FabLab Documentary
There was a large FabLab presence at the SHiFT conference in Lisbon last week. Part of that was a documentary about FabLab. This 14 minute film was made by Elmine Wijnia, based on 2 days of filming in 2 FabLabs, and doing interviews with both visitors and staff of the labs. All in all 130 hours of work yielded a great document.
It's not just the film itself though that is the result of Elmine's work. All the material she gathered is also available in snippets, cut and edited to bite sized statements. These can be used in a variety of ways, in the context of other stories, content or situations. Some of that material is already available in the FabLab video channel. This is how Elmine sees her work as 'video as a service'. She makes the stories visible that are already there (not constructing her own story), and let's the people involved tell those stories. All the material is then made available again to those who are telling the stories, so they can reuse them in every way they want.
The documentary was shown twice during the SHiFT conference, once as part of the FabLab workshop, and once as the official premiere in the main room.
Now that it has been also shown to the FabLab community at the FabTable today, it is time to reveal it to the wider world.
It's a documentary, not a clip, so do take the 14 minutes of time to watch it all. Enjoy.
See FabLab video channel at 23video for more video material on FabLab.
0 Comments and 0 Trackbacks | PermalinkSHiFT 2010 - Maker Households
My talk 'Maker Households' was the closing key-note of the SHiFT conference last Saturday.
This posting gives you the slides (with text) and the video of my talk (made by Siert Wijnia with his iPhone. Thanks!). The video starts about a minute after the beginning of my presentation.
This is the text that goes before the start of the video:
I am here today to do two things:
Pedro and his team asked me to try and bring everything that happened in the past 2 days together under one notion: 'Maker Households'.
And the second thing I want to do is to talk to you about how we can start looking at DIY not just as a skill or skillset, but also as a literacy.
So we can live in these what I call 'Maker Households'.
But to be able to do both of those things I need to take a somewhat winding detour.
I need to discuss internet and mobile communications with you, what is great about it, and what is problematic about it.
And I also need to first talk to you about the state of the world we live in.
Because only then you will see why I think DIY as a literacy, or Maker Households, is not just an exciting thing, but also may well be our only feasible way forward.
So let's start with the detour leading up to this story that I created over the past two days. And the detour starts with something you are probably familiar with.
In the past 15 yrs we mainstreamed 2 new infrastructures and connected people in the furthest regions of our globe to it: Internet, and mobile communications.
These infrastructures are unique compared to any other infrastructure that went before.
First of all. Conventional infrastructures basically always connect two geographic locations.
Your bathroom to the sea..
Now hit play :)
Ton Zijlstra on Maker Households - SHiFT 2010 from Elmine Wijnia on Vimeo.
Closing key-note of the SHiFT 2010 Conference
These are the slides (with the text below the slides)
I would appreciate any feedback.
A great illustration of my talk, made by Bauke Schildt / @bschildt
SHiFT 2010 - DIY, First Notes
Last week Friday and Saturday the SHiFT conference took place in Lissabon, Portugal. I wasn't able to post anything earlier, as we were busy rebooking our flights home due to the Iceland vulcano ash cloud, and I was without reliable internet for most of the time. Although I must say, being stuck here is far from unpleasant.
We can't fly home before Friday, so now we are staying with Josien Kapma and her family on their dairy farm near Lisbon, and enjoying their great hospitality.
The theme of SHiFT was DIY, do it yourself. A rich theme, in the same vein as last year's Reboot conference around 'Action'. It seems to me we are finally but slowly moving out of the social media only focus of these internet/tech conferences, now that has become much more mainstream, and once again start spending time on exploring the outer fringe (dare I say, cutting edge?) of the new affordances that technology brings us.
The empowerment of social media lies mostly in being able to organize and form groups easily and effectively without most of the incumbent structures we used for that until now. The first wave of great effects (starting almost ten years ago with the advent of blogging) was in building bigger and more networks and communities of peers for learning, filtering and making sense of the world, as well as finding new ways to organize and co-create. We spent our time on building the apps and platforms to do that, which has now turned into a rich landscape that functions as infrastructure for the new wave of affordances it is now spawning.
That new wave of affordances focusses on using the knowledge and experience that has become available and accessible, to act, to do things, to put it to different and novel uses. (Where before we were learning new things and putting them to use in our still very much unchanged individual working routines)
On that outer fringe the availability of networks and access to all kinds of knowledge is now taken as given, and doing things yourself as well as acting upon the knowledge, both in the context of your own local communities comes to the fore. It is visible in the enormous attention on co-creation (which basically means letting go of the conveyor belt metaphor for task allocation, and organizing work in the way we organize everything else), as well as in what's going on in Hacker-spaces and FabLabs.
My own contribution to the conference was very much meant to discuss just that. That's why my closing key-note for SHiFT was titled 'Maker Households' (synopsis), and trying to show how all the new digital possibilities should not be seen as separate things, but as a singular shift to a new level of activity. More on that in a subsequent posting.
I want to thank the whole SHiFT team for organizing this event. I know how it almost didn't happen, and yet it did. It was fun and inspiring, and I was glad I could be part of it. The hospitality of Pedro, Andre, Joao and others in the team seems to know no boundaries. One of the participants remarked that she accepted my argument that internet creates more as well as faster connections between people, but that she didn't believe it helped create deeper connections as I said. I completely disagree. Me being at SHiFT, and the origin of the relationships that brought me there, are a case in point.
0 Comments and 0 Trackbacks | PermalinkGuestblogging at EPSI Platform
This month I am guest blogging at the European PSI Platform. To talk about Open Government Data and open government in general in the Netherlands.
