*RC3 preroll music*
Herald: Hello, and welcome back on the x-Hain stage at this very strange RC3. Now
on the second day and our next talk is by aprica and Saad, we're going to talk about
how to add critical making to your critical thinking to your making. And
there was a talk two years ago at 35 c3 when we're still able to meet in person,
which was also already talking about the subject. And this now kind of as a follow
up. And they're going to talk about what we can learn from critical makers and
other grassroot initiatives. Yes, the stage is yours.
aprica: Thank you, Carl. Thank you so much for hosting us here under the tree and
X-Hain. Well, maybe not so great to be here and great to have you all watching in
the stream, and I hope next year we will meet on the trees again and also not on
the trees and the at the rocket. So I'm aprica . I'm part of the global innovation
gathering a big worldwide community that I often describe as global erpha, which most
of the CCC- folks would know as a Erfahrungsaustauschkreis. So knowledge
sharing and circle. And so we are also a knowledge sharing circle, and I'm joined
by Saad, who was one of the amazing members of the association and of the
network of gig from Singapore. And do you want to quickly introduce yourself as
well? Saad: Sure thing. I'm based in Singapore
normally, and last year we had a little talk about with Regina and on critical
thinking and critical making, which was actually quite phenomenal. The response
was really great. And who had a chance to work on this, together with the other gig
members, members of the Global Innovation Group, which is also part. So I'm very
happy to be with you a little bit of my background. I'm a tech person. I run a
small startup in Singapore and I also help with maker spaces and tech for good. And
I'm a huge coffee snob that that's me. aprica: Other people would call it coffee
coffee geek. *both laughing* Saab:That works too.
aprica: Nice. So I think some people now in the stream also see our slides and we
are on the first slide. And on the second slide, you would see a picture of an
actual stage and an actual Congress where Regina and Saad last year defined
critical, making the topic rules two years ago. It's basically yesterday like pre-
pandemic, but it's also 100 years ago, right? So last time*laughs* you spoke
about the topic, you define it as adding critical thinking to the making. And so we
arrive at critical making. And I guess there's like 200 other definitions of
this. Which one did you share, Saad? Saad: Making with a purpose, I think, is
the one that puts the best. The idea that the skills and experience and knowledge
that have being applied towards something that is constructive and meaningful, and
that means very different things to very different people. So depending on the
context that you're in, the definition changes quite dramatically by sort of
digging down into it, making with a purpose, understanding what that purpose
is, rather than just using your 3D printer for printing you over their heads all the
time, you think about how this could actually help people with customization,
personalization, things like that. So that's the that's the sort of thing that
definition, but I prefer to making with the purpase.
aprica: Well, yeah, that's certainly one of them. Yeah, very easy to understand
once. Also, it's also very academic concept. And so everybody who's interested
in this whole concept and all and all the different areas of critical making, we
highly recommend. I highly recommend because speaking of this, I really
recommend to watch the talk by Regina and Saad. It's like one hour long, and it will
give them very comprehensive and also academic viewpoint of the topic. And today
I think we will focus more on, what happened since then and what's beyond just
the not just beyond the concept. So to go to the third slide, you see, this is one
of the pictures also shared in the talk back then of the global innovation
gathering, when we also were still gathering physically with the Big Blue
Mobile Lab. And I would love to go like for two minutes into what's happened since
we gathered the last time. So what happened during the pandemic in terms of
how? How did critical making evolve in public perception during the time of the
pandemic? Saad, what would you say? Saad: Well, I think we've seen a
phenomenal response, a global response from makers to meet the needs of what the
pandemic has surfaced. I mean, I think there's a phenomenal potential here in the
nature of this response. But if we remember about a year or so ago and I
know, time is broken because of COVID, but about a year or so ago, there was this
shortage of personal protective equipment, PPE and people came forward in order to
try and help. And it wasn't just health care workers, it wasn't just social
workers. It was anybody and everybody who had skills or knowledge or experience,
tried to find a way to make themselves useful. And this happening on a global
scale in response to something like the personal shortage of PPE. Drew out a lot
of critical neighbors, as in makers who were quite comfortable with how 3D
printers work or how maker spaces work, and trying to apply that to a social need,
which I think is remarkable in itself. But on a global scale, I think that that that
potential is phenomenal, that all of us have had to find ways to adapt digitally
and go online and do things remotely. And I really miss having a CCC in person, for
example, and the global innovation gathering hasn't happened in person. So I
really do miss that and I'm looking forward to a time where we're able to meet
in person again, trying to stay optimistic, but with we're still not out
of it yet. The pandemic is still very much something we're adapting to, something
that we're responding to. And to answer your question, what's changed, I feel, is
that people are now more involved. People who are normally sort of in their own
maker spaces bubble or in the tech bubble or in the hacker space bubble are now more
involved and more engaged and recognized for the skills to be relevant to a social
cause. So I think moving forward, I would like to see us try and tap on that
potential as much as possible. aprica: Yeah, definitely, and I mean, the
space we're in at the moment, the Ixion can make space was like at the forefront
