Fab Lab Taipei

When the Fab Lab opens its doors in 2013, it was located near a University. Hence 60% of the users used to be students during the first 2 years. Moreover, 80% of the users used to be males, as most of them came for the engineering classes, less frequented by females.

Since the lab moved into the CIT (Center for Innovation Taipei), the profiles of users tend to change with less students coming (20%), and more hobbyists (70%) and entrepreneurs (5%). The female frequentation rose to 40%, probably due to the new location, as the CIT hosts more design firms and startups.

Most of the users heard about the place thanks to their intense social networks activity, especially on facebook, where they already gathered more than 13K fans.

All users are involved in the lab community. It is one core aspect of Fab Lab Taipei. As the place is free and open to all, users are required to get involved in the daily life of the lab and participate to the maintenance. Hence any user might be asked to help cleaning, or to train another member, before using the machine for himself (see our best practice for more detail on this organizational system).

“Fab Lab Taipei doesn’t have a business model”, so are the words of its founder Ted. In 2013, he invested himself 140K€ to rent the place and buy the first set of machines.

Today, the Fab Lab is seen as a free service provided by the Taiwan Maker Association. The new location in the Center of Innovation Taiwan (CIT), is lent for free by the government. And since the Taiwan Maker Association is running an incubator program for 6 Taiwanese startups, the government also pays all the operational costs.

One singularity compared to all the other labs is the absence of any employee running the space. Volunteers manage everything.

There is a strong interest in the maker culture nowadays in Taipei, especially in the area of education. 23 schools have already built their own Makerspace. But so far, few young students are coming to the Fab Lab. In the near future, Ted would like to bring more young people into the Fab Lab to develop their maker spirit.

Fab Lab Taipei is officially part of the Taiwan Maker Association (TMA), a non-profit organization gathering more than 60 members (companies, individuals, makerspaces…). 7 members are working full-time for the TMA, splited in 4 main teams: the consultancy (focusing on education), the fabacademy (running the program for Taiwan and China), the events (organizing mini Maker Faire), and the incubator.

In Fab Lab Taipei, the core rule is that there must be minimal rules, allowing as much as possible freedom to its users. So anyone can build anything, and ask for help to someone from the community.

Today, 10 members of the community who are highly involved act as lab manager. One of them must be present at least every day, so they operate shifts to ensure the openess of the lab. They are in charge of the lab’s daily activities, help the users and also can assign them some tasks to help the community. As every member is a volunteer, the full system is based on trust and cooperation.

The Fab Lab hosts many workshops, which can be proposed by the community itself, or even by companies or institutions. Amongst those we can quote the “digital fabrication for kids”, “arduino programming”, “user experience” or “how to run a crowdfunding campaign”.

The documentation is currently a challenge for the Fab Lab. As the rule of freedom applies, documentation of projects is not compulsory for the users.

Only the fabacademy students are required to document their projects, as per guidance of the class. All workshops and events are documented on a google drive account shared by all highly involved members.