Training fab managers to use Luanti

With Thomas François, we designed a training course for the Orange Foundation aimed at the fab managers of the fablabs it supports in Africa, particularly West Africa, and in the French overseas territories, joined by members of the French fablab network. The day-and-a-half course, run entirely online, was given four times, each time to about twenty participants.

After presenting Luanti and what makes it unique, notably the difference between a game, the base game and its rules, and a mod, which adds blocks, tools or behaviours, we reviewed its uses. Luanti makes it possible to learn by building, to simulate phenomena such as a flood or the spread of a fire, to run urban consultations or to rebuild historic buildings, thanks to the import of real geographic data.

The participants then practised together on a single server, before discovering tools that open up other activities in a fablab, from 3D printing their buildings to rendering them in Blender, as well as programming. As they came from very different countries and regions, a large part of the time went into adapting the examples to everyone's situation and imagining the projects they could carry out at home.