Monday, August 15, 2011

Day 1: afternoon (tardes)

So my Spanish is downright lousy as you can see, but that hasn't stopped me from trying :-)

On to the afternoon sessions. I attended one done by Sherry Lassiter, director of Fab Central at MIT. It was about getting a fab lab so I was keen to listen and contribute, given my recent experience with Fab Lab Tulsa. The session was enjoyable, touching on the elements of a fab lab including adhering to the charter, sharing your knowledge globally and having open access. The dicussion turned to sustainability models for funding and operations. This is challenge for most fab labs, globally as many are govt funded without long term business plans defined yet. As a global community of labs we need to crack this nut. I was able to share some experiences from the founding of Fab Lab Tulsa which were well received. I spoke with planned labs in Israel and Rio de Janiero afterwards.

It ended, we ate snacks and were off to Fab Foo, a free form discussion on emerging lab topics. Some of us discussed some rewording of the Fab Charter to better differentiate true fab labs from pretenders. Its not easy to do and there's more mission statement dialog to had.

Afterwards I returned to the hotel for dinner (pappas rellenas!!) and sleep. Good night.

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