 Well, welcome, everyone. I think it's time that we begin. I would like to thank Ugo and James from the Restart Project very much for giving their time to us this evening to talk about repair data and some of the tools that we can use. This is really an opportunity that we'd like to provide to you through the support of the Australian Repair Network that we value to show the value that you contribute to our repair economies. Sorry, that is my dog in Australia in terms of the repairing that you're doing. And we really want to thank all of the work that you do. And we thought that this workshop would provide an opportunity for you to just learn about some of the tools that some of the other repair cafes are using in other countries, but also here in Australia to collect the information about all of the repairs that you're doing. And we know that some of you do a really great job and are using some of these tools already. Others of you may be considering collecting the data or using different methods. So this is really an opportunity for us to learn and I'll hand over to James and Ugo from the Restart Project who are going to lead this seminar tonight, but there'll be plenty of opportunities for discussion and contributions from you so that you can get the best value out of this. This will be recorded as well and will be made available so that those of the repairers and repair conveners who weren't able to join us this evening will be able to access this in the future as well. So thank you once again for joining us and I'll hand over to James and Ugo from the Restart Project to talk to you about repair data. Thank you. Hi everybody. Thanks so much for that introduction Leanne. Evening everybody. My name is James Pickstone. I work for the Restart Project along with Ugo who's also with us this evening. He's waving in the top. I'm not sure if you can see that. So yeah we're the Restart Project. We're a London-based social enterprise and charity and we've been working for about 10 years in the space of community repair to run community repair events in London and currently run a network of around a dozen or so repair groups in the city and we also support repair groups around the world with running events and managing data and so on and so that's one of the reasons we're here this evening. So we're here to share our story, kind of what we've been doing over the last 10 years, some of the tools that we've built, some of the works that we've been doing with data specifically to offer some kind of inspiration and share our experience and some ideas with all of you this evening. So we'll go through a little bit about our background how we've got to where we are, what we do currently and sharing some of the tools that we've developed plus other tools that exist in the world of community repair that are useful for logging data, measuring it back, sharing data and so on. We'll also briefly cover a little bit of the why repair data and so kind of why it's actually useful for groups and useful for the wider repair movement more broadly and the annual touch on some of the Australian context for that as well. But there'll be plenty of opportunities for all of us just to have a bit of a chat about data, what we currently do, what we'd like to do as repair groups and ways of doing what we'd like to do with repair data, so how to record it, how to share it, how to measure impact, all of that kind of stuff and so there'll be lots of opportunities just to have a discussion between us. Given we're quite a big group tonight, we'll probably break out into a couple of rooms, different rooms for those discussions and then report back afterwards. Just so that everyone gets more of an opportunity to speak, because 32 people, there's quite a few people so it might be a bit unmanageable all in the same space so we'll try and break out where we can. I'm assuming at this point most people are fairly familiar with Zoom but just in case a little bit of Zoom housekeeping, so at the bottom of your screen you should be able to see buttons to enable or disable your camera, enable or disable your microphone and there's also a chat button which you can click to bring up a text chat. Feel free to use the text chat at any point during the evening to say hello to people, to ask questions. We'll keep an eye on that chat and see if we can answer questions as they come up during a session. Anything we can't answer at the moment, we'll try and answer in the chat afterwards. Those are the key things. If you're not currently speaking, do try to keep your microphone muted just to avoid any background noise, dogs or kids or the usual. In my case, a very loud cat who is after her breakfast this morning but otherwise the usual kind of Zoom stuff applies. If you've got any questions, just hit the chat at the bottom and I'll do my best to try and sort out any technical issues. Are there any kind of immediate housekeeping questions before we get started? Feel free to kind of unmute yourself or put it in the chat. No? Okay, perfect. I'm