Blog posts

Digital platforms for the Maker movement: MAKE-IT, OpenCare & OpenMaker, Maker Faire Rome 2017

by Massimo Menichinelli
Posted on July 9, 2018
Category: MAKE-IT, Maker Events, Other CAPS projects, Platform
Tags: CAPS, Event, Italy, Maker Faire Rome, Maker Platforms, OpenCare, OpenMaker, platform
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Digital platforms have been very successful in leveraging long-tail of markets and in building ecosystems, partnerships and communities. Some platforms have focused specifically on supporting democratic practices that are environmentally aware, participatory and based on sharing and collaboration. These platforms, called Collective Awareness Platforms (CAPS), are an example of new models to create awareness of emerging sustainability challenges and of the role that each and every one of us can play to ease them through collective action. A specific program of Horizon 2020 European projects has focused on CAPS, and some of these projects have worked with the Maker movement, addressing it with different perspectives and methods.

In MAKE-IT we focused on how CAPS enable the growth and governance of the Maker movement using and creating social innovations and achieving sustainability, especially for understanding how Maker communities are organised and governed; what makers do and how they behave; the various ways this impacts on and adds value to society. Two other CAPS projects in this direction are OpenCare and OpenMaker. OpenCare empowers care receivers to design and prototype bottom-up solutions to specific care problems. The European network of makerspaces, Fab Labs, etc. makes these solutions distributed, as every prototype devised can be reproduced, tested and deployed anywhere in the world. OpenMaker aims to create a transformational and collaborative ecosystem that fosters collective innovations within the European manufacturing sector by connecting makers and established companies and drives it towards more sustainable business models, production processes, products, and governance systems by bringing together manufacturers and makers. OpenMaker is seeking strong and innovative applications from Maker-Manufacturer teams who aim to have a social impact on their surrounding communities: 20 projects will be accelerated by hubs in Slovakia (Bratislava), Italy (Firenze/Torino), Spain (Bilbao) and United Kingdom (Wolverhampton/Birmingham/Liverpool/Salford). The goal is to foster collaboration between makers and manufacturers, prototype innovations including products, production processes, supply or value chains, distribution or ownership, and encourage partnerships that are sustainable and deliver social impact.

These three projects met in December 2017 and we discussed together our activities and results in a panel at Maker Faire Rome 2017, which was preceded by a discussion (in Italian) with several makers at Roma Makers the day before. Hare’s the video registration of the (English) panel at Maker Faire Rome 2017!

Webinar: Fab Labs and the Maker movement – how can they support entrepreneurial skills?

by Massimo Menichinelli
Posted on April 13, 2018
Category: Maker Events
Tags: Collaboration, Entrepreneurship, Fab Lab, Horizon 2020, Maker Movement, Skills, Video, Webinar
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During MAKE-IT we did not just focus on our research and innovation activities, but we also collaborated with several other European projects. For example, one of these was the I-LINC Horizon 2020 project, working on digital inclusion across Europe:

I-LINC is an open membership platform, that enables you to connect with any stakeholder interested in improving youth employability and entrepreneurship. I-LINC is here to find ways to empower young people to become agents of change using the Information and Communication Technology as the tool for that change.

I first wrote a short post for introducing the possibilities of the Maker movement regarding work to the I-LINC community, and then participated in a webinar where I discussed this with more details: Fab Labs and the Maker movement: How can they support entrepreneurial skills?. You can download the presentation here and watch the webinar here below:
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What is the TechRadar?

by Troels Bovbjerg
Posted on January 11, 2018
Category: MAKE-IT
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How do Makers organize and collaborate? How do they create value and impact? What is the role of Collective Awareness Platforms (CAPS) in enabling them?

MAKE-IT tackles these questions through different research methods and with the development of technological innovations, such as the interactive Technology Radar (also called TechRadar) that describes the current and future technology developments or trends that will impact how makers create, communicate, organize and might even do business.

The TechRadar has been developed in order to help anybody discover the Maker movement through its technologies and platforms for example, for students who are becoming makers, and so on. This tool helps to understand the uses and impacts of CAPS in different contexts, as well as of the Maker movement itself, and maker technology developed and/or used by makers. The TechRadar is built with open source components and it is open source itself, so everybody in the Maker community can add and update the content.

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Knowledge Transfer Workshops at Maker Faire Barcelona 2017

by Marie Nicole Sorivelle
Posted on December 15, 2017
Category: MAKE-IT
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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.

