MAKE-IT celebrated the fourth annual Maker Faire Barcelona with visitors from all around the world, of all ages, backgrounds, expertise and curiosity levels and facilitated, in this context, three workshops over the course of two intense days. This was the opportunity to meet, discuss and co-create individualized ‘solutions’ based on the imagination, creativity and innovation of participants who contributed and learnt new skills and ideas with the workshops of our partners from Fablab TI and ZSI.

Continue reading “Knowledge Transfer Workshops at Maker Faire Barcelona 2017” »

Authors: Sebastian Mair & Christian Voigt

A central question to the MAKE-IT project is the Maker movements’ near and long-term potential to actually disrupt current production and consumption patterns. Of course, that is a multidimensional question whose complexity can’t be comprehensively reflected in a single sentence. Disruption is better understood as a process rather than an event, if it is to happen at a societal level. The process of disruption starts with becoming aware of a situation which is not satisfying anymore. However, this realisation will depend on persons’ position within the economical ecosystem. Incumbents of lucrative positions within the current system will likely oppose emerging solutions pointing at their shortcomings, often related to a lack of mature and robust implementations of otherwise progressive, forward-looking ideas such as fabricating and assembling products on-site and thereby avoiding shipping and related burdens for the environment. Similarly, there is an argument that making enables people to become more entrepreneurial and therefore create their own jobs, quasi employing themselves.

In both situations, we rely – among other things – on the idea of networks as empowering distribution mechanisms of either product knowledge (e.g. 3D models, materials and related parameters for desktop production) or ‘how-to’ knowledge (e.g. instructions, shared experiences and evaluations of alternative solutions). Hence, one of the ‘signs of disruptions’ is the emergence of large-scale networks empowering makers to share and comment their knowledge. In this posting, we want to more closely study the relationship between network dynamics, as reflected by their increasing membership and related network characteristics such as various centrality measures, the degree of members (often referred to as ‘connectivity’) or the largest sub-networks within a community.

The role of online platforms

By analysing existing online platforms such as thingiverse.com or instructables.com, we aim to contribute to a better understanding of collaboration and connectedness within the Maker community. Eventually, this will be of help when pursuing the realization of the movement’s real potential due to the identification of missing features or incentives that stop platforms from supporting desirable behaviours. Or, alternatively, we might realize that the existing platforms serve a distinctly different purpose and are therefore less suitable to support the larger picture of digital, social innovation as envisioned within large parts of the Maker movement.
Continue reading “Do we need more collaboration for a truly disruptive Maker movement? First insights from the instructables.com community” »

During the MAKE-IT project, we had the chance to visit many Maker Faires and exhibitions to meet makers, 3D printing enthusiasts and FabLabs teams. Putting aside the passion for technology and sharing experiences and knowledge with others, we realized the difficult financial situations many (if not most) of these people or organizations could be. If you do not have a job on the side, it might be difficult to find the right balance to maintain or develop your makerspace because of the lack of funds. This is probably the true spirit, where people focus on giving their time to others to help them learn rather than trying to make money out of it. But if you cannot find quickly the right financial balance sometimes you need to close your space and stop sharing once and for all.

This leads us to define sources of revenue and we could see people are really creative beside relying on donations and standard members subscriptions. Trainings, 3D design for companies, consulting are often good revenue resources, but not always stable. Potential solutions like the secure print developed at Create it REAL could help 3D file designers to sell their 3D files online and get some revenue out of it in order to support the makerspace or FabLab (people can print but do not get the STL file, so you keep your intellectual property). The solution allows to define the price you want, so if you prefer to share your objects for free as you manage to get enough funds to maintain your team, so be it. But if you need to put a little price to contribute to your efforts, then that could be the right solution.

We believe people need to find the right balance between the full open source, everything free approach and a fair price to pay to help to make sure your project is sustainable. We have seen so many places closing because the smiles, the energy and enthusiasm at the beginning of the project turned quickly into worries and stress to fund it. We hope all makers around the world could find this important balance even between starting their project so we see more and more makerspaces in all cities.

Many commentators highlight the Maker movement’s great promise of bringing about a new and fairer economy. They contend that the dominant neo-liberal economic model is reliant on the over-exploitation of natural resources and low wage regions. It leads to the centralization of industrial power, the marginalization of the majority into the role of consumer, and a reduction in the true quality of life for most.

The Maker movement offers a genuine alternative whereby grassroots initiatives gain access to high quality digital fabrication facilities, can share knowledge through online platforms and open source technologies, and they can finance their innovations through mutual crowdfunding campaigns. Futurologist, Jeremy Rifkin, in his 2014 book “The zero marginal cost society”, goes so far as to say that once maker infrastructure is fully developed, it will bring the price of products and services close to zero thereby completely destroying the capitalist stranglehold on the economy.

However, other commentators are less impressed by the Maker movement. The critical analyst, Evgeny Morozov, in his Jan 2014 New Yorker column, draws a parallel with the arts and crafts movement during the industrial revolution. That too held great promise to democratize production technologies at a time when workers suffered exploitation in new textile factories. But access to tools on its own is not enough to bring about political and social change; makers need to change corporate laws and governmental policies too. Otherwise they are doomed to be side-lined as irrelevant hobbyists, like their industrial age counterparts.

So, is there now evidence of the disruptive nature of the Maker movement? Are we about to enter the collaborative commons era, as Rifkin suggests, where everyone is a maker and the peer-to-peer economy becomes dominant? Or, as Morozov implies, are makers too busy with their cool gadgets to realize that they are simply pawns stuck in a corporation-controlled game?

My answer to these questions is built by looking at a number of indicators that provide an indication of future change. Through participating in the MAKE-IT project, I have had the opportunity to learn about many Maker initiatives and understand the makers’ experiences and challenges. Clearly, at the present time most makers remain small-time hobbyists, and there is no major disruptive effect being exerted on the economy. Indeed, a major driving force of many makers is their moral compass guiding them in the direction of the sharing economy, open source principles and a rejection of financial value in favour of social value. This focus in itself is not conducive to developing a competitive drive to scale-up and disrupt existing markets.

Nevertheless, this does not mean that all makers remain economically insignificant or, importantly, that the effect of the whole movement will not be felt on a wider scale. Disruption may take time. The question we can ask ourselves now is: Can we see the first signs of change?

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Let’s build a network of central European Fab Labs!

For two days in June, eight Fab Labs from central Europe gathered in Happylab Vienna for an exciting workshop on Fab Lab management best practices and different education formats. The exchange was particularly interesting due to the differences in terms of size, equipment and user base between the participating labs. On one hand, the smallest participating lab – Roglab in Ljubljana – operates in only 30 square metres; while on the other hand, Maker Space Munich is one of the biggest labs in Germany, with 1500 square metres.

All the participating labs are part of the FabLabNet project. The project, which is financed by the European Regional Development Fund, aims to connect Fab Labs in a Central European network. The project partners share experiences and develop activities to boost their knowledge and capacity. FabLabNet’s main objective is to bring the Fab Lab concept to new, existing and future innovators across Central Europe and connect them on a transnational level.

Continue reading “FabLabNet: Connect – Exchange – Inspire” »