going to hand over to Ugo who's going to run a quick opening round with us. Hey, everyone. Lovely to meet you all and to also see a couple of familiar faces. We thought that it would be great to get started by just introducing everyone. Because we're a larger group, we're going to keep it quite short. What we are asking everyone is to just share your name and what repair group you are representing and a key thing that you are hoping to learn or share about repair data during this session today. Because we are a large group, I think the main challenge is how to just go from one person to the next. And so I suggest that we start. I'll go in the order that I have here and so I'll just call people. So I'll start with Julie. Oh, hello. I'm Julie King. I'm in Castleman, Victoria. I'm a relatively new member of the Repair Cafe here about one year. And my role is actually keeping records. So it's a very simple process that we have. It's actually a word table. We have people weigh the item and we have a lot of debate about that, whether that's an appropriate way to do things because we're trying to indicate to people what we keep from landfill, that weight isn't ideal, but it is easy. And we have people get involved in weighing their items and understanding and talking about their items. So they really do appreciate what our repairers do in preventing it from going to landfill. That's me. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. Joe. There's no other Joes. Me, Joe. There's a Joe Murray. Sorry, I should have said. I'm another Joe. Do you want me to go? So I'm Joe Murray. So I'm from the Repair Cafe Surf Coast. So we're in Victoria, Australia, on the surf coast on the Great Ocean Road. We've been going for about five and a half years and we do similarly to Castleman with weighing things. We currently keep all our information on a spreadsheet. Well, spreadsheet for each year. So after five and a half years, that's quite a lot of data, but it doesn't enable us to really analyse it or do much in a time effective manner. So keen to learn what other methods are out there. Brilliant. Sue Liversley. Sorry for my pronunciation. I might not be the best. That's all right. I'm with Joe Murray who just spoke. I'm with the Repair, Surf Coast Repair Cafe. And yes, I'm sort of responsible for the data and want to improve how we can give it out to other people, show what we do, etc., use it in a way to maybe get grants and that sort of stuff. Great. Catalina? Oh, I'm Catalina. I'm with Derbyn Repair Cafe. We also weigh things and we have a spreadsheet which we enter the weight and whether it was fixed into and we've semi-automated within the spreadsheet so that it counts some of that stuff for us. But that's as far as we've got. Brilliant. Matthew Thien. Hi, I'm Matthew. I work with Choice and we're doing some research into repair and how to encourage people about how to repair things and how to encourage longer life or product lifespan increase. So I'm here to learn more from you about how we display that data, how we collect it. Brilliant. Hadma Lau. We're pretty much doing anything and everything that we can make Repair Cafe operate efficiently. So you will see that I've got Derbyn to bring it from Repair Cafe and the two of us look after all our data. We've been fortunate in using the Repair Monitor database as a way of actually recording what we do. We've had a few issues and I'm sure we can talk about some of those challenges but we have used the information about the weights, the kinds of products, et cetera, what we have been able to repair for our Community Forum, Eco Forum, which was organized by local state member. So we are in fact looking forward to learning about how other people record the data and particularly what data is most critical that we should have and what we can do with them. Thank you. Brilliant. I see next the Radcliffe Peninsula Repair Cafe with other names. Yes, hi. Yes, my name is Les. We started the Radcliffe Peninsula Repair Cafe two years ago. We've repaired about 63% of the 372 items that have come through. So we've got some stats that are moving to the interest to see what the higher level Leanne and others need to actually push this forward with governments of all levels to get some major changes done. So bearing in mind we're all volunteers so we all have sort of finite time. So it would be good to perhaps, I think it's great that we're doing this. I think it's perhaps we need to start at a certain date if we're going to look at a certain timeframe that we can start getting the starter together. It's an awesome, so thank you everybody for getting this together. Brilliant. Thank you. Susan Lloyd. Yeah, hi. I'm Susan Lloyd. I'm with the Campbelltown Repair Cafe in Adelaide, South Australia. We've been running for two years. We collect the weight of our items, also how many items we have. And we've just done a tally for the number of volunteer hours for 2022. And we've worked out, we put in 1318 hours of volunteer time. So that's not just cold