 You too-hoo-hoo. This is a talk about how I learnt how to use Mac books. Welcome to here if not you, a guide to community. I am able to talk to people about how to build a mutual aid network and also how not to build a mutual aid network. One thing before we move on to the major things is that there is an spot for you food. Some of you may be experiencing signs of hypothermia and I recommend you bundle up into nice warm things and have a hot drink. I have the other end of the spectrum. I have heat exhaustion. If you have heat exhaustion, drink lots of water. It's very important that you don't pass out or end up in the first aid tent. So, who am I? I am an infosec person, which is one of the worst things you can be. I apologise for my sins. I work with the trans tech tent, which is a mutual aid group. Ond y gallwn ymddyf yn gwahanol, rwy'n wedi eu gwahanol. Ond rwy'n rwy'n rwy'n fydda'r hyn o. Yn bod rwy'n rwy'n wahanol'r pethau, ac 10 ymdwyd yw'n ddod maen nhw mae'n ddwyfntiau mwy o'r celfadau, oedrych, oedd ei hunain, oedrych, oedd brif wneud. Mae anon nhw ymmddill fydda'r bod i. Rwy'n ddiad cyffrffianllol ar y cyfnod. Mae'r rydyn i'r cerdd yn rhaid. is also here helped me write this talk so she's currently viving with chronic illness in the front she is one of the few people in the community who can drive so she is our wheel woman running around town helping helping everyone out you may see her around with her light up purple cane please say hi very gently and if you spam our twitter account she's the one that gets notifications on her phone because she was brave enough to download it so trans tech tent we are lots of trans people who do technology and have a tent which is kind of why we're here we do repairs we do bio hacking as well which is really cool if you want to do the boring kind of bio hacking where you put an led in your arm that's fine if you want to change your entire endocrine structure so that no one can recognize you with you know facial recognition cameras anymore we can do that too it's great fun and we also teach people and that's one of the big things there's no point in having a set of skills if you can't pass it on to someone else and that's kind of what we're about so what are we learning today i'm going to learn what mutual aid is why it's worth doing and how you can do it too you will also all graduate with an associate's degree in red panda iconography i'm not sure if you've realised this yet a lot of people might be interested in history of mutual aid its origins the politics of it and a whole host of really cool and interesting context for how mutual aid works however this is a no theory zone i do not read i cannot read reading is far too difficult for my small brain there is a place for a long history of mutual aid but this isn't it this isn't a talk about any kind of history work this is just things that you can do i pushed all of the theory out my brain to make room for more red pandas as we can see and this may affect the quality of the talk slightly so mutual aid when i want what is mutual aid mutual aid is not charity it's not something where a large organisation comes and piles money on you and says go help pause it's about sharing your skills with the community it's taking you know what skills you have what things you can do and giving it you know giving your time giving your expertise to people who don't have that and in return you might get something back if you're in trouble or if you need something fixed so a lot of people in the infosec community like to call it like paying it forward where what you'll do is you'll help someone else in the hope that if you needed that help you would get it back so it doesn't need to be an organisation you don't need to have like a community interest company you don't need to have a charity registered or anything like that we just find that a framework for mutual aid really helps build a community around it so more people get involved it's not just strangers anymore you know you have friends and you get along with each other you have a good time so why do we have mutual aid so for the trans community obviously we're in a position where you know if you look at studies in the US trans women are paid 60% less and cisgender people in general uh it's much harder to get work even with the same skills we don't have that kind of social mobility that a lot of not like cisgender people will have and you need to work around that a lot of other groups also face these struggles so you will find mutual aid groups that deal with a lot of different teams communities that kind of thing and sometimes the conditions that you grew up in and live in will overlap and they multiply each other so you know some of us struggle with rent some of us struggle with food and the thing that we focus on is technology uh digital poverty major issue in impoverished communities so everyone needs access to the internet nowadays if you don't have the internet you can't do much anymore you know a lot of a lot of disabled people will need to order things to their house also universal credit is all online and if it's not online then you have to go 30 miles to the nearest universal credit place and the job center is horrible so seeing as charities are often a bunch of people outside the community taking lots of money to um improve everyone's life without actually asking what would help anyone we can take things into our own hands instead and ignore charities in favour of mutual aid so why would you do mutual aid because uh you know if you're set for life if you have a nice large bank account and everything you could ever think of why bother you get some field experience you get to test things out you get to try things and you get to basically expand your own knowledge base through