together with, of course, many other spaces in Germany to produce such
protective equipment. And if you see around around us now, you also see like
lots of figurines of, I don't know, Yoda hats, for example, and many other things
that bring joy to making as well. And that, for example, help to educate about,
which tools to use, for example. And then, yeah, looking in what you're doing in
Singapore, was creating toys for children with disabilities, which you also sharing
in the talk two years ago, where they can interact with like big buttons instead of
like tiny, tiny things that they can't really touch and interact with. That's
also bringing lots of joy. And it's not only always to counter a pandemic, but it
was there before. And now I think it's very, yeah, more in mainstream. Well, it
was for a time more arriving in mainstream that this is really, yeah, a movement or
movements to follow and to contribute to as well. So what we often do and this is
the next slide is we create a Horizon 2020 proposal for things we want to do. And so
this is my work actually to bring in funding that lasts us for two and a half
years, for example, in this case, to really further research, to collaborate
with researchers as a civil society organization ourselves and to be able to
work together globally on a specific project and on a specific topic. So in the
craziness of the beginning of the pandemic, we found that critical making is
the one topic that is not very researched and that we can contribute to as a network
and also connecting with Regina as part of the two billion and other organizations
that you see here with Vicki Factory. That's a global platform for makers to
share designs, for example, and to find a community of other designers and makers
and the Center for Social Innovation in Austria and also Vitt in Finland. So we've
produced this project together that got finally accepted by the European Union,
which was really nice. And so we are now thankful for getting support for the
research we're doing now in critical making. So this was after after Congress
that we wrote this. And the main goal and you see this on the next slide, is to help
make a communities to work with anyone to contribute to open source innovation. And
so from this very complex like research frameworks that Horizon 2020 is using,
like the responsible research and innovation framework and others, we found
that it connects very well with values that also we want to further contribute
to, like openness, like inclusion. And so we selected a few of those. We selected
gender diversity, we selected young talents. We call it because in such
proposals, you often have to use language that speaks to the funder. And we also
selected openness as a very broad term, also to research on. And today I would
like to show you a little bit of what's already happened, because we're now at the
end of the first year of the project and show you about what we're up to as well.
So to just give you a very tiny glimpse into, what we did in the gender work
package, we work with different spaces, different makers in several countries. And
in this case, I brought two examples of case studies that will be published soon
about different spaces. The. One is Miss Baltazar Laboratory and Austria, which I
highly recommend to check out. And then there were like many different more and
also X-Hain. And of course, I need to show that here as we are in X-Hain at the
moment. *laughs* And this is super nice because of course, if you like think about
gender, many people would assume it's only about like inclusion of women of girls in
maker spaces. But of course it's not. It's like to have an understanding of the
multitude of genders and also like them to to include everyone. Also have a nice
space for people identifying as male, female and many other genders. And in this
case, it's just so nice also about X-Hain, that they are not saying like we have
space for women or we have space for only for a specific kind of nerd. But we want
to be very, very inclusive and very safe for everyone. So that's just a very tiny
examples you will find online more in our deliverables. We call it that. Yeah. The
reports that we have to hand in to the European Union. And then after handing
them in, we take snippets out of these and published them and a more like human
interaction formats, that people outside of academia can also read better and watch
better. Than the next one I see in slide nine is Yang Taelons, which basically make
about maker education for young people. And there you already find online, and
that's the next slide. The review of measures to integrate young people into
make a community. And then we looked mostly only at Germany at the moment and
want to be creating this for other countries as well. So if you're interested
in this part of the project, you can already download like the full report, the
first one. But you can also reach out to us and contribute to the next steps. And
then the part in the next slide openness, which is the one that I want to be talking
a little bit more about, because that's the one, where we're mostly working
together here. So for openness, you see in the next slide, that was some academic
article now published, which is a literature review on the openness
practices and which is like, very directed for researchers, of course. But we're also
starting to make, yeah, like talks like this about what was found out by our
colleagues, who were doing the literature review. So in the next slide, you see a
little bit more accessible. What they found is that openness, as probably all of
you also know, it's one of the core values of global makeup movements. But as you
probably also all know, there are lots and lots of different interpretations and ways
of practicing this. So we can speak about open hardware, which is probably one of
the most obvious for many of the people just watching this, because it's also
something we speak at Chaos Congress all the time. So like sharing what you're
making and like open repositories, for example, creating very easy tech like
frugal tech, customizing things. So that's all integral part of open hardware. I
would say from then found other aspects that are strong in the literature as well,
like openness can also be understood as inclusion and empowerment of, for example,
of people with disabilities, but also generally consumers or ethnic minorities.
