Fixfest UK 2020: everything you need to know

[james]

Fixfest UK is now open!

As we announced back in March, our biennial UK gathering for community repair is going online this year. We’re incredibly excited to announce that Fixfest UK starts on the 4th of June and that tickets are now available!

Join us online for a series of engaging online events curated by you and for you - the tinkers, fixers and waste preventers of the UK!

Fixfest UK is aimed at people who are actively involved in community repair. That means folks who organise and/or volunteer at Restart Parties or Repair Cafes or any other fix-focused community events.

Get your ticket and join the event here

Schedule

We’re making the most of the online format by splitting Fixfest UK into 11 separate sessions over the course of a month. We’d encourage you to come to as many sessions as you can, but you’re free to pick and choose those that interest you most.

Date	Session
Thurs 4 June, 8pm	Opening Keynote with Josh Babarinde, CEO of “Cracked It” social enterprise & Session on Right to Repair in the UK	Read the notes
Thurs 11 June, 8pm	Strengthening our decentralised network in the UK	Read the notes
Sat 13 June, 11am	The Scandal of Faulty Capacitors	Read the notes
Thurs 18 June, 8pm	Running Good Online Events for Adult Learners	Read the notes
Sat 20 June, 11am	Saturday morning social!
Thurs 25 June, 2:30pm	Parliamentary E-Waste Inquiry: watch Restart and Green Alliance live	Read the notes
Thurs 25 June, 8pm	Reuse and repair in urban environments	Read the notes
Sat 27 June, 11am	Sewing Machines: Maintenance and Repair	Read the notes
Thurs 2 July, 8pm	Lightning Talks, Demos, Show ‘n’ Tell	Read the notes
Sat 4 July, 11am	Sharing repair stories to build our movement	Read the notes
Thurs 9 July, 8pm	Closing session - our powerful repair data	Read the notes

We’re aware that some of the linked notes above aren’t working at the moment. We have backups and are working to restore them!

[james]

A huge thanks to everyone who came along to the first session of Fixfest UK last week!

We’d also like to thank our keynote speaker Josh Babarinde, CEO of “Cracked It” social enterprise and Libbey Peake, Head of resource policy at Green Alliance and our very own @ugo who spoke to us about Right to Repair in the UK.

A recording of the session will be available soon. But in the meantime, you can read the notes from the session here.

And for anyone who missed it, here’s a short extract from Josh Babarinde, describing how Cracked It uses repair to empower and upskill young ex-offenders and youth at risk who are making the transition into employment:

Fixfest 2020 Keynote speech by Josh Babarinde

The next session is on Thursday at 8pm (UK time): Strengthening our decentralised network in the UK. For full details, head into the Fixfest UK site

[james]

We’re just over a third of the way through Fixfest UK 2020. A huge thanks to everyone who’s spoken and participated so far, especially @Clare_Seek (Repair Café Portsmouth) and John McCrory (Repair Café Wales) for running a great session yesterday!

Read our Twitter thread summarising yesterday’s session on running good online learning events for adults

Be sure to check the schedule above for links to the notes from all sessions so far.

Fixfest Updates

New sessions added!

We’ve added two new sessions to the schedule:

Parliamentary E-Waste Inquiry: watch Restart and Green Alliance live, 25 Jun, 2:30pm BST
Watch live as @ugo from The Restart Project and Libby from Green Alliance give evidence to the UK Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) as part of their inquiry into e-waste. We’ll have a live text chat for comments, questions and discussion. More information about this EAC enquiry can be found here

Sharing repair stories to build our movement, 4 Jul, 11am BST
Lee and @CHRIS_MCCARTNEY from Repair Cafe Belfast will share their story about building a repair community in Northern Ireland and invite you to share your own repair stories as a way of connecting our movement and welcoming new people in.

Share your work

If you have something small and beautiful to share with the UK community, there are still slots available in our Lightning Talks, Demos, Show ‘n’ Tell session (2 Jul, 8pm BST). In events offline, these sessions can be real highlights of the event.

We’ve invited Dorkbot London’s delightful MC Dave Green to host this session. You’ll have the floor for five minutes - deliver a provocative lightning talk, demo a skill, or show and tell the story of a fix or favourite tool. Please get in touch in advance if you’d like to present via email: fixfest@therestartproject.org

BYO demo, prop, tool, mend/fix, photo album or slideshow, pet/assistant

[james]

With just two sessions left, we’re nearing the end of Fixfest UK 2020!

A huge thanks to everyone who has participated so far and especially to all our lightning talk speakers yesterday evening: @Artur_Donaldson, @Clare_Seek, @Dave, @Elena, Grant, Jon (@Repair_Cafe_Glasgow), @Lorna_Montgomery and @Tony_Brown, as well as to Dave Green for hosting!