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Trajectories to reconcile sharing and commercialization in the Maker movement

by David Langley
Posted on November 21, 2017
Category: Research
Tags: Business, Commercialization, Journal, Paper, Sharing
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Which is more important for makers? Having a sharing, open attitude aimed at achieving social impact, or a commercial mindset aimed at profit? In fact, many Maker initiatives try to balance these two ways of working because making money can offer the financial stability needed to be able to scale-up and really make a difference.

In this paper for the Business Horizons journal, based on case studies from the MAKE-IT project, we describe the trajectories that maker initiatives go through in order to reconcile the two apparently conflicting objectives of sharing and commercialization.

Paper

1123 downloads

Trajectories to reconcile sharing and commercialization in the maker movement

Citation

David J Langley, Marthe Zirngiebl, Janosch Sbeih, Bart Devoldere: Trajectories to reconcile sharing and commercialization in the maker movement. In: Business Horizons, 2017, ISSN: 0007-6813.

Abstract

Maker technologies, including collaborative digital fabrication tools like 3-D printers, enable entrepreneurial opportunities and new business models. To date, relatively few highly successful maker startups have emerged, possibly due to the dominant mindset of the makers being one of cooperation and sharing. However, makers also strive for financial stability and many have profit motives. We use a multiple case study approach to explore makers’ experiences regarding the tension between sharing and commercialization and their ways of dealing with it. We conducted interviews with maker initiatives across Europe including Fab Labs, a maker R&D center, and other networks of makers. We unpack and contextualize the concepts of sharing and commercialization. Our cross-case analysis leads to a new framework for understanding these entrepreneurs’ position with respect to common-good versus commercial offerings. Using the framework, we describe archetypal trajectories that maker initiatives go through in the dynamic transition from makers to social enterprises and social entrepreneurs.

BibTeX (Download)

@article{langley_trajectories_2017,
title = {Trajectories to reconcile sharing and commercialization in the maker movement},
author = {David J Langley and Marthe Zirngiebl and Janosch Sbeih and Bart Devoldere},
url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681317301039},
doi = {10.1016/j.bushor.2017.07.005},
issn = {0007-6813},
year  = {2017},
date = {2017-01-01},
journal = {Business Horizons},
abstract = {Maker technologies, including collaborative digital fabrication tools like 3-D printers, enable entrepreneurial opportunities and new business models. To date, relatively few highly successful maker startups have emerged, possibly due to the dominant mindset of the makers being one of cooperation and sharing. However, makers also strive for financial stability and many have profit motives. We use a multiple case study approach to explore makers’ experiences regarding the tension between sharing and commercialization and their ways of dealing with it. We conducted interviews with maker initiatives across Europe including Fab Labs, a maker R&D center, and other networks of makers. We unpack and contextualize the concepts of sharing and commercialization. Our cross-case analysis leads to a new framework for understanding these entrepreneurs’ position with respect to common-good versus commercial offerings. Using the framework, we describe archetypal trajectories that maker initiatives go through in the dynamic transition from makers to social enterprises and social entrepreneurs.},
keywords = {Digital makers, Institutional logic, Maker Movement, Open source sharing, Social entrepreneurship},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {article}
}

Download File 1-s2.0-S0007681317301039-main-2.pdf – 423 KB

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Case study: Dezentrale – a Maker initiative offering a variety of digital fabrication technologies

by Elisabeth Unterfrauner
Posted on November 21, 2017
Category: MAKE-IT
Tags: Case Study
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Dezentrale inner courtyard (Photo: Julia Krayer)

Based in Dortmund (Germany), Dezentrale is a Maker initiative, which, since July 2013, offers a variety of digital fabrication technologies (3D printers, a laser cutter, and electronic equipment), respective knowledge, space and the required equipment for mushroom growing. It is a project funded and run by the research institute Fraunhofer UMSICHT that has a strong focus on sustainable energy and resource use and the transfer of scientific results into companies, society and politics.

Dezentrale is open to the public on two afternoons a week, whereby the focus is on digital fabrication during the first afternoon and on mushroom growing during the second. In addition, Dezentrale offers a variety of workshops. These cover various themes ranging from introduction to 3D printing over crypto parties to mushroom growing. At the moment, Dezentrale is also involved in research projects that address how collaborative economies emerge from production processes, different possibilities for sustainable energy solutions within the citizens’ district, creation of personalized products and equipment for children suffering from rheumatic diseases.