So all different kinds of inclusions that one could think of. It's probably like one
of the things, I think also a slick hacker. Ethics is concerned, but. That is
maybe not always in our minds and then also very important economic growth,
especially if we look at the global scale of the maker movement. So that we have
open business models, for example, and high innovation activities and. And the
field. And so this already shows also lots of tension, so I would like to go to the
next slide, where you see the tensions identified in the scientific literature.
So there's lots of tension between different economic stances like people who
want to have their make up practice, mostly for leisure purposes, mostly for
also capitalistic or anti capitalistic purposes. So this is quite an important
tension to identify and also to to work around. Then tensions arising from
different imagined areas of the future role of making like, do you use it in a
revolutionary sense or in the sense that contributes to the current status of the
capitalist system, for example? And then also, of course, always that's maybe the
least important finding between individual and collective orientations, where you
often have, like, What do I do? And what is good for society is. Something that's
always important to to go forward with us as a discussion. Yeah. So these are the
scientific findings from this article. Not not all of them, of course. Please read
the article also has more in it. And do you want to add something, Saad? You will
bring more examples of these different tensions, I guess.
Saad: Yeah, I mean, I have my perspective is always the sort of hands on learning by
example kind of approach. For the more academic perspective, I turn to Regina and
people who are with the academic community. So I won't I can't really speak
to that perspective. But, to add to what you've already said, I think the the
nature of the work, at least from my perspective, being all hands on does meet
a lot of resistance with these restrictions, you the whole pandemic
situation. So I'm hoping that we are going to see more examples of people coming
forward with a more constructive mindset and the ability to share. Because we've
seen examples of this in response to the pandemic, and some of that is now starting
to show up in people's mindset. And when people who are normally not so engaged
with engineering, good, where I volunteer, is depends entirely on volunteers. And
sometimes people show up like once a week, once one weekend a month to volunteer, and
then they go back into their day to day lives and we see them every now and again,
when they have the time. But in the last few in the recent past, we've seen a
different kind of volunteer, a different kind of mindset that they bring to their
work. And it seems a little bit more motivated, I feel. And so the work, that
we've been doing in the past, this idea of being open and to share and to be able to
look into other people's work and try and replicate it, that aspect is starting to
get to be more welcomed by these volunteers. It's not seen as an alien
idea. It's not like you have to sort of like workshop it and get people
comfortable with this idea. And in Asian cultures, that more of that is necessary,
I feel. But the remarkable difference, I think. I don't know if this is just me,
but from what I've seen, the mindset has shifted and people are more open to trying
new things and also sharing what they've tried, rather than waiting until they get
to a point, that something works and then they share it. So the process of that
they're going through is something that you don't, at least with Asian
sensibilities, you tend not to share it. You would think that it's not good enough
or it's not fully formed yet. So you tend to keep it to yourself or just a few
people that you're working with and it never gets documented. It never gets
shared. But I'm starting to see more examples of that.
aprica: Yeah, I think that's not only Asian. Asian problem *laughs*, but we have
it like everywhere that you have so many projects or left foot products that people
create, that are like prototypes to a certain stage and then you either don't
have time for it anymore or you just feel like you can't finish it and it never gets
documented. So that's also one of the issues. We found another identified when
we met in 2019 in Kenya and the crew. This the global innovation gathering in the
like Work Workshop kind of conference, and we came up with what is shared on the next
slide. The principles of sustainable making and sustainable is not only
environmentally, but also, what you would call maybe responsible or with purpose. So
do you want to share a little bit more about that?
