Cities join the Fab City initiative every year during the Fab Lab network meetings. We work with local communities of Fab Labs, government and organisations in order to develop local strategies for Fab Cities. Contact us in order to start this conversation in your city.
Drawing from over a decade of field experience, Fabbers are creating an interactive Fab11 program that includes hands-on workshops, talks, planning meetings, project demonstrations, Fab Academy graduation, Global Fab Awards, a Fab Youth track , informal opportunities to connect and fabricate and, of course, fun celebrations of our network. Join your colleagues at Fab11 and expand the impact you have on your world! Stay up to date on the emerging program by checking the Schedule here.
International Fab Lab Network members from more than 450 labs in 55 countries are gathering in August 2015 in the birthplace of the Fab Lab concept. We come together this year to explore how the ability to “Make (almost) Anything” is impacting individuals, communities, businesses and collaborative research and projects from Detroit to Togo, Barcelona to Shanghai and everywhere in between. At Fab11, members will share technical expertise, best practices, and the powerful stories behind Neil Gershenfeld’s statement “The power of Digital Fabrication is social, not technical”.
Fab11 Symposium
The Fab Symposium: Making : Impact will take place August 6th at Boston’s famed Symphony Hall. It is a one-day, public event that explores the principles, applications and implications of digital fabrication. This year our focus will be on the incredible makers who have emerged from fab labs and digital fabrication education over the last 12+ years, who have made significant social, economic and community impact in the world and who are inventing the future. From the White House to Google to Barcelona to Togo, these makers are changing the world around us. Details about speakers and participants will be updated frequently on the conference scheduleweb page and via our social media channels.
Fab Festival
Over the weekend of August 8 and 9 the cities of Boston, Cambridge and Somerville will come alive with a public Fab Festival. The 3-city Festival is a celebration of making and creativity. The weekend includes exhibitions, demonstrations, cool performances, hands-on activities for the whole family, and talks and panels featuring great makers from around the world. The Fab Festival is free and open to the public. Check the Fab Festival program often as new, fun activities will be added daily by Fabbers from across the city and around the globe!
e Fab Foundation will be running free children’s fab/maker workshops for registered children at the MIT Cambridge Campus at McDermott Court on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on August 3rd, 4th and 5th from 8:30 AM- 11:30. One workshop will take place at the MIT museum and campers will meet there and sign out from that location.
Children 8 – 14 will select a variety of creative & fun workshops including: Toy Shop Design, LED Cuff Bracelet, Story Making: Designing Interactive Stories Using Circuit Stickers, Video Sensing with Scratch, Pop-ups, Lighted Lanterns, Speakers and More!, Sling Shot Cars, Mini-Chain Reaction Design Lab, Optical Illusions: Make Your Own Spectacles, & 3-D Design Challenge with Blocks CAD. Children will use computers, software, leds, circuits, switches, laser cutters, silhouette printers, 3-D printers and more to create their projects.
A huge thanks to the following organizations for their participation in Fab 11 Kids:
Chibitronics
Chibi Lights Circuit Stickers are LEDs on stickers. Perfect for STEM, STEAM learning! Developed by MIT students
Einstein’s Workshop
A hands-on learning center where you can explore the creative side of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)
Electroninks
Creators of Circuit Scribe a rollerball pen that writes with conductive silver ink & It makes creating circuits as easy as doodling
Fablevision
A company dedicated to helping all learners discover their true potential
MIT Museum
Making research and innovation accessible to all
Flagship Computer Clubhouse
Located at the Museum of Science Boston it is one of 100 Clubhouses around the world encouraging young people to explore their own ideas, develop new skills, & build confidence in themselves through the use of technology. We are a free program for Boston-area youth ages 10-18, located at the Museum of Science, Boston.
South End Technology Center
Provides free or low-cost access and training in most aspects of computer-related technology
Each year members of the more than 1,000 worldwide Fab Labs gather to share, collaborate, explore and, of course, fabricate. This year, August 2016, we meet in Shenzhen, China a historically important city for manufacturing and making. Today China is embarking on a long-term program to foster innovation and technology, so the city is a perfect incubator for the digital fabrication revolution fab labs are bringing to the world.
This year our focus will be on Fab Lab 2.0, the ability of a fab lab to use its own digital fabrication tools to produce a fab lab and to produce the manufacturing machines of the future.
We’ll have the annual Symposium, the Fab City pledge and the Fab Academy Graduation.
