Born in MIT and Northern Norway, the Fab Lab concept seems to be blossoming. I think it works because you can clearly make just about anything in a Fablab and what happens is relevant to local circumstances. At school one of the reasons for not liking Physics was that all the experiments had been worked out by others, and I couldn't see the practical application of what was being taught. These public access science labs work the other way round - you share an idea and they look to see what's possible. It is a great place to prototype. Check fablab.no/ and this list en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fab_lab#Lab_Locations for one of the nearly 50 labs near you. Ton Zijlstra, also in this video, blogs in English about Fablabs at fablab.nl/.

Thanks too to Fing for featuring this at their conference in Marseilles this year fing.org. Videos of the presentations from this years' conference are here liftconference.com/fr/lift-france-10/home_fr