And we are off! Strangely, even after months of preparation, we still don’t feel totally ready to go… For the three of us, Phonesavanh Thongsouksanoumane, Guillaume Coulombe and Marc-Olivier Ducharme, our first meeting with Montreal’s Fab Labs and workshops was the occasion to reflect on our approach to co-creation.

The Fab Labs Nation caravan will cover about 14722km in 12 weeks, in more than 20 cities and municipalities. Inside our van, we’ll be carrying digital fabrication and information collecting tools, and other material from the simple camera to the laser-cutting machine and drones…

During the afternoon, we will meet with our participants and our partners. It will be the ideal situation to validate and further refine our main question, the one that will guide our residency process during the following months:

What becomes possible when Canada’s Fab Labs and their ecosystem act as collective inter-structure?

This is the question we would like you to answer, the one we will bring and ponder on it during those four months of residency. As such, during the first phase of the residency, we will start by interviewing people we will meet.

Our first interviewees have shared their answers about these four topics:

– What are their thoughts on the question?

– Do they know people we should meet, places we should visit?

– What information do they wish to see on fablabsnation.ca’s website and wiki?

– What part do they wish to play?

Everything seems to be going well; a few minutes before the official launch, our vehicle timely makes an entrance well suited for the occasion!

For the next few days, we will be testing our machines, our material and our equipment to collect information. We will also need to implement our methodologies and get out of our comfort zone!