The first posting, a description of the current situation around open government in the Netherlands, as I see it, is up since yesterday.
0 Comments and 0 Trackbacks | PermalinkMay 14th - My 40th Birthday (Un)Conference / May 15th - BBQ Party
In a little over a month, it will happen. The (un)conference and BBQ party coinciding with my 40th birthday, which I announced last fall, will definitely take place. The theme is 'Working on Stuff that Matters'.
Elmine's birthday conference 2008 (photo left by Elmine)
Working on Stuff that Matters
Are you working on Stuff that Matters? That really matters to you? To those closest to you? To the world?
How do you stick with or start doing the things that really matter? How do you stay the course, through every day trivia?
What practices do you keep, that help you? How do your relationships and networks factor into this?
How have your practices evolved? How do you operate in this completely networked world?
What are the things and questions you are convinced matter most? And how have you or haven't you incorporated those into your life?
And can we make something in one day that makes the aggregate of our efforts matter more?
This is what we will be working on, on May 14th! A full day in BarCamp style format, with inspiring people, of course with a BlogWalk style walk after lunch.
Ever done actual work on a birthday party? ;)
Celebrating Stuff that Matters
The day after the unconference we will open the door of our home for a party. To celebrate stuff that matters: friendship, family, and inspiring conversations.
The outcome of the unconference day before will be shown around our house (just as we did for Elmine's birthday in August 2008), so the conversations can keep flowing.
All age groups welcome for some serious bbq-ing! (both photos by Elmine)
If you want to join us, you are very much welcome to! (I will be sending e-mail invitations as well)
Find out more about the program, the party, how to get to our place, where to stay, and how you can contribute. And don't forget to add your name to the guest list if you are joining us. Of course your partner and kids are welcome as well.
Mobile Monday Amsterdam - Internet of Things
Last week Monday I visited the 15th edition of Mobile Monday. This time the title was 'The Internet of Things', and it was a great event. Three international speakers talked about the coming years for the internet of things by Alex of Tinker.it, how machines make us more human by David Orban, and the internet of living things by Andrew Hessel. I enjoyed all three talks a lot. As I am more familiar with both Alex and David's thinking, the nicest surprise was Andrew Hessel's talk on the speed of development in genetic engineering. It is rapidly approaching the DIY stage, and FabLabs are certainly already capable of providing this type of possibilities.
Andrew Hessel's talk was at the same time exciting and exhilarating, as well as scary. A very interesting point was that a number of scientists involved in this field see only one way of keeping bio-engineering like this away from the 'dark side' or at least in check, by open sourcing everything they do. Only when all information is available to all, will we all be able to detect things amiss, and counteract wrongdoing. Another soundbite that puts how we will be dealing with the fall out of this technology into a tangible perspective: "Information travels around the globe instantly, viruses in a month" That's the window we'll need to work with, it seems.
A very stimulating session, with good people, and good discussion. I think I will add some elements to my upcoming 'Maker Household' talk at SHiFT 2010 in Lisbon next week as well.
0 Comments and 0 Trackbacks | PermalinkReboot11 Action - The Book
Last years Reboot11 conference was a great event. To me it had lots of the atmosphere and vibes that made Reboot 7 in 2005 a landmark event for me. That first Reboot conference for me came on the heels of two BlogTalk conferences in Vienna in 2003 and 2004. At Reboot I found myself in a crowd that embraced so much more and shifted the discussion of tools and their impact to technology and society as a whole. It meant I could even better connect it to things that were important to me then and now: how do people learn, how do they interact, how can we augment that, how do we use this to tackle real issues of real people. (See some of my postings from the conference in 2005)
Reboot11 had much of the same vibe for me. It was a call to Action, and it adressed the feeling I had from the year before that much of the social media discussion was coming to a stand still. Social media wasn't at the cutting edge anymore, as mainstream adoption had begun in earnest (even if it is hard, and sometimes happens in perverted ways). It seemed we were trying to look more Avant Garde than actually being at the forefront. We were still in the same spot but our niche was no longer at the edge.
Reboot11 helped (me at least) to refocus. By bringing it down to 'action', by speaking of actual interventions, and by no longer ignoring the goings on in the wider world (like the credit crunch, dwindling resources, and climate change)
"Are we working on things that matter?" has become an urgent question for me since then.
During the conference a team of people worked hard to collect and rework everything that was going on. The plan was to create a book about the conference. A tangible document in these digital times.
The book is now available at the Reboot site. And what a great artefact is has become. It's exciting, lovingly designed, has great content, eye for details and is well thought through. Leafing through it was like opening a box and being met with a gush of air that brought the smells, sounds and inspiration of the actual event.
A big thanks to the people that made this book a reality:
Priya Mani, Sten Jauer, Metsu Jørgense, Karen Mardahl, Line Henriksen, Louise Yung Nielsen, Lori Webb , Martynas Jusevicius, Malene Kure, Jens Nielsen, Thomas Kofod, Sidsel Marie Winther, Niklas Stephenson,
Guy Dickinson, and Thomas Madsen-Mygdal.
Reboot11 Sponsors
Weblog by 
Lilia Efimova *
Gary Murphy
Sebastian Fiedler *
Thomas Burg *
Terry Frazier
Dina Mehta *
Stuart Henshall *
Spike Hall
Phil Wolff *
Jim McGee
David Gurteen *
Elmine Wijnia *
Julian Elvé
Denham Grey
Ian Glendinning
Paul Goodison
