This is in progress. I would love to be doing these exercises, but the machine assignment is so difficult for beginners that it has taken so much of my time away from doing the other assignments. This makes me unhappy.
This was really interesting! We would have so many of the relevant competences and interest in our university that it would be great to be a node, but I think it would be too much pressure on the current schedules and teaching. And impossible for next autumn already. I will send the Fabricademy information to some professors and researchers at any rate.
I also like that the recitations are often open conversations about what we can and should do as a community. (I say 'we' even though I still feel like an insider-outsider in the FabLab network.) It can be risky to have these kinds of conversations, in a world of hierarchical organizations where things are carefully strategized and communicated. 'You mean you don't have everything perfectly arranged, organized and logically and rationally justified? You are talking about a programme openly that is still a work in progress?' This would be suicide in the corporate world. But in the hybrid world between new business, academia and the cultural spheres, where FabLabs reside, Fab Academy and FabLabs can get away with it such open and emergent planning.
The Fabricademy schedule looked very ambitious; I wonder if the course will be able to achieve all of that without killing the students. I do like the idea of having an extended period at the end for finishing the final project. This turbo charge Fab Academy style where one is not allowed to have any kind of other life (if one is a beginner and without a local tutor) is stressful and leads more often to frustration than senses of achievement. I wish I could learn to work faster, learn faster, absorb information faster. But I'm old.
Notes and reflections to come (if I have time). (I started Fab Academy in 2016 and there are some recitations I'd like to revisit.)