KERRY GLASGOWIS HUMANITY'S LAST BEST CHANCE - Join search for Sustainaabilty's Curricula
101ways-generation.docx 101 ways education can save the world WHAT IF WE DESIGNED LIFELONG LIVELIHOOD LOEARNING SO THAT so that teachers & students, parent & communities were empowered to be ahead of 100 times more tech rather than the remnants of a system that puts macihnes and their exhausts ahead of human life and nature's renewal 2016 is arguably the first time thet educatirs became front and centre to the question that Von neummn asked journalist to mediate back in 1951- what goods will peoples do with 100 times more tech per decade? It appears that while multilaterals like the Un got used in soundbite and twittering ages to claim they valued rifghts & inclusion, pubblic goods & safety, they fotgot theirUN tech twin in Genva has been practising global connectivity since 1865, that dellow Goats of V neumnn has chiared Intellectual Cooperation in the 1920s which pervesrely became the quasi trade union Unesco- it took Abedian inspired educations in 2016 ro reunite ed and tecah as well as health and trade ; 7 decades of the UN not valuing Numenn's question at its core is quite late, but if we dare graviate UN2 aeound this digital coperation question now we give the younger half if the world a chnace especially as a billion poorest women have been synchronised to deep community human development since 1970
Dear Robert - you kindly asked for a short email so that you could see if there is a CGTN anchor in east coast who might confidentially share views with my expectation of how only Asian young women cultural movements (parenting and community depth but amplified by transparent tech in life shaping markets eg health, food, nature..) can return sustainability to all of us
three of my father's main surveys in The Economist 1962-1977 explain imo where future history will take us (and so why younger half of world need friendship/sustainable adaptation with Chinese youth -both on mainland and diaspora)
1962 consider japan approved by JF Kennedy: argued good news - 2 new economic models were emerging through japan korea south and taiwan relevant to all Asia Rising (nrxt to link the whole trading/supply chains of the far east coast down through hong kong and cross-seas at singapore)
1 rural keynsianism ie 100% productivity in village first of all food security- borlaug alumni ending starvation
2 supercity costal trade models which designed hi-tech borderless sme value chains- to build a 20 million person capital or an 8 million person superport you needed the same advances in engineering - partly why this second economic model was win-win for first time since engines begun Glasgow 1760 ; potentially able to leverage tech giant leaps 100 times ahead; the big opportunity von neumann had gifted us - knowhow action networking multiply value application unlike consuming up things
1976 entrepreneurial revolution -translated into italian by prodi - argued that future globalisation big politics big corporate would need to be triangularised by community scaled sme networks- this was both how innovation advancing human lot begins and also the only way to end poverty in the sense of 21st C being such that next girl born can thrive because every community taps in diversity/safety/ valuing child and health as conditions out of which intergenerational economic growth can spring
in 1977 fathers survey of china - argued that there was now great hope that china had found the system designs that would empower a billion people to escape from extreme poverty but ultimately education of the one child generation (its tech for human capabilities) would be pivotal ( parallel 1977 survey looked at the futures of half the world's people ie east of iran)
best chris macrae + 1 240 316 8157 washington DC
IN MORE DETAIL TECH HUMAN EXPONENTIALS LAST CHANCE DECADE?
- we are in midst of unprecedented exponential change (dad from 1960s called death of distance) the tech legacy of von neumann (dad was his biographer due to luckily meeting him in his final years including neumann's scoping of brain science (ie ai and human i) research which he asked yale to continue in his last lecture series). Exponential risks of extinction track to mainly western top-down errors at crossroads of tech over last 60 years (as well as non transparent geonomic mapping of how to reconcile what mainly 10 white empires had monopoly done with machines 1760-1945 and embedded in finance - see eg keynes last chapter of general theory of money); so our 2020s destiny is conditioned by quite simple local time-stamped details but ones that have compounded so that root cause and consequence need exact opposite of academic silos- so I hope there are some simple mapping points we can agree sustainability and chinese anchors in particular are now urgently in the middle of
Both my fatherwww.normanmacrae.netat the economist and I (eg co-authoring 1984 book2025 report,retranslated to 1993 sweden's new vikings) have argued sustainability in early 21st c will depend mostly on how asians as 65% of humans advance and how von neumann (or moores law) 100 times more tech every decade from 1960s is valued by society and business.
