International Fab Lab Association

URL = http://www.fablabinternational.org/

Description

"The fast and substantial increase of the worldwide Fab Lab community leads to the need of a higher degree of self-organization. Because the network diversifies, a formal structure could be supportive for various objectives within the Fab Lab community (visibility, development, spreading of research, empowerment, open design, to mention only a few). At the Fab6 Conference held in August 2010, the Fab Lab community decided to establish an International Fab Lab Association." (http://www.fablabinternational.org/fab-association/why-we-are-here)

What we want

Our policy plan covers the period from the start of the association until the end of the following year, i.e. 4 July 2011 - 31 December 2012. What do we want to accomplish in the coming period?

• we come to a single list of Fab Labs and monitor the functioning of our rite-de-passage and intervene if necessary

• we facilitate members in setting-up workgroups on common issues and sharing their results

• we try to compose an attractive membership benefits package
• we have our association up and running.

List of Fab Labs etc. - In fact we adopt what has been accomplished so far and add an anchor to the association (i.e. intervening when other mechanisms fail). Eventually we can change this all via a democratic process, i.e. our next general members meeting.

Common issues - The Board should focus on facilitating the members to be active for common goals. Which issues are most relevant has to be figured out.

Membership package - We need members for our association while most people involved with Fab Labs focus on their own lab and do not have the means to travel to international conferences. So we have to compose an interesting membership benefits package to stimulate them to become a member.

Up and running - As CBA expressed various times that running the community is not their core business, we have to figure out with them which activities better can be allocated to the community and organised via the association. Further, we want to set-up a website with interactive facilities or merge with one of the existing web sites." (http://www.fablabinternational.org/fab-association/what-we-want)