Hi all,

This is a summary of what I learned when I spoke to many of you about your Resource Guide, or Guru Projects.

• You are an amazing group of individuals! The things you are doing in your schools and organizations are fascinating and I totally see why you were chosen for the Fellowship.
• The template was good to get started, but it’s not perfect – or complete. Many of you are uncovering important things that don’t fit in the template, and that’s fine. It was just an on-ramp and we want your ideas and content to drive the tools, not the other way around.
• Even for those of you with very tool-oriented topics, the most important thing is why YOU use the tool and what YOU know about how to use it most effectively (or why it didn’t work for you). No one is looking for a sales catalog. As we all know, prices change, new tools and new versions appear all the time, and other people can google those. What’s important is what you know about how a “kind” of tool works in a fablab.
• Don’t worry too much about what the final format of these Resource Guides will look like. Right now, concentrate on what makes sense to you – what do you tell visitors who ask “what do you do with your xx?” “How do you do assessment?” etc. What would you say to the self you were when you started your FabLab?
• What you are creating will be useful, and what you have to share is very important. Many people will be interested in what you do and how you do it – so don’t worry about attempting to answer every possible question about your topic – share your expertise even if you think it’s narrow.
• Many of you are entertaining lots of visitors and inquiries about what you do. If you can capture any of that, please do, it will be useful. If you are doing webinars, tours, etc. – try to capture some of that on video. If it doesn’t fit in a resource guide, it will fit somewhere! Don’t feel you have to reinvent the wheel for your Fellows work. If you have existing material or resources, links to blogs, wikis or anything else, feel free to share that.

I would suggest that for your Resource Guide – designate one Google doc page that is an overview. If you are using the template that can be your overview. Your overview page can link to addtional pages, files in the shared google drive, or out to your personal blog or school website. The overview page can then be more easily found and reviewed when we do our peer reviews, and we can use the Google comment features.

These documents are work in progress – so feel free to ask questions in the document (does this make sense? should I write more about that?) that your peers might help you answer.

As always, I’m here for any clarification or to chat.

Sylvia