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Two Years Old and Just Getting Started

I can hardly believe we’ve just had our second birthday.  It was October 1, 2014 after just seven months of “serious” planning that we opened the doors for the first time.  Since our grand opening celebration, things have happened and they have happened quickly with the speed accelerating each day as we move forward.  Tim Haynes and I have often used the analogy that we feel like we’re on this rocket, holding on for life, as it takes on a path will twists and turns.  There’s no way to summarize everything that’s happened in this column, but we thought it would be fun to take a look back at the first two years from a high level. 

  • 7,000 visits during this first two years. 

  • 9/30/14 3D printed  Cyborg Beast prosthetic hand for 13-year old Kara Marr  

  • 2/7/15 Hand Up weekend to fit Cyborg Beast hands for 3-year old Brinley Papish and 4-year old Preston Bundy from Overland Park and Manhattan. 

  • 2/10/15 Media coverage resulted in news story on TV in 25 states and Venezuela. 

  • 2/14/15 Received thank-you email from Dr. Jorge Zuniga, developer of the Cyborg Beast hand. 

  • 4/17/15 First meeting with Mark Werthman, Federal Economic Development Agency (EDA) about grant to expand Fab Lab ICC. 

  • 6/16/15 Ribbon cutting for the 10,000kw Westar solar array making us the world’s first solar powered Fab Lab 

  • 6/25/15 Tim Voegeli makes 3D printed prototypes of what would become known as “Bead Biters” for bicycle enthusiasts, becoming the first entrepreneur we helped to market 

  • 7/27/15 First Fab Lab Boot Camp for 8 – 14 year olds. 

  • 10/11/15 Tim and Jim present about Fab Lab ICC to National Association for Community College Entrepreneurship (NACCE) in Houston, Texas 

  • 11/11/15 First class visit by Greenbush Gifted program students. 

  • 3/22/2016 Tim and Jim present about Fab Lab ICC to USA Fab Lab Network Symposium in Bentonville, Arkansas. 

  • 6/7/2016 Hosted “Maker Girl” 3D design and printing session for 7 – 10 year old girls. 

  • 6/21/16 Mitsubishi Truck and Mini-Trade Show event. 

  • 8/19/16 Met with SAVE board of directors about incorporating maker space into their Veteran Farm project 

  • 9/12/16 Work with former Fab Lab Boot Campers to print Childhood Leukemia awareness stickers 

In addition, we’ve hosted countless classes, seminars and tours and we are always working with a handful of entrepreneurs toward launching their products or businesses.  We’ve discovered a surprising and amazing boost in self-efficacy to nearly everyone involved with the Fab Lab ICC experience; gifted, challenged, old, young, male female, everyone. 

Do we have challenges? To be sure.  To keep memberships affordable, staffing will always be a challenge.  We continue to take advantage of student work-studies, but when an individual student’s work-study hours are depleted, we have to find new ones.  Training to bring all of us up to speed on using our machines to make the creations come to life will likewise also always be a challenge.  Sustainable funding will always be on our mind.  We’ll keep working to meet the challenges. 

While we don’t yet know where else Fab Lab ICC will take us, the ride promises to be a wild one and we look forward to sharing it with our students and community members. 

Jim Correll is the director of Fab Lab ICC at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship on the campus of Independence Community College. He can be reached at (620) 252-5349 or by email at jcorrell@indycc.edu. Archive columns and podcasts at www.fablabicc.org. 


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