Today we visited the Centre for Advanced Manufacturing at University of PEI. The Centre was previously called Fab Atlantic but it’s mission changed slightly along the way and is now more focused on serving the students of UPEI and the business ecosystem of the province, mostly through research partnerships. The Centre is well equipped to provide support to students project. It is located in the brand new building of the Department of Sustainable Design and Engineering.

We were meeting with Jeff, in charge of the Centre and Casey from Makerspace Summerside, located about 40 minutes west of Charlottetown in a building provided by the municipal authority. The makerspace is very much in it’s inception phase but does already have a strong community.

We are always pleased when people with the same passion meet for the first time. Meeting with them, even for the first time, seems to make the world a little bit smaller and less lonely. Ressources are scarces, for large and small organizations, and sharing best practices or tips on how to hire interns can make such a difference in the evolution of a Fab Lab.

Because even when we are working with a community, whether it is the students or the members of a Makerspaces, sometime it feels like our labs are a tiny isolated islands. How can an interstructure of Fab Labs and their ecosystems can bring us together?