Aiming for an increased participation of the public in research, Dezentrale is supporting the annual festival for more democratic science Innovative Citizen for the third time this year. Dezentrale’s goal to open up research and innovation processes for society via its different projects and is also co-organizing the citizen festival Innovative Citizen, an annual festival for more democratic science.
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Case study: Arduino – participating in a world of creation in digital space

by Elisabeth Unterfrauner
Posted on November 20, 2017
Category: MAKE-IT
Tags: Case Study
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“If you aren’t able to participate in the world of creation in the digital space, you’re left out.” (Severance 2014).

There are many different options to create and craft digital artefacts and products. One of them is Arduino. Arduino itself is a microcontroller on a developer board which can be easily ordered and programmed to do a variety of things. The ever-growing Arduino community is made up of everyone from hobbyists and students to designers and engineers all across the world.

Arduino started as a teaching tool, and one of the conditions shaping the emergence of Arduino were the requirements of studying interaction design. These students had only about 30 days to study electronics applied to design. So apart from many other things, the Arduino technology had to be very accessible in a relatively short time.

Arduino is, in fact, many boards. Boards are different in terms of memory (Uno versus Mega) or in terms of processing power (Uno versus Due). This aspect actually relates to an on-going discussion of closed hardware products being inspired by Arduino but offering better functionalities at a lower price to maker enthusiasts. Now that the idea of programmable microcontrollers has taken off, different business models are experimented with. In the end, Arduino is not only a technology but also a company that had to grow and stabilize. Even though Arduino is one of the success stories in open source hardware, it’s still a relatively small company with few full-time employees.
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Do we need more collaboration for a truly disruptive Maker movement? First insights from the instructables.com community

by Christian Voigt
Posted on November 10, 2017
Category: MAKE-IT
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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” »

Exploring Maker technologies: the TechRadar

by Troels Bovbjerg
Posted on November 9, 2017
Category: MAKE-IT
Tags: Tech Enhancement, Technology, TechRadar, WP4, WP5
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MAKE-IT is a Horizon 2020 European research project focused on how the role of Collective Awareness Platforms (CAPS) enables the growth and governance of the Maker movement, particularly in relation to Information Technology, using and creating social innovations and achieving sustainability. MAKE-IT tackles these issues through different research methods and with the development of technological innovations, such as the interactive Technology Radar (or TechRadar) , which provides an overview of all relevant technologies for makers:

http://techradar.make-it.io/

We hereby invite you to test the TechRadar and provide the MAKE-IT project with very valuable feedback. The TechRadar was developed for the purpose of research, but have added features that we hope can make it useful for a maker, especially for the maker beginners and as an educational tool within fab labs. When exploring the TechRadar, we would like to draw your attention to

The possibilities of exploring across the platforms: Specific examples are linked with general types of technology categories (where more inspiration can be found) and further linked with technology trends and vice versa.
A feature letting the user contribute to the database of platforms/technologies.

After exploring the TechRadar, we will appreciate all the feedback we can get. Please use this link to enter the online survey:
https://make-it.io/surveys/index.php/888114?lang=en

There’s time until December 9th 2017.
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Case study: How to Make (Almost) Anything – HRW Lab, Bottrop (DE)

by Elisabeth Unterfrauner
Posted on November 7, 2017
Category: MAKE-IT
Tags: Case Study
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The HRW FabLab is located at the “Hochschule Ruhr West University for Applied Sciences” (HRW) in Bottrop, Germany. Bottrop is located in the Ruhr district, the densest populated area in Germany which has undergone significant degradation after the loss of its industrial base.

Due to the explicit orientation on education and empowerment, the HRW FabLab is helping to raise the human capital of the area by teaching practical skills for innovation. Psychological barriers to higher education are consciously broken down by inviting pupils to the FabLab who could usually not imagine following an academic career. The research and development services benefit especially local SMEs who might otherwise not have the budget for tailor-made R&D services.

The HRW FabLab is primarily a laboratory for students at the technical University of Applied Sciences “Hochschule Ruhr West” (HRW) and has also open hours for non-students from the wider community. The HRW is a technical University of Applied Sciences with focus on computer science, engineering, mathematics, natural sciences and business administration.

According to the motto “How to Make (Almost) Anything”, the HRW FabLab encourages its students to experiment with rapid prototyping in a wide area of fields like robotics, electronics, 3D-design, -printing and –scanning, film-making, clothes-making, drone-making, and the pursuit of various individual projects. The HRW FabLab offers furthermore a wide variety of hands-on workshops and learning experiences in the above-mentioned fields for primary and secondary schools as well as other interested groups like refugees and youth from disadvantaged areas.

The FabLab does not have a formalised membership structure, but the facility manager estimates that it has a user base of approximately 200 people who regularly use the facilities, plus a larger number of one-time users who come to workshops and courses.

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