doing really good idea and you get to meet people along the way so you get to learn from other people who are in the same field as you you know you might see someone trying to repair the same kind of phone they bring out the new model they've done it before they can teach you a few new tricks you might need to do a little bit digital forensics and you know there's a couple hard drives on there that you've never had to deal with before with a different partition system they can teach you how to go through that useful stuff and then you get to teach other people things that you know and they don't it's a really rewarding experience you also get to build a community and be part of a community there's way more than the sum of its parts and they'll rally around you when it's your turn to get something fixed or if you need help so a quick story um we have been doing repairs for what two years now year and a half two years so we've been doing it for quite a while and we've fixed a lot of phones and a lot of laptops someone came to us with a broken usbc port we couldn't figure out what was wrong with it at all so we ended up finding a new put like someone who'd never been in the community or helped us before and they came along and they're like i can reflow this like i have the kit i have all of the kit i have all the specialist just give it to me and i'll give it back in a week and you know we said hi we got to sorting all of it out sent the machine off comes back in a week worked perfectly that's one person who couldn't afford a new laptop with new hardware and a new person bought into a community because they didn't have any friends in the area it turned out mutual benefit so how do you make a mutual aid hopefully i've sold you on why it's good and cool um but how should you go on off the ground so you're going to have three things you need people you need space maybe some money so you don't always need to have these straight off the bat but it does help to think about them in the long run that'll help you keep going you need to figure out some people who have passion in their field or expertise and skills that they can share some people will play themselves down um this is really common a lot of people will be like oh well i don't have any skills but actually things that everyone takes for granted can be skills driving is a skill making good meals is a skill um kind of nutrition is a skill even inside technical communities things that everyone takes for granted can be really useful so if you know how to use say you know you can navigate the universal credit system you can help people with that if you've been through something and you don't want anyone else to suffer through it that's a skill that you can share with someone else so bring them along take them into your little social group start talking with them get them involved in things and maybe you'll find someone else in need who fits that skill set you don't need an expensive office when it comes to space you don't need to have like your own office you don't need to get a little high rise apartment block or something like that you can use your house if you're struggling for space or places we're fortunate enough that a local cafe open their doors to us and they let us do safe exchanges of equipment so um we don't get stalkers turning up at our door and um everyone else can get a nice easy bus into the middle of town to hand off their equipment very useful for us you'll probably be able to do that uh local libraries are a really good place if you just talk to someone behind your local library and be like hey we're doing this thing can we meet up here is that fine they'll probably let you do it for free and then you know think about money are you going to need it sometimes you do sometimes you don't a little money goes a lot further in a mutual aid than it will in your traditional charity but I think if you need to raise it how are you going to outreach is very important um touching grass is for people who go outside I do not go outside and because I don't go outside I need to talk to people through screens so we need a method of facilitating that now regardless of data privacy concerns because the companies mentioned here are terrible for it uh getting yourself out there on social media is important as an organization you've not really got many opsec concerns when you're you know dealing as a faceless group compared to being an individual but those might be something to pay attention to if someone's targeting you our instagram account was actually a complete throw away uh we just built it because you know we're building all the social medias why not let's see if the name's reserved turns out that the thing I hate most in my life out of all the social networks apart from maybe LinkedIn um is where we get all of our people come through the majority of people who talk to us do it through a social media site that we all hate which um you know taking one for the cause uh our twitter page is where we get most help offers and working with other organizations and you know linkedin and Facebook kind of exist on the periphery you get the occasional trickle through the idea is that you are accessible to as many people as possible so not only can you help others others can also help you in the format they're most comfortable with the last thing you want to do is learn an entirely new tech stack you don't want to like build your own IRC channel and have someone figure out how to use IRC just to tell you that like they can repair an iPhone 7 so try not to be overly specific try not to bring everyone and force everyone to use the one thing that you like to get people involved because that will wall you off from 80% of the people who otherwise could do a lot for you organization is