face, but it's collecting our background information and stuff. We're very fortunate our local council gives us free use of the venue with storage at no cost. So we've had great support and we use spreadsheets to store our data. We store it on a monthly basis and then I do a cumulative total for each year so that we've got information. And we've started putting some stuff into a pictorial form as a graph because our repeat customers have started asking us information about how much we've kept and what our numbers are and stuff. So we've kept that sort of stuff. We probably picked a round about three quarters of what we have come in and we're lucky enough to have three qualified electricians amongst our volunteers. Great. Excellent. So much amazing work you're doing all. Jim Stryker. Thanks very much. I'm with Maloney Neighbourhood Centre. We have fixed at cafe. Thursday will be our 10th anniversary since the cafe started. We've got three, four good people who do the repairs. We basically have a sheet for every item. We do no collation of any data. So I get to be shown why that's important for us. We use a Facebook to get our stuff out. And one of the neighbour's friends knitted up a little Mr Fixit. So we take pictures of Mr Fixit with the various items that we've done and that goes on our Facebook. Great. Erin? Hi. Yep. Erin here from Repair Cafe, the Gap on with Padma. So pretty much what she said. We have a separate form for each item as well. It's the repair monitor form that we downloaded when we registered with Repair Cafe International. And then we upload the, you know, enter that data each month into the repair monitor database. And we use that to get little graphs and stats and things like that out of four, you know, different presentations and whatever that we do. We also try to record the weight for the same reason that others have said. And yeah, we were interested in finding out, you know, how all this data collated can be useful and help to lobby governments and companies and so forth to do better. Thank you. Vilma? Hello, I'm from Perth. We started Repair Lab back in 2017. And in the meantime, several local councils have picked up and do their own now with our, how we organise it. I organise the Repair Labs in Claremont, Mosman Park area. And I, we have Perth table, like we have the sewing table, the general repairs, the jewelry repairs, bicycle. They all have separate forms. And at the end of the event, we, I put it all together and see how many articles are repaired. And we communicate everything via Facebook. We make a lot of photos and I keep all the paperwork. Actually, I have a whole stack now and I have no idea what to do with it. So it's a, try to be paperless, but it's still on paper because we, yeah, we have to do it manually. But yeah, keen to know if there's better ways to do it. Great. John Tenok? You're muted. Yes, I'm John Tenok from Repair Cafe, The Grove. We're in Fernie Grove and surrounding suburbs in the northwest corner of Brisbane. We've been going since June. So we haven't had very long to collect data, but we have been just capturing everything on, on paper for the first few sessions and really more interested in working out our workflow and who was going to do what and all that kind of thing. So for the last couple of workshops, we, well, I have tried to do a bit of analysing what we've captured, really discovered that the quality of the data capture was pretty poor with a lot of empty fields and things like that. So I thought that's not going to be very helpful when we come to feeding it into a larger database. So at this next session on Saturday, we've designated one of our helpers to be the data quality person and she's going to use the capturing people for a fixed photo when they've got their repair done to also just run through and make sure everybody who's should have filled in a box has actually filled it in. Then we can probably get in the habit of doing that more accurately and that'll give us more reliable data to, to enter in just what database and how we do that I look forward to discovering in this session. Great. Kate? Long? Yeah, I'm with the Repair Cathay Service Coast in Victoria as well and we've been going for five years, so we're really, or five and a half, really looking at how we can best use the data we do collect and what other data we should be collecting to make a very comprehensive picture of the entire operation and also it helps with funding and publicity and so on. Great. Kanchanna? Hi everyone, my name is Kanchanna. I'm from Griffith University. I'm an academic. I'm here to learn about how you collect data. Thanks. Yeah. Saraya? Hi everyone. I'm Saraya. I'm with Max Dean from Choice. I work as a user experience and interface designer and I'm here to learn about repair data and have a think about visually representing that back to Australian consumers. Thank you. Brilliant. Eveline? Hi. I'm with the St Hilda Repair Cafe in Melbourne. We started running in November 2017 and we're lucky enough that my husband