Repair Cafe?

Events and Announcements
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I am curious if VHS has ever ran “repair cafes.”

I know Open Nights also serve as this, and there is some overlap with the Hackery. But these sort of events are both popular and well funded in various communities. I think FreeGeek participates in these as well, and the Sunshine Coast Maker Faire, this was a popular station (very chilled event, but there was someone working on something nonstop).

A “bring it and fix it” theme, with a donate or pay what you like expectation, is a good way to earn a bit of money, possible sponsorship, and build community.

Again, curious about previous history with these and other people’s thoughts. Perhaps marketing Open House as such may bring new audience as well.

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SO… there’s a whole website around this, looks like it runs on a very distributed membership model. https://repaircafe.org/en/start/

And @xquared see infact Free Geek finger is in a fix that stuff event locally. Need a hand? What are those like?

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i tried to get vhs involved with the city led repair workshops. free geek is involved in that, but they already have repair matters there.

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We’ve done some informal fix-it stuff in the past and I think there was a Fix-it Collective event at VHS back in the day. I think more repair stuff is a great idea and a good way to get new folks in to the space. We also have a lot of people with various interests who may be up for volunteering to help with fix-it stuff especially on the electronics side of things.

I’d be definitely in to help any efforts. Things I tend to fix for folks or help folks learn to fix:

  • roombas (we have the parts) - takes about 45 minutes on average
  • phones and tablets (more tricky to do at a one-visit event and tend to need parts in advance)
  • lamps (great projects for fix-it as usually just need re-soldered)
  • laptops and PCs (data recovery mostly although other fix-it stuff can get more complex and need parts - e.g. cmos battery, need screen hinge, replacement screen, etc.) - so that’s more of a diagnois thing
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