Fab 13 Fabricating Society took place the week of July 31 in Santiago, Chile. This was the 13th International Fab Lab Meeting. The three main objectives established this year were to: present successful projects that create high social impact, position Chile as a Global Hub for innovation and entrepreneurship, and reinforce Latin America as a regional focus on social development.
Field Ready staff spoke and participated in numerous aspects of Fab 13. Andrew Lamb, Innovation Advisor presented on our work in Syria, Naiomi Lundman, curator for Humanitarian Makers held a Quality Testing In-Field Prototypes Q&A and held a working group on leveraging fab lab networks and impact. Georg Hoehne, Innovation Advisor in Jordan led a three-part workshop on low-tech design solutions.
During Andrew Lamb’s presentation, he showed a video from our team in Syria who were unable to attend the conference, here is what they had to say:
Some of the takeaways from the event were that the Fab network, Field Ready and Humanitarian Makers can mutually benefit from each other Attendants at Fab 13 were enthusiastic on the work both Field Ready and Humanitarian Makers are doing and expressed a growing interest in purpose-driven making.
The fact that humanitarian issues are now an established working group and indeed recognized as part of the reason for FabLabs around the world to exist is a massive step forward. It is important because humanitarian issues shouldn’t be an ‘activity you do for charity’ on the side of normal work, but should become the new normal – particularly as the FabLab movement reaches around the globe from (as we saw) from Bhutan to Brest, from Syria to South Africa, and from Chile to China. ‘Humanitarian’ was recognized by the conference, and the Fab Foundation President and Chair.
Our goal moving forward is to learn of how fab network interacts with industry; how can that industry "reality" be represented within the network to bridge the gap between what works now and what will work in the future; or if already is, what does this look like in the network. We are going to work on opening up a diologue to inform the Fab network of opportunities for them to get involved with humanitarian endeavors and how we can collaborate in the future.