This past month I went to travel a little bit - spreading information in person in events such as these is what helps people get inspired to create their own labs. 

First was design festival DMY Berlin, where Finns (my nation of origin) were in charge of the MakerLab area at the spacious airport hangars where the festival was held. So I decided it was time to go meet and greet the Finns to spread a little Fablab inspiration where the minds ready for it were gathered. Connections were made and it seems there might already be some initiatives coming up - but only time will tell when and where the first Finnish Fablab will pop up. Most notable was the design workshop organized by Enviu(NL) and SEOS(FI) where we thought of ways to make use of one of their new inventions - solar-powered unit that can produce ice - fun and useful.

Last week I visited Cloughjordan, Ireland (village wiki) where they are currently building the next generation "eco village" - in what is traditionally a self-sustaining farming community, they are now building energy-efficient modern housing and a business center which may very likely host one of the first Irish Fablabs. I was part of the green digital fabrication panel held during the Convergence festival, where I had the chance to share some thoughts and experiences of our work at ProtoSpace and the Dutch Fablabs.

Last but not least: together with Peter Troxler were invited to give a talk about Fablab documentation sharing issues at the Open Knowledge Conference (also in Berlin this year) - this is part of international efforts to collaborate on creating better project documentation tools so we could easier share designs between all Fablabs of the world. Our short paper also made it to the conference proceedings, which is another sign of this topic being quite hot right now and possibly important enough to justify further research and development in the area. 

The talk was part of a half day track on Open Source Hardware, including talks on projects such as OHANDA, MilkyMist, OSEcology and repairable open source machines. The conference was extremely interesting and will hopefully lead into some collaboration with other movers and shakers in the area soon. Other reports on the event: 
http://www.keimform.de/2011/report-from-open-knowledge-conference-2011/
http://www.nikolay-georgiev.net/blog/2011/07/open-hardware-at-open-knowledge-conference-2011/

Some more pictures here