Champaign-Urbana Community Fab Lab

Welcome in the spring with us at our annual community BBQ. This next Sunday, May 4th, the lab will be hosting a celebration of volunteers, graduating students, new staff, grants and continued good times. We'll have an open grill with some meat and some kind of vegetarian option, but please feel free to bring your own dish. We'll kick the fire off around noon and continue on in to open hours.

Volunteers are highly encouraged to attend so that they can meet some of our new student staff helping us with workshops this summer!

I had the pleasure of presenting twice this past week at the Fab8nz conference via video conference. Among many things we discussed research in Fab Labs related to literacy, learning and empowerment as well as the Powers of 10 concept and how we've gone about doing mini FabLab deployments. If you're interested the paper and one of the presentations is available for download below!

The CUCFL was part of the Partnerships for a Thriving Champaign Urbana conference April 20 at the NCSA.  It was great to meet so many people who are working to create a more livable community.  I hope they make the Fab Lab a part of those efforts.  One example is the work of Christine Moore, who is working with the Prosperity Gardens project near the police station where the public market is open.  The lab might help by making a few wooden garden stakes and signs for the area.  Anyone have any great sayings for a garden that we can laser cut into a sign?