1. Introduction to Neil
Neil's introduction presentation
We had our regional meeting. The point of regional reviews are to present your documentation from the prior week. Our regional cohort includes labs from Kazakstan, Germany, and Armenia. Something I’ve heard again and again over the first few days is “Don’t fall three weeks behind!” Mind you, I have no plans to fall even one week behind, as the idea of making up documentation sounds dreadful. Our graduation ceremony in Brno this year is earlier than in other years by about a month, so, if I’d like to graduate there, I must stay on track with the schedule. There has been a strong emphasis on documentation since the beginning of the course. Documentation, as was explained by Neil, should help people make your project again. Another contributor to the lecture mentioned that if we are going to use AI, that we should document the prompts that were used. I thought that was a valuable mention.
It was recommended that we work through a git tutorial, but I didn’t feel totally comfortable with the link that I found in the coursework notes. I plan to give this 1 hour long YouTube tutorial a try. There has been a few mentions of the acronym GUI. I decided to look it up so that the term is more comfortable. GUI = Graphical User Interface (think apple’s computer)
Global lesson with Neil (#1)
Neil started the presentation with an outline of where computers, as we know them, have come from: a unix operating system —which was developed in the 1970s by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and many others at AT&T Laboratories. I found it interesting that the first computers were designed to help build complicated jet parts, that were too difficult to make by hand. those computers were programed to do CNC milling. This fabrication is the FAB in FabLab. The opening of the presentation greatly improved my understanding of specifically one thing, that his course, and fabrication as a whole is the bridge between the physical and the digital.
I found Neil’s mention of his colleague, Seymour Papert, particularly intriguing. It seems that Papert’s life’s studies were devoted to using computers to engage the minds of children. I’ve added this to my notes and will hopefully come back to it.
Another project that I found intriguing was that of a previous student who has made a business from FabLab-style kits, to increase the take-home-ability of the Fablab movement. I use ‘movement’ because it was something that Neil continuously mentioned throughout his presentation. Namely, that he believes that digital fabrication will become increasingly ubiquitous over time; ie. Lass’s law. Neil is clearly very forward thinking. I liked his analogy regarding ribosomes, as molecular machines, and that there could one day be machines that build themselves in the same way that our ribosomes do. Each of us is made of 20 parts (amino acids), and from that we’re assembled. He mentioned that the last research of John von Neumann and Alan Turing was both regarding self-sustainability. To take that a step further and consider the practical examples of self-sustaining design is NASA’s ISRU framework. In-Situ Resource Utilization is the harnessing of local natural resources at mission destinations, instead of taking all needed supplies from Earth, to enhance the capabilities of human exploration. As I said before, Neil is clearly very forward thinking!
Project management theories
Note to self: Use the search bar at the bottom of fabacademy content page to search for certain terms; ie “drone”
Along with the many tools that Neil mentioned in the lecture that were technological, towards the end of the lesson he mentioned a few theories regarding project management. There has been a continuous theme throughout the opening days of the course that there will not be enough time in the week to complete our tasks to perfection. Finishing projects and managing my time are two skills that I’d benefit from working on!
Supply side management - A new concept for me was the idea of supply side management. It’s the practice of, rather than planning a project / week around tasks, planning the tasks based on how much time you have; ie. I have 5 x 1 hour slots in the week, what will I use those for?
Triage - Essentially, what stuff to give up and what to prioritize. Neil used the example of a plane crash (grim), and sorting the injured by those who are stable, those who seriously need help, and those who won’t make it. This, I imagine, is a discipline that requires practice. Or, perhaps not practice, necessarily, but attention — to remember to remember it while working on a project.
Parallel development is the simultaneous development of more than one version of an object
Spiral management is the practice of working in smaller, complete phases on a project and adding more each round. Start at a workable bare minimums and add features with each new round. That way, if you come to the end of the week, and your current spiral hasn’t resulted in a successful prototype, then you can always revert back to the previous spiral.
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