First Exploratory Geographical and Social Maps of the Maker Movement

Massimo Menichinelli; Alessandra Gerson Saltiel Schmidt

doi:10.6092/issn.2612-0496/9640

Authors

Massimo Menichinelli RMIT University http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9391-6653
Massimo Menichinelli, research fellow at RMIT University and doctoral candidate at Aalto Media Lab (Aalto University), has investigated, lectured, published and worked on the connections between Design and Open Source, Peer-to-Peer, Fab Labs and the Maker movement since 2005.
Alessandra Gerson Saltiel Schmidt IAAC | Fab Lab Barcelona, Spain; AGS invest http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6618-5197
Alessandra Schmidt, head of AGS Invest, a consultancy firm focused on social and environmental development initiatives, supporting communities’ pathways for social innovation. Graduated in Business, with a master in Social Development Practice at UCL. She is a former Chevening scholar at the Foreign and Commonwealth in the United Kingdom.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2612-0496/9640

Keywords:

Maker Movement, geographical distribution, social network analysis, mapping, community,

Abstract

The Maker Movement emerged in the last decades through a mix of both bottom-up and top-down initiatives, promotions, communities and companies, informal experimentations and rigorous research projects. The result is a global system of design and making actors localized in community places of Maker Laboratories such as Fab Labs, Makerspaces, Hackerspaces, DIYBio Labs, Repair Cafes and so on. This contribution explores the first maps of the Maker Movement in terms of geographical distribution and of architecture of social networks of its Maker Laboratories and proposes a specific data analysis for each of these two directions. This article draws an overview of the social, local and global nature of the Maker Movement and of its laboratories, with the overall aim to provide spaces for democracy, participation and citizenship.

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First Exploratory Geographical and Social Maps of the Maker Movement

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