At the end of July, two members of the Semillero team, Lucy, our Design Engineer, and Jimena, our Outreach Coordinator, got the opportunity to attend the 2026 FabLab conference at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as tour the fab lab at NYU. Fab labs are digital fabrication laboratories designed to support learning, creation, and invention. The conference brought together fab lab community members from around the world, including makers, engineers, artists, academics, industry experts and educators.
Our team attended with the goal of developing our own mobile fab lab that we can bring to rural agricultural communities all around Washington state and beyond. With this mobile technology hub, or as Lucy calls it, the TechMobile, we hope to reach more farmworker innovators and provide them with the tools and resources they need to develop innovation that makes their work safer, easier, more ergonomic, and more productive.
At MIT, our team members participated in workshops, learned about different machines and tools, listened to keynotes, and networked with experts from around the world. The topics ranged from how to design a learning environment conducive to cocreation, to how to create a culture of safety, to theories about learning-by-making, also known as the constructionist learning philosophy developed by Seymour Papert. They were introduced to new tools like mesh networks that can communicate environmental data in areas without internet connection, desktop plastic recycling machines, and combination computer numerical control (CNC) cutter / welding machines.
At NYU, our team learned about how to run effective workshops and how to balance training participants on tools and machines with having workshops with low barriers to entry. The NYU makerspace manager, Molly, also provided us with many helpful resources to run workshops related to cardboard prototyping, sewing, and embroidery.
Our program staff learned both technical and social tools for creating a functioning maker community that is accessible to our participants. We emerged from this conference with new connections and potential partnerships with fab labs, communication platforms, and tool manufacturers. The Semillero team is looking forward to engaging our community of farmworker innovators to build on these lessons and towards our mission of transforming the future of agricultural innovation!