Sites (1st ed.). O’Reilly Media.
• Tsvetovat, M., & Kouznetsov, A. (2011). Social Network Analysis for Startups: Finding connections on the social web. O’Reilly Media.

1. When you are commenting an issue, you are interacting with all the people that have commented it before you, including the person that has opened the issue;
2. When you are committing, you are interacting only with the person that has commited just before you;
3. When you are forking, there no direct interactions to be mapped: it is too easy to fork on GitHub, you don’t even have to ask for permission, so in practical terms there are no interactions;
4. When you are sending a pull request (i.e. you are asking for permission to merge your code in the code you have forked), since you are asking for permission for contributing, there is one social interaction to be mapped;

The script itself has been developed to further explore all the forks of one repository, but this functionality hasn’t been fully developed yet. At the moment there two scripts, single_repository_social_mining.py (source) that lets you analyze the repositories of a user, and organization_repository_social_mining.py (source), that lets your analyze the repositories of the organizations the user is part of.

Open Design Definition

For a first test, I’ve analyzed the repository of the Open Design Definition I’m co-facilitating within the Open Design Working Group of the Open Knowledge Foundation. Some edges were not imported by Gephi and are therefore missing, you can see anyway my central role in facilitating the discussion on GitHub, and you can also see that only two people (color: light blue) have actually committed something, and that half of the users have never interacted with anybody. There’s still then a lot of facilitation work to be done yet, but it is clear that the work on the Open Design Definition is just starting.

D3.js

I then wanted to try to analyze a bigger project, so I’ve tried to analyze D3, a great javascript library for creating data-driven documents and therefore visualizations on the web. It’s repository is on GitHub here and its creator, Mike Bostock, is mbostock on GitHub. Here the interactions are much more: 12949 nodes and 837 edges. Many nodes are just following the development of the project, and inside in the center you can see the interactions beside the development of the project. You can then discover that, after Mike Bostock, Jason Davies is doing most of the work in developing the project.

The source code

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#
# Social analysis of an Organization repository in GitHub
#
# Author: Massimo Menichinelli
# Homepage: http://www.openp2pdesign.org
# License: GPL v.3
#
# Requisite: 
# install pyGithub with pip install PyGithub
# install NetworkX with pip install networkx
#
# PyGitHub documentation can be found here: 
# https://github.com/jacquev6/PyGithub
#
 
from github import Github
import networkx as nx
import getpass
 
# Variables for the whole program
 
graph = nx.MultiDiGraph()
issue = {}
issue = {0:{"author":"none", "comments":{}}}
commits = {0:{"commit","sha"}}
repos = {}
 
def analyse_repo(repository,loop): 
    print ""
    print "LOOP:",loop
    print ""   
    print "-----"
    print "DESCRIPTION:",repository.description
    print "-----"
    print "OWNER:",repository.owner.login
    graph.add_node(str(unicode(repository.owner.login)),owner="Yes")
    print "-----"
    print "WATCHERS:",repository.watchers
    print ""
    for i in repository.get_stargazers():
        if i != None:
            print "-",i.login
            if i.login not in graph:
                graph.add_node(str(unicode(i.login)),watcher="Yes")
            else:
                graph.node[i.login]["watcher"]="Yes"
        else:
            graph.node["None"]["watcher"]="Yes"
    print "-----"
    print "COLLABORATORS"
    print ""
    for i in repository.get_collaborators():
        if i != None:
            print "-",i.login
            if i.login not in graph:
                graph.add_node(str(unicode(i.login)),collaborator="Yes")
            else:
                graph.node[i.login]["collaborator"]="Yes"
        else:
            graph.node["None"]["collaborator"]="Yes"
    print "-----"
    print "HAS ISSUES=",repository.has_issues
    if repository.has_issues == True:
        print "-----"
        print "ISSUES: Open ones"
        print ""
        for i in repository.get_issues(state="open"):
            print "Issue number:",i.number
            if i.user != None:
                print "- Created by", i.user.login
                issue[i.number]= {}
                issue[i.number]["comments"]= {}
                issue[i.number]["author"] = i.user.login
            else:
                print "- Created by None"
                issue[i.number]= {}
                issue[i.number]["comments"]= {}
                issue[i.number]["author"] = "None"
            print "--",i.title
            if i.assignee != None:
                print "-- Assigned to",i.assignee.login
                graph.add_edge(str(i.user.login),str(i.assignee.login))
            else:
                print "-- Assigned to None"
                graph.add_edge(str(i.user.login),"None")
            print "--",i.comments,"comments"
            for j,f in enumerate(i.get_comments()):
                if f.user != None:
                    print "--- With a comment by",f.user.login
                    issue[i.number]["comments"][j] = f.user.login
                else:
                    print "--- With a comment by None"
                    issue[i.number]["comments"][j] = "None"
            print ""      
 
        print "ISSUES: Closed ones"
        print ""
        for i in repository.get_issues(state="closed"):
            print "Issue number:",i.number
            if i.user != None:
                print "- Created by", i.user.login
                issue[i.number]= {}
                issue[i.number]["comments"]= {}
                issue[i.number]["author"] = i.user.login
            else:
                print "- Created by None"
                issue[i.number]= {}
                issue[i.number]["comments"]= {}
                issue[i.number]["author"] = "None"
            print "--",i.title
            if i.assignee != None:
                print "-- Assigned to",i.assignee.login
                graph.add_edge(str(i.user.login),str(i.assignee.login))
            else:
                print "-- Assigned to None"
                graph.add_edge(str(i.user.login),"None")
            print "--",i.comments,"comments"
            for j,f in enumerate(i.get_comments()):
                if f.user != None:
                    print "--- With a comment by",f.user.login
                    issue[i.number]["comments"][j] = f.user.login
                else:
                    print "--- With a comment by None"
                    issue[i.number]["comments"][j] = "None"
            print ""      
 
