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About me

Hi! I am Jean-Marie Durney . I am a FabLab Manager at the SDG Solution Space based in Geneva.

Visit this website to see my work!

My background

I was born Paris and lived in Fontainebleau until the end of my studies.

My studies start with electronics then industrial data processing to finish as a telecom and network engineer.

Then I moved to Annecy in the French Alps and start working In Geneva as an IT specialist

So I worked 15 years as a Telecom engineer and IT specialist in different UN organization like ITU (international telecommunication Union) or WHO (world Health Organization).

Then I had my middle age crisis, trying to move to prostectic research, I discovered by chance the maker movement during some MakerFaire (paris, Roma) Fully Amazed by this movement I decided to follow the fabacademy courses in 2015, I was the only french doing it in France @ La casemate (Fablab in Grenoble) with Jean-michel Molenaar as mentor.

Those 6 months were like Christmas on steroid, I had a smile on my face every day (ok maybe not in June because I was so late on my project), it was a crazy experience. Find Hereby the link to my FabAcademy Repository

I started in this new domain by helping Orange Fondation to deploy the 1st Fablab in Madagascar within an NGO @ Antananarivo. Check what they did 6 months after the opening

I was so amazed by the way those people took the ownership of the FabLab and start to create real usefull stuff or new business, I decided to continue to help deploying fablab in LDC or humanitarian envirronnement. I joined Global Humanitarian Lab which has the same objectif.We installed the first fablab in Ioannina in greece within NGO named Terre des Hommes inside a comunity center for refugees. Unfortunately Headquaters and people on the field do not have the same vision, UNHCR and ICRC don't see a tool in Fablab and we run out of budget. So the idea of FabLab for humanitarian Purposes was spin off to Terre Des Hommes who were the only ones who see the social impact of FabLab. FabLab with Terre Des Hommes

Actual work

So now because GHL was created in partnership with the university of Geneva, I kept my FabManager position but now the FabLab is fully dedicated to SDGs under UNIGE supervision and my main task is to support master student in sustenable developpement and human developpement by giving them the opportunity to learn about digital fabrication. This Year the Main subject of their studies is plastic pollution under water. Recycling plastic is not the solution (to many bad additive componant, only 25% could be incoporate in the news items so quantity of plastic will grow..) The best is to stop produce them for unique usage, use returnable glass, create new product fully biodegradable.

Why Fabricademy ?

After Fabacademy I tried to follow BioHackademy on my own but It was a little bit too highlevel for me and now it's not anymore available on line.

but I am really interested by material, I grow my kombucha since 2016 trying to make it waterproof... and I would like to explore all the alternative to plastic because as I said Plastic Pollution is the main subject for my students this year. I am doing the "precious plastic stuff" but for me recycling plastic is not the solution, Replacing Plastic seems more effective.

I really want to try lot of material like all the recipes from Materiom

I don't have any idea yet for my project, but maybe because we are SDG oriented in my fabLab, it could be nice to reproduce the SDG wheel Logo using 17 different materials with 17 different colors created using natural pigment or color made using bacteria.