In November, from 19-24.11 to be precise, we were at the Center for Austausch und Machen (ZAM for short) in Erlangen. A place in the middle of the city center that couldn't be busier and whose hosts have understood and live what open workshops are all about.
There were many reasons for our visit and we would like to report on them because we are very impressed.
As is now the case every year, our association board members travel to the general meeting of our umbrella organization for open workshops, the Verbund offener Wersktätten e.V., to find out about current developments in the greater Germany area, to exchange ideas and advice, to network with other workshops and workshop operators, to catch project updates and also to have a great time.
Among other things, the new openness index was presented. This provides guidance and poses the question of what openness in open workshops actually means and what criteria can be used to create or achieve this openness in the first place. In the coming year, we will determine our own index and are looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.
Another exciting and important issue for us is the topic of further training for workshop supervisors and general occupational safety. These topics have become even more important, particularly as a result of our move to the Stadtwirtschaft. The VOW is strongly committed to this. In April, for example, we attended a preview workshop at Hobbyhimmel Stuttgart under the guidance of Martin Langlinderer and Johannes May, who presented the beta version of the hotly anticipated practical guide “Unglücksverhinderungsverzeichnis” (accident prevention directory).
The FabAccess project, which will be funded by the DSEE in 2024, was also presented. We are heavily involved here. See below in the text.
New VOW board members were also confirmed this year. We congratulate Fadia Elgharib from GIG, Sara Reichert from TU Berlin, Jennifer Leis from Habitat Augsburg e.V., Stefan Vock from ZAM and Maik Jähne from Konglomerat e.V. / Stadtfabrikanten e.V. for their activities in office.
Incidentally, we also brought another hiking box with us to Chemnitz - this time the blue one.
The VULCA Seminar is the annual meeting place for European operators of the maker movement. We have been fans of the VULCA network for several years and are loosely connected. It all started in 2019 with a round trip through Europe and a little later with a humorous, friendly “guy” in a yellow van and avatar with a guitar and EU flag in the background, who paid us a great visit to the FabLab with lots of input. Alex Rousselet is his name and he has visited hundreds of MakerSpaces across Europe in recent years - including us. With a confident vision in his luggage - networking, sending and receiving makers across the country - he also convinced us of this idea and the analogy to Erasmus scholarships, which do not yet exist in an official form for creatives like us. Over the last few years, this has resulted in a strong alliance, a MakerTour offer (platform) and a pan-European manifesto. The association is currently putting itself on a new footing in terms of its organization and we are looking forward with confidence to a serious membership in the new year and a VULCA seminar in 2025. We were already there in Ljubljana in 2023 and this year in Erlangen - one of the reasons to be in Erlangen for almost the whole week 🚸.
We were also delighted that the meeting in Erlangen was also a reunion with our RFF Labs friends (the French maker network). In the summer, we took a trip to France to the Faire Festival in Toulouse (where we also created a cool 360° VR Tour) and supported artists in residence at Makers United who were working in Augustusburg and Chemnitz. We met many of them again. This also renewed the alliance that was signed on paper in Munich in 2023: the collaboration between the French RFF Labs and the German Association of Open Workshops (Verbund offener Werkstätten e.V.).
Another not insignificant anchor of our ZAM visit was the showcase we organized for the long-term open source project FabAccess. We have been pursuing the FabAccess idea since 2019: an access system for open workshops that allows makerspace operators to manage access to machines in order to unlock them for authorized users. This makes particular sense for very dangerous, very rare or very expensive machines (to maintain and/or purchase). Since winter 2023, we have been one of the selected workshops within the DSEE funding program and received support for the installation and also some hardware (Tasmota switch sockets). In the short term, we have now also become very active co-supporters for the user and developer community since this October and have produced extensive preparatory work for the documentation. The aim is for FabAccess to develop its practical character in our workshop too. If we hadn't moved to Stadtwirtschaft so late, we would already be much further along. We will continue to drive FabAccess forward with enthusiasm - here in the workshop and in the German-wide community. We are looking forward to an exciting FOSS year 2025 with new features, bug fixes and releases, document snippets and ingenious electromechanical designs.
Further information on FabAccess can be found at docs.fab-access.org.
A short video from ZAM:
Comments