Saad: With the process behind? This was mind boggling to me. The sort of energy
that was in the room at the time, when we were discussing this was sort of, for me,
at least very hard to keep up with. And the challenge was to try and encapsulate
what that sort of very diverse perspectives that were coming in all at
the same time, because with the global innovation gathering and many other groups
of that sort. There's a lot of diversity and the nature of the people who are
working on maker spaces and co-working spaces are sort of enterprise type of
ecosystems or hackerspaces. They're very socially engaged and it tends to be in
response to the local environment in which they exist. So the learnings and the sort
of mindset that they have and they bring to this, this particular topic, that we're
talking about unlocked a whole world of opinions and perspectives. And all of that
was flooding in and to this room after having gone through the sort of ice
breaking thing, it was all just pouring in and it was very difficult to sort of sort
out what was happening. So the process was a mess. And if you look at the image now,
it's very neat and clean and tidy. But I feel every single aspect of what's being
portrayed here is a representation of this diversity in an international on a global
scale, and all of this was just before the pandemic and the idea of this of this
global perspective, bringing it through times of crisis, I think is phenomenal. I
mean, I could go on and on and Typekit, but that's just what I think at the point.
aprica: Thank you, and yeah, I also feel it's phenomenal, and we try to replicate
this kind of. Yeah. Sessions and workshops online and to have big whiteboards
together. But yeah, I'm very happy that we also got to build this still in person.
And so we came up with these five principles of integrate local knowledge of
make things that make sense, of share how you make like that's one of the openness
factors, of course, build for continuity and also include ecosystem services. So
look around you and look what's already there and also contribute back to what's
around you. And based on these and what we already talked about in particular making.
We built this project. And while I was away for three months and didn't look at
any email and recharged this year, the project team also updated this for our
project, so that we now look at being local and connected. Have like a social
background and what you're doing at the criticality. So be reflexive, have an
impact and change structures and adding to it the joyful and meaningful. But we
didn't found and our principles PAC Man, which is we of course, always think that's
part of it, hopefully.*laughes* So adding some glitter is always necessary. So this
from that slide is, what we're now working with and the critical making principles,
basically, and we are also building upon it in the next steps of the project. So I
would like to share, what we're now working on in the next few months, which
is on the next slide. The Critical Making Mentoring program, which is to be starting
to have an open call in January or early February. And then we'll go through four
will go on for the whole year. So on the next slide, you see, why are we doing
this? We did like a small survey within our own circles and again found, that
openness also for everybody in the global innovation gathering community is very
important value, which we knew, but it's nice to see it again. And then also the
economic opportunities of making all very important. So we're thinking about lower
income countries sometimes. But also if you look at high income countries, there's
so many volunteer projects like projects are doing in your free time that in the
end you would like to find somehow a way to further work on them. And what is
possible without any like economic background to add to it? And then also
inclusion was recognized as an important topic like including, for example, people
with lower technical skills and also, for example, having making more accessible for
people with disabilities. So we're looking at that. And on the next slide, you see,
I'm trying to live up to the value of sharing early, like one of those online
mind boards of like forts of seeing, what we want to be doing in the year in this
project. where we're having mentoring workshops throughout the summer and we
will hopefully in the end have an amazing demo week or demo day, where we also give
a reward for people who participate in it. And we're still in this last phase of co-
designing that program to prepare the open call. So I'm inviting you for watching now
already to watch our space, to maybe apply for the program or share it also with
others who could be interested in it. And last but not least, I would like to share
a few tools and. Resources, whereas currently assembling. So one of the things
we're preparing for the next two months, I think, is toolkits for researchers and
filmmakers. And you see on the next slide one example of a tool for makers, to learn
about open hardware, and I hope you all know this already. But if not, check out
this open hardware makers program. It's an amazing resource to learn like the basics
of open hardware. We collected, you see on the next slide, lots and lots of different
resources for people to look at. And this is just the first page of a long list,
that we want to publish in the next weeks for people to look at and to add to. And
then the last bit I want to be sharing is the self-reflection as a slider tool. And
this is what you find on the slider tool page, where we also look at the different
categories of the principles and where we use this tool once we start with the
mentoring program for people to just reflect back on their own making on their
own projects and where we have the idea that this would be like a like a game and
Saad, you created that idea together with a few other people also in Singapore to
just have like a needle to spin. And then you don't always answer it and the same
like one after the other question, but you can really make it also a little bit more
fun. So on the next page, you see how this was created, also from masi slides back
back, when we were meeting in person. So how it evolved and on the next slide, you
see some guiding cards, that should help you to actually think about what to ask
yourself like. How do you think about what makes sense or how do you think about
being self-sustainable and to to share a few questions around this? So you have
like a card game that you can have and you maker space and you can make a workshop
around it and work with other people in the maker space to speak about that. So,
and then on the last page, you see how to follow the project and how to contribute
to it also in the wiki factory community and where we will also be launching the
calls on these platforms very soon in the next year, which is basically tomorrow.
*both are laughing* And if you're watching this in January, it's maybe already there
in February. So now I would say call can come back.
