Fab Lab Torino

“Here in the Fab Lab, the typical users are designers and engineers. There are hobbyists, students (mainly from PoliTecnico di Milano school), and also craftsmen, woodworkers making furnitures. But it’s still mostly men (80%).”

They discover Fab Lab Torino mainly from the website and social media. “We have Open Days sessions on Tuesday nights to make a tour in the Fab Lab, and people come back to attend some workshops. I would say 40% people who come to Open Days come back to attend a workshop. Most if them come here for the workshops, but don’t show up during the rest of the week.”

Why are they coming? “Some for a project, some hear about digital fabrication and want to discover the Fab Lab and its machines, some don’t even know why and come looking for collaboration and projects to join. A little percentage come here for their work, like a laboratory with tools” The range of projects is very wide, you should take a look at their portfolio.

“Even if we have 250 members, only 20-30 represent a core community and have a deep Fab Lab culture. They come often to help people within the Fab Lab, to run workshops, to share what they do, moments together and feel good!”

Fab Lab Torino was created with less than 30.000 euros. The first business model was to rent machines and give workshops, helping also the creation of other Fab Labs. During Fab Lab Italia exhibition in 2011, they made a deal with Toolbox Coworking to be hosted there, paying them a rent. 10-20 people took part in the adventure. The machines were given/loaned and shared between the Fab Lab and Officine Arduino.

Today, the non-profit org. has two people in the team and six in the bureau. The community gathers 250 members, and run activities for a yearly budget of 26.000 euros. Its different income sources are workshops, classes like the FabAcademy, collaborations based on renting know-how, and minute-based machines use.

Tomorrow, they’d like to empower the Fab Lab core community people in a profitable way, create a cooperative solution to provide services. And become more independent.

Their indicators of Fab Lab Torino’s good health? “The subcommunities diversity, being always creating strange and innovative workshops, seeing big companies coming through the doors. A Fab Lab is a community. So the community is the main indicator. Machines are just machines.”

Fab Lab Torino is a non-profit org. with a 6-people “council”. But there are only two people employed by the Fab Lab on a daily basis: one on the lab coordination, machinery, design, and architecture related activities; the other one on events, workshops and community management. All others contribute to the Fab Lab’s life and management but are not paid for it.

To welcome newbies, “we do organise every week an Open Day session to let people see the lab for the first time and ask questions. Once the person suscribes, they are invited to join some workshops. You need to attend it (some are free) before using the machines and tools.”

On Open Days, there’s the Hello World workshop, free for new suscribers who can also bring someone from free. It’s a lab introduction to the space, machines and equipment. But Fab Lab Torino offers more than 50 workshops from coding to drone basics, clay matter and DIY lamps.

A rare thing, Fab Lab Torino’s members created autonomous and thematic subcommunities like Audiohacklab, Biohacking Experience in Torino, Fab Labs for Kids, Arduino User Group, etc. They run meetups, events and projects on their own, independently from the Fab Lab’s team.

Fab Lab Torino has many different ways to keep traces about the Fab Lab and what people make inside. The blog and agenda features all the events and workshops, the portfolio features the users and Fab Lab team projects (picture, maker name, links), the newsletter introduces the coming events and everyday interactions through the social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Periscope, Instagram, Vine, GitHub, Tumblr, Pinterest and Vimeo).

About projects documentation, Fab Lab Torino started a collaboration with YouWant3D, a 3D printing platform startup. “What a Fab Lab needs is a platform for its makers to share their projects and be able to recreate the projects made by other people of the world community. Through our collaboration, YouWant3D developed a new branch of their website, made for this use!”

“I guess makers from our community read a lot of external documentation. Mostly on Github, people working on Arduino use Github a lot. The FabAcademy documentation, with the students following the classes. You can see their work there.”

“We also push our makers to speak about what they do! We even created events to teach makers how to become more entrepreneurial: social networks, business model canvas, taking pictures, share their work outside of the lab!”