Find notes from yesterday’s session and all other sessions in the first post above

We still have two great sessions coming up:

• Sat 4 July, 11am: Sharing repair stories to build our movement (with @CHRIS_MCCARTNEY and Lee from Repair Café Belfast)
• Thurs 9 July, 8pm: Closing session - our powerful repair data (with @Monique, @neil and @Stuart_Ward)

Get your ticket and join the event here

Fixfest Updates

Following on from last week’s session where we watched @ugo give evidence to the UK Parliment’s Environmental Audit Committee, the Committee has launched a short survey for volunteers at community repair events! We need your help to complete and share this survey with as many repair groups as possible before the deadline on the 9th of July. Details here:

In the UK? Please fill this survey on Right to Repair - by 9 July

The UK Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee is currently doing an inquiry on electronic waste. As part of the inquiry, the EAC has now launched a very short survey directed specifically at volunteers at community repair events in the UK. It’s a perfect opportunity for repair volunteers to voice the need for better repair legislation and for removing all barriers to repair. It’s just 4 questions, so it should take no time at all. Please take the survey by 9 July at 5pm and share it with other repair volunteers in your groups. MPs on the Environmental Audit Committee are looking to hea…

[Janet]

And that’s a wrap! Thank you to the 300 or so people who “attended” Fixfest UK over the past month.

We finished last night with a brilliant session by @neil @monique @ugo @Stuart_Ward about our repair data, and how it’s useful at a local, regional, national and international scale.

Recording what we discussed

We’ll have recordings ready to share by the end of the month. In the meantime, notes links are at the top of this thread, and slides are here.

We had 11 sessions total - ICYMI, you can listen to the keynote by Josh Babarinde of Cracked It, London social enterprise teaching at-risk youth how to fix mobiles - on our podcast.

Other highlights

• @Chris_Moller’s demo of his component tester - to the delight of many assembled fixers
• @Repair_Cafe_Wales and @Clare_Seek’s highly participatory session on adult learning - we all got involved
• The highly competitive Glasgow Quiz by @Repair_Cafe_Glasgow , where we learned that the Govan Hogbacks were NOT a heavy metal band from Glasgow
• Jennie Caminada’s sewing machine “Ask Me Anything” - such great energy and wisdom!
• @ugo telling the Commons Environmental Audit Committee that industry will fight regulation “tooth and nail” - with industry lobbyists visibly uncomfortable on the screen
• @Felipe_Fonseca’s takedown of the corporate “smart city” agenda
• Lightning Talks Compere Dave Green’s amazing microphone
• @Tony_Brown’s top tips for trash-picking TVs
• @Chris and Lee’s story about the first piece of toast ever made at Repair Cafe Belfast
• @monique’s tour of Dutch and German repair data - such complexity and precision!

Please give back to the community

Here are three things you can do to give back to the community and help promote our cause of better, more repairable products!

1. Please take a couple of minutes to send us your feedback to make future Fixfests even better!

The Restart Project - The Right to Repair and Reuse Your Electronics

2. Help out with our new online data project, MobiFix you can spare 30 seconds or a couple of minutes. You can do this while on hold to your utility company, or waiting for something

3. We’re launching a drive to get missing data in the Fixometer! 1/3 repair events in the year prior to March are missing data please get in touch if we can help you enter some of the missing data. This data will help us push for more repairable products here in the UK and in Brussels.

… And lastly, see you in Glasgow for #COP26?

No really. We’re serious about a repair fringe event in November 2021. Please like this post if you’d like to join, or send us a message.

[james]

If you missed Fixfest UK or want to revisit any of the sessions, we’ve finished processing all the recordings and have uploaded them as this playlist:

Watch Fixfest UK here

From Josh’s inspirational keynote to fixing sewing machines through to telling stories of repair and the power of repair data, you’re welcome to revisit any or all of the topics we covered.

Do also share these with anyone you think might be interested!

Here are the links to the individual sessions:

• Josh Babarinde (Cracked It) + Session on Right to Repair with Green Alliance
• Community repair in the UK: Strengthening a Decentralised Network
• The Scandal of Electrolytic Capacitors - Why They Fail and What to Do
• Quality Online Engagement with Adult Learners
• Sewing Machines maintenance and repair
• Lightning Talks, Demos, Show ‘n’ Tell
• Reuse and Repair in Urban Environments with Researcher Felipe Fonseca
• The Importance of Storytelling and Social Aspects of Repair
• Our Powerful Repair Data - How and Why We Collect It

[Jesus_Castane]

Great! Thanks for sharing the recordings!

[Artur_Donaldson]

Very proud to be on the cover photo for Session 6 - The Lightning Talks, sporting a lockdown hairdo !