Hi, I’m Raphael from Fab lab du PEC in montreal, (french fab lab)… here’s our instagram Ted told me this was “the fab lab network”… there’s like… 9 of u here?
so first, when I type www.fablabs.io … I don’t think I should be seeing this…
an alphabetically ordered fab lab list is pretty boring… it could at least be the newest labs …
or even better, “ONLINE” labs … with the possibility to chat/video conference with them. just like facebook if all your friends were labs and you could chat/vido/call them or just live stream their labs… <3 could replace the MCU (cuz we all know fablab wgt are the only one always connected)
Second point
I think a “Techniques” section could be an interesting way to teach other interesting techniques we’ve discovered with our machines. Project documentation is nice… but I don’t want to make your project that much… I want to know how to make my own.
ex:
-The workflow we use for filling images instead of tracing the vectors with the vinyl cutter with the “eggbot inkscape plugin”
-How u can use the vinyl cutter to create masks for screen printing.
-How to drive the roland mdx-40 and camm1 gx-24 (and probably every stupid roland “printers”) live using processing.
-how to deform meshes using open data sets to create objects that tells a story
-or even the workflow used to create pcbs using the fabmodules
I didn’t know about that vinyl mask trick before Brad Presler from the South End Technology Center in Boston (which is in my top cute/warm labs) came for a visit. I learnt something from the network, and it felt good.
Third:
Re-crediting fablabs every years is a must to be honest, most canadian fablabs are empty shells… the list is crippled with ghost labs, closed to the public labs, no machines labs, metaphysical labs…
Fourth
A useful/interesting link section? boxmaker, thingiverse, yeggi, open data sources, hackteria.
maybe even an image board where people can post new stuff they found online… but only if we agree not to post every single new useless/fake startup products we find on kickstarter…we should all be super critical about making stuff… …
I think improvement on the site should be more focused on building a community and knowledge sharing than knowing who has which badges. I have to admit I really enjoyed recieving a badge for uploading a profile picture and editing a post. 
I’m not too sure about a badge for attending fab9-10-11 and fab academy… If I don’t have a badge, am I still part of the gang? 
that’s my input.
xx