2011-April-12

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12042011

Who was there

  • Sherry (MIT)
  • 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
  • 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(spelling?) (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)

  • 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.

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 * …)


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:

  •  ?