by Al-ine 😄
Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aline-b-ingenieure/
I recently accepted a position as coordinator of a lab which is in launching. This lab is in a building mostly dedicated to software and commercial activities and is already equipped with high end equipments 🤖
I am aware that labs and prototyping facilities tend to struggle in software environments 👨🏻💻
Seing this high end equipment made me question the inclusivity of the lab.
The deadly combination of fabrication and softwareecosystem happened at Station F, supposedly the worlds largest startup campus based in Paris. Techshop opened a lab at Station F, the business model was similar to a fitness facility as users had to pay a monthly fee to use the machines. After a couple of year, the bankrupcy of Techshop USA and a pivot from BtoB to BtoC it had to close its doors. Usine IO located nearby providing mentoring in prototyping had to pivot also by renuncing to its huge workshop before selling to another prototyping consultancy, Sparkmate.
An article about the closing of Techshop can be found at this link: https://www.makery.info/2017/12/19/alors-techshop-fermera-fermera-pas/
An article about Usine IO and its hardware acceleration program: https://medium.com/usine-io/usine-io-launches-focus-at-station-f-e784c64d6116
Both explained their lack of longevity to being connected with the wrong ecosystem. They were maybe also ahead of time, deep tech wasn’t the government focus yet.
As for housing lab location is key for labs.
We will therefor try to compensate our imposed location with an investigation of our close surroundings in order to map hardware oriented actors.