Herald: Yes. Thank you very much for the talk. And before now, we have a few more
minutes for a quick Q&A session. And before we start that, I want to remind the
viewers and listeners that you can ask questions for this talk using Twitter and
Mastodon using the hashtag ac3xhain. That's rc3xhain. And you can also ask
questions on IRC on Hekint and using the Channel RC3-XHain. And we already got a
few questions in, and many of them are asking, where they can find more
information. So you already showed the link just now is everything you talked
about can be found on there, I think? aprica: Not everything is published yet.
Many of the things I just showed are also still a work in progress. And if somebody
is like, eager to have it immediately, we can of course share like our internal
boards with people, but otherwise we always like continuously publish things on
the website to to find. Yeah. Herald: OK. So the people just have to
follow you on Twitter and look at your website and reach out directly to you. And
then the next question I got here was What is frugal tech, exactly?
aprica: Saad, do you want to answer that? *both are laughing*
Saad: It's an interesting question. I mean, if depending on who you ask, it'll
probably get co-opted as a new buzzword or a hashtag, especially if you talk to the
voice of venture capital and sort of world. But the way I see it is sort of
like borrowing from the disruptive mindset where you look at what is available in the
marketplace and find a lower cost alternative for it. And when you look at
the assistive tech marketplace, when you work with persons with disabilities and
you look at the devices that are available, they suffer from high prices
because of supply and demand. And you have a fairly small, relatively small market
and the cost of production of a specialized device is quite high. So the
products that you find in the assistive tech marketplace tend to be very
expensive. And when you look at it, it could be as simple as just like a button,
which you just press the button and something happens and the button itself
costs like sixty five dollars. And it doesn't quite make sense to me that this
is a good thing, but that is what you will find in the marketplace. So to answer the
question. I think frugal tech or frugal innovation is to sort of think outside the
box of the normal, or at least the established workflow of making a product
that is this expensive to take the end price or the user perspective as the
starting point and then figure out the value chain from behind it are the cost of
production from from that point on with an inner makerspace that happens all the
time. You are working with things that you're not entirely sure of. So instead of
starting with something really, really expensive, you start with something that
is cheap and cheerful, something that you can have lots of. If you break one, that's
OK, you can always try it on another one. And then when you're confident with that,
you translate what you've learned into something that's a little bit expensive.
So that I think Approach speaks to, I think, what people are calling now frugal
tech or frugal innovation. aprica: Oh, my very short answer would
have been that just low cost, because that's the easiest I would be able to come
up with, but that's way more colorful now. I hope for everybody. *laugh*
Herald: Yes, and thank you for the great explanation. The next question we have is
how does this movement or how do you include people who are not that interested
in politics or the political side of making and just want to build cool stuff?
*both laughing* aprica: How do you do that in Singapore?
Well, it's very easy because, you know, the political scene in Singapore is quite,
how shall we put this? Not very exciting. And I don't really care much for politics
either. Whether it be like, you know, at the government level, our internal
politics within large companies, I just I just don't have the mental capacity for
wrap my head around that. So I really like to just do things. And I find that with a
physical thing, it's easier to talk about something. It sort of crystallizes what
your your ideas are, even if the thing is made out of Post-it notes or cardboard or,
you know, cable ties and duct tape. It just having that little physical, tangible
prototype helps focus the attention on the thing that you're trying to solve. So the
conversation I find becomes solution oriented rather than ideological process
or about manufacturing principles or design ideologies or even good ones. So I
find that it's not I mean, it didn't work all the time, but having something
tangible really helps to sort of bring that point back to the solution that
you're talking about. aprica: Yeah, yeah. And adding to that,
there's always like so many different levels of politics. So maybe you're not
interested in global or national or whatever politics, but you're still
interested to help your own community around you. So if you look at, I don't
know, sensors for airquality or if you look at providing free public Wi-Fi for
people or all these things are very political in one way and very much not
very political in another way, like depending on how you want to look at them.
So. So I think there will be like areas to contribute for anyone, like whether it's
for their own grandma or whether it's for like a whole school class. In the end,
that's not so important. Herald: OK. Very interesting. So I think
now our time for Q&A is almost over. So I want to thank both of you again for having
this really interesting talk here at our X-Hain stage. And I want to thank all of
you us for watching. And our next talk will happen in a bit more than an hour at
16:00. It's the car's audio. It's 407 reverse engineering kochen, nähen break
points, and I hope we'll see you all there.
aprica: And maybe I'm sorry, Tony commercial if you're still there. Go to
the open hardware. Happy hour and also go to on the last day to the prototype and
hardware announcements. So don't miss that.
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