My father (awarded Japan's Order of Rising Sun and one time scriptwriter for Prince Charles trips to Japan) had served as teen allied bomber command burma campaign - he therefore had google maps in his head 50 years ahead of most media people, and also believed the world needed peace (dad was only journalist at messina birth of EU ) ; from 1960 his Asian inclusion arguments were almost coincidental to Ezra Vogel who knew much more about Japan=China last 2000 years ( additionally cultural consciousness of silk road's eastern dynamics not golden rule of Western Whites) and peter drucker's view of organisational systems
(none of the 10 people at the economist my father had mentored continued his work past 1993- 2 key friends died early; then the web turned against education-journalism when west coast ventures got taken over by advertising/commerce instead of permitting 2 webs - one hi-trust educational; the other blah blah. sell sell .sex sell. viral trivial and hate politicking)
although i had worked mainly in the far east eg with unilever because of family responsibilities I never got to china until i started bumping into chinese female graduates at un launch of sdgs in 2015- I got in 8 visits to beijing -guided by them around tsinghua, china centre of globalisation, a chinese elder Ying Lowrey who had worked on smes in usa for 25 years but was not jack ma's biographer in 2015 just as his fintech models (taobao not alibaba) were empowering villagers integration into supply chains; there was a fantastic global edutech conference dec 2016 in Tsinghua region (also 3 briefings by Romano Prodi to students) that I attended connected with great womens education hero bangladesh'sfazle abed; Abed spent much of hs last decade hosting events with chinese and other asian ambassadors; unite university graduates around sdg projects the world needed in every community but which had first been massively demonstrated in asia - if you like a version of schwarzman scholars but inclusive of places linking all deepest sustainability goals challenges
and i personally feel learnt a lot from 3 people broadcasting from cgtn you and the 2 ladies liu xin and tian wei (they always seemed to do balanced interviews even in the middle of trump's hatred campaigns), through them I also became a fan of father and daughter Jin at AIIB ; i attended korea's annual general meet 2017 of aiib; it was fascinating watching bankers for 60 countries each coming up with excuses as to why they would not lead on infrastructure investments (even though the supercity economic model depends on that)
Being a diaspora scot and a mathematician borders (managers who maximise externalisation of risks) scare me; especially rise of nationalist ones ; it is pretty clear historically that london trapped most of asia in colomisdation ; then bankrupted by world war 2 rushed to independence without the un or anyone helping redesign top-down systems ; this all crashed into bangladesh the first bottom up collaboration women lab ; ironically on health, food security, education bangladesh and chinese village women empowerment depended on sharing almost every village microfranchise between 1972 and 2000 especially on last mile health networking
in dads editing of 2025 from 1984 he had called for massive human awareness by 2001 of mans biggest risk being discrepancies in incomes and expectations of rich and poor nations; he suggested that eg public broadcast media could host a reality tv end poverty entrepreneur competition just as digital media was scaling to be as impactful as mass media
that didnt happen and pretty much every mess - reactions to 9/11, failure to do ai of epidemics as priority from 2005 instead of autonomous cars, failure to end long-term carbon investments, subprime has been rooted in the west not having either government nor big corporate systems necessary to collaboratively value Asian SDG innovations especially with 5g
nye:csis jan2020 dc the greatest debate help search 2025NOW.COM
I am not smart enough to understand how to thread all the politics now going on but in the event that any cgtn journalist wants to chat especially in dc where we could meet I do not see humans preventing extinction without maximising chinese youth (particularly womens dreams); due to covid we lost plans japan had to relaunch value of female athletes - so this and other ways japan and china and korea might have regained joint consciousness look as if they are being lost- in other words both cultural and education networks (not correctly valued by gdp news headlines) may still be our best chance at asian women empowerment saving us all from extinction but that needs off the record brainstorming as I have no idea what a cgtn journalist is free to cover now that trump has turned 75% of americans into seeing china as the enemy instead of looking at what asian policies of usa hurt humans (eg afghanistan is surely a human wrong caused mostly by usa); a; being a diaspora scot i have this naive idea that we need to celebrate happiness of all peoples an stop using media to spiral hatred across nations but I expect that isnt something an anchor can host generally but for example if an anchor really loves ending covid everywhere then at least in that market she needs to want to help united peoples, transparency of deep data etc
please map how and why - more than 3 in 4 scots earn their livelihoods worldwide not in our homeland- that requires hi-trust as well as hi-tech to try to love all cultures and nature's diversity- until mcdonalds you could use MAC OR MC TO identify our community engaging networks THAT SCALED ROUND STARTING UP THE AGE OF HUMANS AND MACHINES OF GKASGOW UNI 1760 12 3 - and the microfranchises they aimed to sustain locally around each next child born - these days scots hall of fame started in 1760s around adam smith and james watt and 195 years later glasgow engineering BA fazle abed - we hope biden unites his irish community building though cop26 -ditto we hope kamalA values gandhi- public service - but understand if he or she is too busy iN DC 2021 with covid or finding which democrats or republicans or american people speak bottom-up sustainable goals teachers and enrrepreneurs -zoom with chris.macrae@yahoo.co.uk if you are curious - fanily foundation of the economist's norman macrae- explorer of whether 100 times more tehc every decade since 1945 would end poverty or prove orwell's-big brother trumps -fears correct 2025report.com est1984 or the economist's entreprenerialrevolutionstarted up 1976 with italy/franciscan romano prodi
