JEDDAH — Fab Lab (Fabrication Laboratory) – a digital fabrication workshop in Jeddah – along with Arab-German Young Academy (AGYA) recently held workshops to explore new ways of technology and creativity in Jeddah. Fab Lab allows everyone in the community from kids, students, entrepreneurs and businesses to turn their creative ideas into tangible products. The Fab Lab concept grew in 2001 as an outreach project by Professor Neil Gershenfield, Director of the Centre for Bits and Atoms (CBA) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). There are more than 700 Fab Labs around the world within 40 different nations and Fab Lab Arabia is the first lab in the kingdom and MENA region. Mohammad Tayeb, General Manager of FabLab Arabia, said "Fab lab allows everybody from kids to adults to entrepreneurs and students to turn their ideas into prototype or products, one of the programs we do is collaboration of different entities that shows the same vision." He added "we are honored to host Arab-German Young Academy, which is platform for design, innovation, technology, and is collaboration between German and Arabs. The workshop was a success and this is only the beginning for building strong collaboration and ties with AGYA that will bring the light to many fruitful ventures in the region." Twenty professionals came from Germany with different background to understand technology and innovation of Arab world. "Although participants have different fields of backgrounds, we all shared the same vision and goal which is fostering technology and innovation in the Arab world," he further said. Their three days visit consists of two workshops. "We aim to formulate a technology where we will design to work together and collaborate in certain programs and workshops that will have a very strong impact within the kingdom. Our main mission is to promote designs as an informal education and technology for every one within the community." He further said "the idea is to empower individuals by giving them an indirect education about the digital fabrication medium for them to use in turning their ideas into projects," added Mohammad.