    print "-----"
    print "CONTRIBUTORS"
    print ""
    for i in repository.get_contributors():
        if i.login != None:
            print "-", i.login
            if i.login not in graph:
                    graph.add_node(str(unicode(i.login)),contributor="Yes")
            else:
                graph.node[i.login]["contributor"]="Yes"
        else:
            graph.node["None"]["contributor"]="Yes"
    print "-----"
    print "COMMITS"
    print ""
 
    repos[loop]={0:""}
    for k,i in enumerate(repository.get_commits()):
        print "-",i.sha
        if i.committer != None:
            print "-- by",i.committer.login
            repos[loop][k]=i.committer.login
        else:
            print "-- by None"
            repos[loop][k]="None"
    print "-----"
 
    # Check the attributes of every node, and add a "No" when it is not present, in order to let Gephi use the attribute for graph partitioning
    for i in graph.nodes():
        if "owner" not in graph.node[i]:
            graph.node[i]["owner"] = "No"
        if "contributor" not in graph.node[i]:
            graph.node[i]["contributor"] = "No"               
        if "collaborator" not in graph.node[i]:
            graph.node[i]["collaborator"] = "No"
        if "watcher" not in graph.node[i]:
            graph.node[i]["watcher"] = "No"
 
 
    # Add an edge from a commiter to a previous one,
    # i.e. if you are committing after somebody has commited,
    # you are interacting with him/her
    print "ADDING EDGES FROM COMMITS"
    print ""
    for h in repos[loop]:
        if h < len(repos[loop])-1:
            print "-"
            print "Committer:",repos[loop][h]
            print "Adding an edge from:",repos[loop][h],"to previous committer:",repos[loop][h+1]
            #graph.add_edge(str(i.user.login),str(i.assignee.login))
 
    # Creating the edges from the issues and their comments.
    # Each comment interacts with the previous ones,
    # so each user interacts with the previous ones that have been creating the issue or commented it
    print ""
    print "-----"
    print "ADDING EDGES FROM ISSUES COMMENTING"
    print ""
 
    for a,b in enumerate(issue):
        print "-----"
        print "Issue author:",issue[a]["author"]
        print ""
        for k,j in enumerate(issue[a]["comments"]):
            print "Comment author:",issue[a]["comments"][k]
            print "Adding an edge from:",issue[a]["comments"][k],"to:",issue[a]["author"]
            graph.add_edge(str(issue[a]["comments"][k]),str(issue[a]["author"]))
 
            for l in range(k):
                print "Adding an edge from:",issue[a]["comments"][k],"to:",issue[a]["comments"][l]
                graph.add_edge(str(issue[a]["comments"][l]),str(issue[a]["comments"][l]))
    print ""
 
 
    #print "FORKS"
    #print ""
    #for f,i in enumerate(repository.get_forks()):
    #    print i.name
    #    print "ANALYSING A FORK, number",f
    #    print ""
    #    analyse_repo(i,f+1)
    #    print ""
    #print "-----"
 
    print "-----"
    print "PULL REQUESTS"
    print ""
 
    for i in repository.get_pulls():
        print i.id
        if i.assignee != None:
            print "Assignee:",i.assignee.login
            one = i.assignee.login
        else:
            one = "None"
        if i.user != None:
            print "User:",i.user.login
            two = i.user.login
        else:
            two = "None"
 
        print "Adding an edge from:",one,"to:",two
        graph.add_edge(str(one),str(two))
 
        # We should look at the comments on the pull request, but it seems not to be working now
        #for k,jj in enumerate(i.get_comments()):
        #    print "k=",k
        #    print "a",jj
        #    print "User comment a:",jj.user.login
        #    print jj.body
 
    print "-----"
 
 
 
    return
 
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    print "Social Network Analisys of your GitHub Organization"
    print ""
    userlogin = raw_input("Login: Enter your username: ")
    password = getpass.getpass("Login: Enter yor password: ")
    username = raw_input("Enter the username you want to analyse: ")
    print ""
    g = Github( userlogin, password )
 
 
    print "ORGANIZATIONS:"
    for i in g.get_user(username).get_orgs():
        print "-", i.login
    print ""
 
    org_to_mine = raw_input("Enter the name of the Organization you want to analyse: ")
    print ""
 
    org = g.get_organization(org_to_mine)
 
    print org.login,"has",org.public_repos, "repositories."
 
    print ""
 
    for repo in org.get_repos():
        print "-",repo.name
 
    print ""
 
    repo_to_mine = raw_input("Enter the name of the repository you want to mine: ")
    b = org.get_repo(repo_to_mine)
    analyse_repo(b,0)
 
    # Getting rid of the node "None", it was used to catch the errors of users that are NoneType
    graph.remove_node('None')
 
    print ""
    print "NODES..."
    print graph.nodes()
    print ""
    print "EDGES..."
    print graph.edges()
    print ""
 
    print "Saving the network..."
    nx.write_gexf(graph, username+"_"+repo_to_mine+"_social_interactions_analysis.gexf")
    print "Done. Saved as "+username+"_"+repo_to_mine+"_social_interactions_analysis.gexf"