knows a bit about databases and he built us a database to to match our needs. We record names and postcodes of people who come to the Repair Cafe just to see sort of how wide ranging from Melbourne and different Melbourne suburbs they come. Also, whether the items are fixed, somewhat fixed or not fixed and it calculates percentages. We also record weight and so I continue that since we also have a website on which we publicise that we've got 668 items fixed, which is 51% of those brought in, 191 almost fixed. We've estimated to have saved 1,824 kilograms from landfill but I do point out there that it doesn't tell the full story because it includes a lot of clothes as well and they don't weigh very much. We're also lucky enough to have, it was started up by the Jewish Ecological Coalition together with the Port Phillip Echo Centre and the Port Phillip Echo Centre. We use their building, there's no charge to us and so our funding basically comes from donations from people who had something with them and they're very generous and it's enough to cover our expenses and even to allow us to purchase some equipment. Great. Joe Pascoe. That's me this time. Yeah, hi. Yeah, I'm Joe Casar and I'm from the Pascoe Vale Repair Cafe in Melbourne operating out of the Navel Hood House, the Sussex Navel Hood House. We're new to this a bit like John a little earlier, we just started in June of this year. At the moment the data that we're collecting is fairly basic so the number of items, the number fixed, the number not fixed, the number of community members coming in, the number of repairs that we have. I suppose I'm here to listen and to learn. We've had fantastic interest from the community and I suppose our interest is, what should we be collecting? How might we best collect it? How might that help with our advocacy and our awareness raising? And I suppose the high level goal is, how can we make this sustainable? And I think hearing from Evelyn really, the sorts of questions that we're asking herself is who might we partner with in the local community to ensure that it's sustained. So we've got a local men's shed and we've got local basket repair sewing type groups so we're trying to sort of connect it all up but it's very new and I'm here to learn. Thank you. Great. KB. Hello, I'm Kirsten and I'm part of the Gin and Dairy Repair Cafe in Canberra and it's a pretty small repair cafe and at the moment I'm just writing down items repaired literally on paper. What I'd be interested in is finding out not all the bells and whistles but just streamlined what is very valuable data to collect because I just wanted to keep it as short and easy as possible and also rather than double entry if people have managed to use iPads or something like that where customers, people who come in can just enter the information directly into a database that is usable on an iPad. Brilliant. Mary? Hi, I'm Mary. The Merino Repair Cafe have been going on you about a year and very interested to hear about the idea like others have already said about collecting data that's useful not just for us but maybe for sort of feeding into sort of promoting the idea of repairing using it as a tool in terms of government and I love the fact that choice is there here today and thanks for putting it on and unfortunately I have to leave in about 10 minutes so I'll have to watch the recording after this but thanks for putting it on and look forward to hearing all the good ideas that we can use to keep our data sort of succinct and valuable thanks. Great. Neil? So yes, my name is Neil Hahn and I'm from the Repair Cafe in Double View which is a western suburb of Perth, Western Australia. The cafe has been running for four years. I've been with it for 18 months. I don't actually know what data we collect but I'm interested in getting started with collecting and making the information useful. Great. Karen, hello. Sorry, hello Ugo, hello everybody. Thanks for putting this on to the Restart Project and the Australian Repair Network and the advisement. Mended Australia is a legacy project in retirement. It's pretty much self-funded and has been for quite a long time and we do get the occasional donation which helps with some overheads like fuel expenses to travel to quite a number of repair cafes around the place. Data is of great interest to me for a number of reasons. Personally, I studied statistics at university and so I'm very interested in data and I quite like collecting it and looking at it and analysing it. The other thing that I find interesting is collecting qualitative data. As Mended Australia, we like to collect the stories of the repairs that Danny pretty much makes. I do make some textile repairs and so the stories to us are very important and that gives us great joy whether it's a written story or in video or Instagram reels and we do that even at home so it's not just at repair cafes. To support the Australian Repair Network in its quest to front to government with some data would be very useful and I'm on the steering committee