2011-April-12

12042011

=Who was there= Lyndi/? - South Africa Beno/Karen - Lima, Peru Alain Craig - Illinois / National Center for Supercomputing (?) Luke - Illinois, USA Peter - South africa / NW uni Anu - Utrecht, Netherlands Sherry
 * Tom - Kenya / Kisumu

=Information gathering=

Peter (NW South Africa)

 * documentation mostly paper & pencil, they complete it in digitally to be worked with at the lab * >
 * exchanging project information only with individual labs with whom there’s an existing relationship (by email / ?)
 * website is being made and the designs will be there then
 * Internet connectivity: not too bad

Shakisa(?) (South Africa)

 * blog (A: which platform? )
 * files stay local
 * 3 months
 * uploading pics = hard(slow)
 * who documents?
 * special projects
 * writeup + pics

Peter

 * hard to hear?

Tom Akite (Kenya)

 * Aro FL - most remote & rural
 * internet connection: satellite dish to connect to other labs (Polycom?)
 * projects mostly done with the local community
 * documenting
 * if the project was successful or not
 * local database to store the information
 * database accessible at the library, that is available to everyone locally
 * usual lab visitors: local community members, school dropouts and schoolgoing kids, highschool teachers
 * college students’ final year projects, with assistance
 * documentation language: English (as it’s the schooling language)

Abu (Ghana)

 * lost connection

Karen/Benno (Lima, Peru)

 * FabAcademy (wiki?)
 * FabMoments not systematically used
 * internet connection is allright enough
 * website exists
 * fabmoments not systematically used
 * documentation language: spanish predominantly. Usually a mix of more basic documentation english and richer spanish version
 * fabacademy context ?

? (Nairobi, Kenya?)

 * who documents:
 * MIT ? pictures & text content
 * bandwidth / archival space * > problem = bandwidth (x?)
 * documentation language: English (works for everybody, mostly)
 * web presence besides fab academy?

Tom (Kenya)

 * in the process of putting up a website * URL: (to come)
 * website: web presence and documentation both are goals
 * finding out about other Fablabs: through websites, fab academy (email entries), fabfolk (with hesitation)

=General questions=

Sherry: knowledge sharing that you are not getting?

 * Peter: sharing files with specifically targeted labs, p2p relationships (via email)

Sherry remarks - two major needs:
1. project sharing (ie “FabMoments”) 2. I want a fablab too, how do I get one? etc

Tom (Kenya)
Luke: Matter documentation documentation quality & details rather finding the documentation Sherry: People don’t have time to respond to in enough detail * > think how much detail needs to be made available (A: allowing for feedback loops * link to other resources *  ask for more complete docs *  …)
 * documentation in fab academy / fabfolk site.
 * For instance Mantis assembly process * following buildup on the writing = difficult. Mantis kits / instructions were sent out to 6 labs but nt enough information on the site to build it up.

Who does the documentation?
Luke: Send picture and paragraph to lab manager to get documentation up Sherry: Seems to fall on the lab guru Lima: everyone does their own documentation Kenya: ? Lindy / Shupiso: lab personnel documents Peter: documentation for the students done by personnel Anu: lab visitors, Utrecht is usually too busy to have lab managers guide people through the documentation process. The documentation station is a solution we are trying out to this end

=Follow-up questions= Anu:
 * which web platform are people using for web presence / documentation:


 * content management system such as Drupal or Wordpress, Joomla, Mediawiki, other


 * self-built website (e.g. with frameworks like Ruby on Rails (Ruby), Django (Python), Symfony (PHP), others


 * some hosted solution (e.g. Ning <* used by Budapest Fablab for example, hosted Wordpress / other blog / anything else)

Other questions: