On the second day at FAN2, we met so many interesting people who come from different Fablabs all around Asia. Lab Review session started at 9:15am; each lab is given 15 minutes for their presentation.
Ted – Fablab Taipei Director – was the first to present. Fablab Taipei is a non-profit and has various projects ranging from art to appliances. We have been attracted by MIDI music instrument.
Angeline who represented FAN1 organizer – Fablab Bohol – was next on stage. Fablab Bohol mainly focused on solving problems experienced in Philippine, such as upcycling. Strongly supported by their government, they also paid much attention to education as well as providing trainings to local people.
Fablab Bohol’s presentation
Mr. Hiroya Tanaka, founder of Fablab Japan Network and co-founder of FabLab Kamakura, introduced about Fablabs in Japan. Its number grew from 1 to 12 in 5 years counting from 2009. Ms. Youka Watanabe, the other FabLab Kamakura co-founder, said that their focus is on community, people and local materials.
Fablab Shanghai
Fablab Shanghai is founded by College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University. It does most things related to architecture. Many great designs came out from the lab, we can see.
There were also talks by FabLab Miriam College (scheduled to open in early 2016) and FabLab DongGuan. They haven’t launched the lab yet but they have enthusiasm to open one soon. For your information, DongGuan is a small city near Shenzhen, known as the Silicon Valley of hardwares.
Keynote speech: Gamification for Education
The lab review section ended at 11:30, followed by Professor Benson Yeh’s keynote speech about “Gamification for Education”. Prof. Yeh shared his experience creating a game called PaGamO to facilitate the first Coursera course in Chinese. For its massive popularity and success, the game-based course platform was given the Grand Prize of Wharton-QS Stars Awards 2014: Reimagine Education and is now well recognized by many schools and universities around the world. Head to their website https://official.pagamo.com.tw/ to know more.
We had lunch at 12:30pm to 2:00pm. For the rest of the afternoon, we were given a chance to attend workshops conducted by various Fablabs. One of them was about learning to use Fabble.cc, a brandnew platform made by Fablab Kamakura for members of the Fablab network to share their projects. This platform is aimed at facilitating knowledge transfer from one Fablab to another.
