Django Girls Bern (Or how a local FabLab can help make your event more colorful)
This blog post was written by Sara Peeters. Thank you Sara! ❤️
When I first came to live in Switzerland a couple of years ago, one of the things that struck me is the amazing ability of the swiss people to turn any object, attraction or event into the first, best, largest, steepest or in fact any superlative except cheapest. They have the world’s steepest cogwheel railway, the largest natural underground lake in Europe. You can drink beer of the oldest beer brewery of Switzerland or - reducing the region even more - visit the largest music festival of german speaking Switzerland, or the highest music festival of central Switzerland for that matter. It seems to be as simple as choosing the right adjective and if necessary reducing the region until it fits, which leaves me wondering why we do not use this possibility more often in my home country. However I did quickly adopt Switzerland as my second home, and I wouldn’t want to miss it anymore. It is in this spirit that I can proudly tell you that we just organised the first Django Girls event in the german speaking part of Switzerland. And that thanks to Fablab Bern it certainly was also the one with the most unique decorations.
An opportunity for both sides
If you have never been in a FabLab before it might be hard to imagine what it has to offer and what you can offer in return. Of course, this also depends on which machines are present at your local FabLab. The FabLab in Bern has multiple 3d printers, a lasercutter, a Silhouette cutting machine, and a sandblaster, to name a few things which gave us plenty of possibilities to make some nice decorations. The normal cutting machine turned out to be the most versatile: We used it to make T-shirts as well as to cut paper and stickers. This is just to give you an idea, I will talk in more detail about the things we made later.
In order to be able to make lots of deco your FabLab should offer you the following services:
An introduction to the machines you want to use
(Unlimited) use of the fablab during your events preparation
Use of materials, either unlimited or a prearranged amount
Help when you get stuck
And you can offer some or all of the following in return:
They are mentioned as a sponsor, and get the same visibility as other sponsors (website, banner, posters, …)
They can give a lightning talk during the event, possibly combined with a small demo
They can send an email to the attendees after the workshop (you write the email in their name, same as with sponsors)
They can give a walk-in workshop during the event
In our case, the FabLab ran a walk-in workshop on making your own laptop stickers.
This turned out to be a blast! The workshop was held during our event in the afternoon. This way it also helped people struggling with afternoon coding fatigue, offering them the opportunity to do something different for a while. For most of the attendees, this was their first encounter with a FabLab, which made this opportunity also valuable for the fablab itself.
Warning: It can be very time-consuming
Before I go on giving a list of the things we made for our Django Girls event,
I must also give a small warning. Making things by yourself, especially in large quantities, can be very time-consuming. It is easy to say: “Wow, cool, let’s make one for each attendee!”, but if you then notice that making one item takes you an hour, that is going to be a full time work week, just for one thing. Of course, some things are more time consuming than others, but as total FabLab-noobs, it was quite hard for us to estimate the time needed from the beginning. Our advice: ask your FabLab manager for his opinion, or make one prototype first and see how long it takes. In any case: get some friends/coaches/coorganisers together, and be prepared to spend some time at the FabLab. If known in advance and carefully planned it will be totally worth it!
Another thing that is hard to estimate is the cost of the materials used. This is the reason why I would advise to negotiate the unlimited (Fair Use Policy of course) use of most, if not all, materials. The FabLab will buy those materials in bulk, so if you don’t exaggerate it, the costs for the FabLab will be manageable. If they want to limit the use of some more expensive materials, such as the colored T-shirt heat transfer foil for the silhouette cutter, this would be a good option as well. However, if they want to charge you for each used material separately, it is a good idea to discuss with your FabLab manager in advance about what you want to make, get a cost estimate and double check with your budget. As bought decorations are often really cheap, not having free use of materials could be a dealbreaker indeed.
Inspiration
Thanks to a large maker community it is very rare that you have to start anything you want to make from scratch. Places like thingiverse.com carry heaps of examples and 3d model files. To help you get started I will also give a short summary of the things we made:
Group symbol stickers and language stickers
Unicolored stickers are very easy to make with the silhouette cutter.
We made a different symbol per group as well as coaches stickers. As we were a multilingual environment, we also had some very simple language stickers (D for German and E for English).
Group symbol signs to hang above the tables
After cutting the Group symbol stickers we also enlarged the symbols and cut them out of colored cardboard to hang above the tables.
Name shields for on the tables
We cut beautiful four leaf clovers out of plexiglass using the laser cutter to write the names of the group members to put on each table. Cutting the clovers went relatively quick, writing the names was the larger effort.
Food Labels
This one was also a quick win. Made with the laser cutter and especially appreciated by our vegan attendees and coaches.
Tea Animals and little robots
We took them from http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1703197 and http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1134277 and 3d printed them in different colors. They came out really cute. The thing with 3d printing is that it takes long, but it doesn’t need your presence while busy. So those are the things you start on your way back from work and pick up the finished result the next morning.
Organiser T-shirts
Using a pretty cool material for the Silhouette cutter: Silhouette T-shirt heat transfer foil, we made ourself some awesome organiser T-shirts.
Conclusion
We had an amazing workshop and I really enjoyed organising it. The part of the preparations I enjoyed the most definitely was making the decorations at our FabLab. I want to thank my coorganisers Nora and Fred, and our Fablab manager Kurt, they all did an amazing job. Let’s get ready for the next superlative workshop!