As a preparation for the launch of Abweb Fablab, I visited the Fab Foundation in Boston as well as different Fablabs both in the US and in France.
The Fab Foundation is non-profit, formed in 2009, to facilitate and support the growth of the international fab lab network as well as the development of regional capacity-building organizations. The Fab Foundation emerged from MIT’s Center for Bits & Atoms Fab Lab Program and its mission is to provide access to the tools, the knowledge and the financial means to educate, innovate and invent using technology and digital fabrication to allow anyone to make (almost) anything, and thereby creating opportunities to improve lives and livelihoods around the world.
During my visit to The Fab Foundation, I met with The Fab Foundation, Luciano Betoldi, International Operations Director, and Jean-Luc Pierite International Procurement and Logistics Manager.
Luciano Betoldi Jean-Luc Pierite
After a discussion about the role Fab Labs and his vision to develop Fab Labs around the world through The Fab Foundation, Pr Neil invited me to a tour inside the MIT Center for Bits & Atoms, which he described as the Fab Lab of FabLabs. It is indeed an amazing experience going through the machinery that exists inside the lab and talking with Pr. Neil about things like Nanotechnology and Internet of Things.
After the Fab Foundation, I met with Pr. Neil A. Gershenfeld, director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms and Chairman of the Board of the Fab Foundation. Neil is a professor at MIT and his research studies are predominantly focused on interdisciplinary studies involving physics and computer science, in such fields as quantum computing, nanotechnology, and personal fabrication.
In France, I visited The Fablab Descartes which is an association, in the heart of Cluster Descartes, in Marne-la-Vallée – Paris, with the objective to foster the emergence of a collaborative and community space for technology exchange in the East of Paris.