very important um so one of the important things about organization is not to do your talk with 10 minutes to spare before you go on stage the whole point of organization is you know you're sharing the load um so one person can't do everything you know who if not you if no one else is going to do it you should however if you can get someone else to get involved and you can get someone else to help take the load off that's really really helpful and to do that you need to share information you need to organize that information somewhere where everyone can see it now we threw up a Google document for this you don't need to have a massive sprawling spreadsheet with like SLAs and trends and all sorts of weird business stuff to make it work just who wants a thing fixed who can fix the thing and we do a little bit of extra stuff just so we can poke people along the process so when did we get the thing in and what stage is it at just as a few ideas so sharing information will help everything run smoothly for you and then we hit stumbling blocks things that have kind of tanked organizations in the past i've been here for quite a while um in my kind of mutual aid scene organizations helping out but this is also true of a lot of other organizations uh burnout is super super hard to deal with so prevention better than cure no one is necessarily going to jump on your list of stuff to do and do it sometimes you need to give them a poke which is why you need to delegate to them poke people who you know have some skills be like hey we need some you know we need like 16 phones repaired they're all on the list and no one's taken them up you poke some people and be like hey can you take one of these can you take one of these and before you know it you're through that list so if you don't do this you'll end up with a massive pile of phones on your desk sat there for two months not getting anything done because you're overwhelmed by them moderation is very important so moderation is probably the one thing that's killed the most communities out of everyone out of every place i've been um this kind of comes from the plate like obviously from the position of a trans person um nothing is more horrible than seeing the one dude who you wished would just shut up being allowed to just run rampant in the community and just like do whatever he wants because he's not technically breaking the rules but literally everyone wants him gone and they don't feel comfortable so if anyone does actual abuse i say actual like if anyone does any verbal abuse physical abuse anything in your community even if they haven't done it on your platforms kick them out it's really simple it's really obvious but some people just don't get it because they don't want to start a fight do it it's worth it in the long run tiny little bit of conflict now will save you months of having to deal with drama in little chats on the side it is not your responsibility to explain or rehabilitate anyone who you remove from your community you can just tell them they're gone and then block them definitely block them because otherwise you will get like 60 paragraphs about why you should be unblocked and it's just like davo and guilt tripping on that note if you have a code of conduct it is not important how you have worded your code of conduct it is important how you moderate your community so you can you know if you have a bunch of rules and they're specifically worded someone is going to try and rules police it and be like well actually it says this you need to have a moderation team that understand that they can go off vibes if someone is being absolutely rancid they are breaking the code of conduct by spirit not by word a lot of people don't understand that it's very important for your community but I will say that um you might you might think after a few of those bits um this kind of sucks am I am I just going to make a mutual aid and then immediately have like 50 people turn up ask for their phones to be fixed and I don't know anyone yet and then like have three abusers come along and then have to use meta products unfortunately you will probably have to use meta products I'm very sorry however most of it is good and fun and cool and you have a great time and you meet loads of people make new friends and you get like a whole new reason to exist in the community more reasons to live the bad stuff is a tiny fraction it's a tiny tiny little fraction the reason that I've been talking about them isn't because they happen all the time it's because I've seen it and just one bad shot will take down an organization so basically I'm just giving you stuff in your toolbox so that if it ever happens you know how to deal with it and you're not having to run around and try and figure out the answer so my appeal to you is to go out and make a mutual aid if you you know if there's one in the area join it see what you can do offer up your skills to someone who needs them there are digital poverty groups all over the place if you want to just like fix tech for everyone there are more specific ones the trans tech tent runs in Wales and mutual aid is much bigger in the united states so if any if any of our visitors are from the states you'll almost definitely find something in your local area a couple stories here we have the iPhone XR very well manufactured they decided they were just going to get a glass plate and glue it all down just glue the whole thing every square millimeter of that is glued so much the same with the MacBook Pro's touch bar when they had the touch bar they're all glued down so we had the laborious task of spending four hours chipping all that off to put in some new things and you're like oh that's terrible you know the glass shards everywhere it's such a mess but actually when