Wednesday, April 11, 2012

USFLN Symposium Rocks!

Fab Lab Tulsa, if you didn't see our website, is hosting the annual US Fab Lab Network Symposium this week.

If I may be so bold...our Tulsa planning team rocks!  They've put on a great event and I'm so proud of them and grateful for their hard work.

Tuesday we hosted Dale Doughtery, of Make Magazine.  He's a global trend setter in the Make movement, and has his pulse on the future of fabrication.

Wednesday we had a wonderful line-up of speakers on topics ranging from running your Shopbot or laser cutter to founding your own non-profit, organizing a board of directors, speaking with foundations and raising money.  John Fitzpatrick from US Highland also spoke about its new and wonderful relationship with Fab Lab Tulsa.  All of it great.

Oh, I forgot to mention Fabfi, made possible through the ingenuity of Amy Sun and hard work at Fab Lab Jalabad (Afghanistan).  Amy had a wonderful talk on the story of this amazing Fab Lab development.

Thursday was our education day with presentations from Project TIES (Caroline McEnnis), David Isenbart from the Fab Lab at Will Rogers Middle School in Claremore, OK; and also a presentation from Dr. Paulo Blikstein from Stanford University.  The afternoon included Camp Shopbot by Sally Coyle and crew.

Autodesk also gave an insightful presentation on the state of networking in the Maker community, and how their site Instructables can play a growing role.  Fab Lab Tulsa looks forward to a new relationship with Autodesk and Instructables.

Overall, the conference was informative and enriching, with valuable insights from the US Fab Lab community.  Personally, I had a great time and made some great new friends.

Visit Fab Lab Tulsa and make something today!

1 comment:

  1. Didn't make it though wish I had. What is in the works for the next similar meetup. Makerfaire in the vicinity or similar? How are these things advertised?

    On a somewhat unrelated note ... the plans for tomorrow's open FabLab day: the building/making of a FEMbots from futurama calendar to be followed by some possible and likely random, bender style shinanigans.

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