During the past couple of days we had a chance to visit the LabtoLab meeting in Nantes, France. This meeting was an opportunity for people running media labs to exchange experiences, to plan collaborations and to discuss about methods and areas for common development.

One of the concrete results of the event is the Wikipedia page for 'Media lab': http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_lab. The method for producing this text was an intense writing sprint that involved numerous participants of the event. Previously in English Wikipedia there was only a text about the MIT Media lab.

For me the most interesting part of the page is this:

"Social effect: Media labs play a role in society to understand the new ways of education, culture, communication and even political participation. Working in a media lab context can be considered as informal ways of learning."

I think this is the essence of what many independent media labs are doing. Many of them are no longer focusing on digital media and new technologies, but are involved in activism in city space, exploring ecological issues, etc.

Further edits to the page are very welcome!