Fab Folk Inc. is organized and operated exclusively for charitable, educational, and scientific purposes. Fab Folk Inc. will further these purposes by:
1. Applying, and assisting others in applying, Fab Lab technologies and processes to serve individual and local community needs, with the hope and expectation of benefitting the Fab and local community at large.
2. Encouraging the advancement of science directed towards benefiting the public through developing or aiding in the research of new bodies of knowledge concerning Fab Lab enabling technology and processes, and disseminating these concepts to the general public by making the results of such research generally available.
3. Advancing education of individuals through instruction or training, or aiding in the instruction or training, in Fab Lab technology, processes, and pedagogy for the purpose of improving individuals' abilities to develop themselves or support their communities; and advancing education through the instruction of the public on Fab Labs and their uses and how to build and/or expand technical capacity in localities.
4. Facilitating distribution and access to the Fab Lab tools and materials, with the purpose of promoting the equality of access to tools and materials that cultivate and support innovating practices.
This domain is a collection of services for fab lab users, maintained by your friendly fab folk.
You can get free yourname@fabfolk.com email and blogs.fabfolk.com/yourname blog spaces by mailing admin at fabfolk.com.
Our core activity for supporting users is the Grants program. Fab Folk works directly with fab labbers worldwide to fund individual user projects and support open source developement, such as that being done in the Fabfi Wireless Project. This part of the Fabfolk mission is just ramping up, so you'll see more info and more projects soon. Amy insists!
It's finally here: the FabYearBook 2011. Over 60 pages with inspiration and stories of FabLabs around the world! Download it now!
Leading up to Fab7, everyone is invited to submit and present a process or capability you think should be added to all labs. We'll share them all at Fab 7 (physically and virtually) and vote on which process to add to the standard inventory.
There are only two rules:
1) the process needs to be documented in a digitally distributed format so that it can be learned and replicated by others. Any text needs to include English copy, but if you have difficulty here we can help make a translation.
2) any special materials or equipment not currently in the inventory are something that we could immediately buy sufficient quantity of and ship to all existing and future labs. Because, if your process is selected by Fab7 attendees, that's what we'll do!
Submit in any way you are comfortable. It can be a document, video, instructable, or fabwiki entry, however you are able to make your project understood. You do not have to physically attend Fab 7 to share your project.
FAB7 is the annual international Fab Lab event coming August 14 - 19, 2011. Our host is a newly forming lab in Lima, Peru. For registration and information, see http://fab7.pe
In the past, MIT and hosts have been able to raise money to bring 1-2 people from every lab to the conference. That probably won't be the case this year. As of right now there is no money to bring people to the conference. You may need to raise money to come to the conference. Here's a guide for how to raise money locally to attend the conference.
Hiroya Tanaka from Fab Lab Japan is on the ground working near the earthquake/tsunami affected regions. He's just created a fabfolk group alias called "japan" for discussions, questions, and well-wishes. If you would like to have further updates from Hiro, please email to be added to the group.
To write to everyone in the group, the email address is "japan at fabfolk dot com".
FabFolk is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization registered in Massachusetts, USA. Your donations will be used to support global user projects per our grant giving policy.
FabFolk.com 2011