JASON EXPLORING BeNeLux MAKERSPACES

Jason, exploring BeNeLux

A new explorer start his journey in 2024, supported by VULCA

Jason,
Belgium maker located in Brussels, wants to explore makerspaces, fablabs and hackerspaces all over the BeNeLux. Let’s learn more about him and his coming tour

We met Jason during a maker event organised by RFFLabs in Paris. It was in OctoberMake 2023. The month after, Jason took his ticket to join Vulca Seminar in Ljubljana (Slovenia).

Quickly, Jason started to open the discussion with us to see how he could contribute to Vulca in his part of Europe.

Jason want to better understand the maker movement in BeNeLux, so naturally, we proposed him to join our team of makerspaces explorers

In 2024, Jason will be exploring every months new makerspaces, Fablabs and Hackerspaces starting with BeNeLux over weekends.

Located in Brussels, Jason will mostly travel using public transports such as train, bus.

Jason, tell us more about you

I come from a family whose mantra is :

“You own what you have
in your hands and in your head;
the rest, people can take it away from you.”

I very much embrace this belief that know-how and knowledge are our only possessions in life, proof is, these are the only things we actually take to the grave.

Since I am 12, I have been dreaming of an open workspace on the district main square where everyone can bring their stuff and repair it together with the others.

I believe in a world where everyone has access to everything and when I discovered fablabs, I figured that the open workspace + digital fabrication is the future I was dreaming of so I’m fully in.

I believe in a world where human & relationships come first, so I’m now visiting fablabs across the BeNeLux to weave relationships and build this network and this community at the heart of Europe.

Also I’m meeting maker/fablab communities as much as I can from across the world from Japan, India, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Europe, …

I am a Belgian engineer curious about everything, hyperactive and dreaming of a world where everyone is free to be curious, to be creative and to exercise their critical mind.
I value intellectuals who make and makers who think, so you can find me or get me hooked talking about philosophy or hammering & welding things together.
I love board games, learning languages, discovering new perspectives and imagining better futures.
When I’m not visiting labs, I work as a freelancer in Product & Strategy for MedTech & Digital Health companies and I am building a company in prevention in orthodontics, Breeze Medical

My journey in fablabs

I did the FabAcademy in 2021 in Brussels and started meeting the Fablab Network community. I did it with the objective of building a digital microscope that could be locally manufactured in Africa to diagnose among other things, malaria.

I ended up making a foldable 3D scanner but learned a ton of things on the way thanks to Quentin Bolsée.

Nevertheless, at the end of 2021, it was time to continue the microscopy project and I left for Tanzania where I printed my first African digital microscopes with my good friend Valerian Sanga (member of GOSH)

Then I went to Rwanda where I kept visiting Medical labs with Maurice and fablabs where I met Dany, Olivier, Héritier, Lambert, Frédéric and many others from FabLab Rwanda.

Back in Brussels, I started visiting the different labs of Brussels.

Then in 2023, I went to Bhutan for the FAB23 where I met Constance, Rico, Matthieu, Haflidy, Hafey, Nanditha and so many others and continued with visiting some Indian labs.

After that, Constance invited me to participate to OctoberMake in Paris where I met even more incredibly cool french makers including Alexandre who invited me to the Vulca Seminar in Ljubljana where I met again some of the folks that I knew from the Fab Network and plenty of yet new places.

After all of this, and having a great match with the Explorer approach of Vulca I joined as Explorer.

I am also looking at businesses that run through digital fabrication and embrace free software & open source movement such as Mekanika or Ugani Prosthetics.

Here with Joren from Ugani