you see the finished product you're kind of proud of it wasn't expecting applause for that bit because when I got through them all I was just breathing a sigh of relief I didn't have to touch them ever again but you know you get frustrated when you do mutual aid because you know you get in things are horrendously broken and you're like oh you know I'll never do this again it's been an absolute ordeal and then like the second it's over you'll actually if anyone else came along and wanted me to do this I've learned a bunch of stuff and I'll do it in like five minutes next time it'd be fine it's great fun but you know the sense of accomplishment you get from doing mutual aid is fantastic and I really hope that some people you know give it a go if you have a small pot of funding like we've we have like a thousand pounds over a year and we fixed 50 machines whether those are brand new iPhones samsung's you know android phones laptops macbooks yeah we even fix macbooks um it costs like 300 pound for a new screen for one of those it's a nightmare it's just you know go out there and give it a go your money goes a lot further as part of a mutual aid and the rewards are way higher as well because you're not sending it off to like a faceless organisation to redistribute it you get to see and talk to the people who you help so thank you all for coming be nice to trans people if you are trans be nice to yourself very important and I don't know what we're like for time so do we have any I'm going to let everyone do questions if that's okay so how can you find mutual aid groups so that's a good question um a lot of the time I browse twitter because I'm terminally online um and I will find them that way it's usually quite a lot of word of mouth stuff but who if not you means if you don't have one already in your area make one but also you can do that regardless so if you make your own and then you find out all of a sudden that like there's another group that does exactly the same thing that you do you can just talk to them you merge just you know get out there get involved straight away and then it turns out that someone else is doing a thing just slide in with their organisation and help them out or not if they're bad people but yeah I find twitter is a really good place to learn about it um because twitter has kind of got a lot of mutual aid orcs using it it's the default I feel there isn't like a map online or anything like that but that might be a resource I might think about cool thank you very much everyone oh another question there are still two minutes left any any more questions so if I feel conscious I'm taking away work from commercial ventures um I will say no I personally do not care if I'm taking work away from a commercial venture because the people who we help usually can't afford it the vast majority of people who do talk to us are like I am on the verge of homelessness or I am actually homeless um and someone has thrown my iphone at a wall or the ipad that I had for five years because I got it as a university present has been smashed and I can't make rent this month so most of the things we deal with uh we're not really stepping on anyone's toes but even if we did um personally because it's because we work with disadvantaged groups I wouldn't care if we stepped on their toes yeah yeah so you're you're basically you're basically running your own mutual aid on um just on a little facebook group um I so I think it's it's not necessarily like a myth that you know we're killing an industry by doing the work we do uh but I would say you know most people aren't going to use aren't going to use that as a paid service for those for a lot of the fixes we make and people won't think it's worth it or can't afford it outright so keep doing what you're doing and genuinely you know don't be afraid that you are stepping on other people's toes because that work would not be done otherwise I guarantee you no one's going to go into a no one's going to go into a workshop or like a repair place and be like hi can you just like replace the fuse on this yeah yeah of course yeah yeah no writing rule can be difficult sometimes absolutely um so that's if you run if you run things by vibes and you accept that you're running them by vibe it works a lot better um case by case is kind of how we deal with a lot of our stuff we ended up putting in a rule for a maximum limit for repair fees because we have a limited amount of money obviously we can get in but we still have a massive need to give people working devices there's there's one more question over there uh so we have actually talked to Cardiff Hackspace we are local to Cardiff um we're looking at getting a membership because we might need access to some 3d printers and other tools but actually because we've got a wide enough community by now most of the things we need we already have we do work extensively with other organisations though um not specific tech groups but like mutual aid groups in Cardiff uh we do basically all of the tech repairs for an organisation called Trans Aid Cymru who you know Welsh Trans Aid uh so yeah reaching out to organisations is super important if you can do it and do it thank thank you very very much this was a lot of yeah but we we would have to have one more question okay quick question hi so I I kind of built this talk together because I couldn't find any so um you know depending on how useful people find the talk I might go ahead and upload something onto our website um I'll probably put the slide deck on uh with notes because the notes are long and meandering but uh yeah I'll build a resource if I can't find one and if I if you reach out on Twitter then I can kind of get in touch and we can discuss that thank you very much please give a warm hand to Abir