so that's where my interest lies there to support Leanne and the Australian Repair Network. Mended also collects some data related to its kilometres travelled so that's more its volunteering work. The kilometres travelled and I think that's really all we're doing other than the qualitative stuff. We have collected some at repair cafes for repair cafes but that all just fell in a hole. It was all too hard and the ones that were trying to do it just stopped doing it and that was on repair monitor so I guess that we don't particularly want to collect the quantitative data ourselves as Mended but we certainly want to support repair cafes that we go to that are actually keen to get that data. We'd like to support it however we do know the barriers to that and I'll no doubt come up later on. Brilliant Pablo you already wrote something in the chat but maybe you want to share it? I'll just add yeah so the person who said the cafe is on leave so I've just stepped in but yeah it's now become something bigger we've only started in April and now we're exploring a recycle shop at a landfill site which but we're looking at having repair cafes and giving spaces to other repairs and micro enterprises to do it so if it gets up it will be on scale we might have dozens of people operating little micro enterprises out of that space. Our purpose I guess is really around creating employment pathways for people in particular refugees asylum seekers and migrants and we're really lucky we've got some super qualified electrical engineers etc who are doing the repairs for us because they can't find jobs as electrical engineers. Thank you so much Georgia. Hello my name is Georgia I am a lecturer at RMIT University in the School of Fashion and Textiles and I'm just with some colleagues commencing a research project around collecting repair data on clothing through the method of running community repair events on campus at RMIT University initially that can spread out into the community as well and for the purposes of informing products longevity within fashion and other opportunities for repair within the fashion and textile sector. Great Anna. Hello is it me am I the only Anna? Yes you are. I am a student at Griffith University and I'm working in Brisbane and I'm working undoubtedly and as part of a group of students doing a research project into starting repair cafes on university campuses so this is really just a beginning I suppose to that research journey for me. Brilliant Rosemary. Hi I'm Rosemary I run the Penham repair cafe which is one of about 10 in Adelaide. I'm not sure how long that's been going I think maybe about three years but I've been running it for the past maybe 18 months although I've been involved in the repair cafe movement in Adelaide since it started can't remember when that was maybe 2018 before COVID anyway we're a very small unit so we do everything with paper and pen at the moment and the details we collect are what the item is how much it weighs and whether it's been fixed or not and we've started just on Saturday trying to collect when it's not fixed as to why it wasn't fixed and also if the result has been to just give somebody advice rather than fix the item whether the advice is is you know don't do that again or or you know we can't fix it nobody can fix it or you'll have to take it to someone. I'm really interested in the data collection personally because I think it's really interesting just having a I was just looking at the right to repair material and it's really interesting I think to you know if this is all about finding out what generally is repaired and what needs to be done to get the powers that be to change their policies and the legislation and the rules because that's basically where we're going to make a big difference but on the ground I think the repair cafe movement is a fantastic movement in that it brings people together so that's that's something that we do generate and try and generate that our repair cafe I'm really interested to hear what everyone else has to say about you know how we can move forward. Excellent uh Danielle don't know if Danielle can hear us otherwise maybe Kate Nyunga. I'm Kate sorry hello I'm Kate McGathey I'm uh on Nyungabuja which is by the Ocean and the Swan River in Perth Western Australia and I am I co-admin our local buy nothing with Wilma from Repair Lab in Perth and so when Wilma's been running the Repair Labs in Perth I've volunteered to help at some of them and Wilma's done so much work in Perth with local communities and local councils and groups that I'm very lucky to have been mentored by her and she has helped me provided me with the documentation and her learning and her experience so that I've been able to now start Repair Labs at UWA University of Western Australia and we have now run four Repair Labs at UWA with the students as the volunteer repairers mentored by some of Wilma's external repairers who have taught them how how the Repair Labs work and how the documentation is sort of filled out and yeah so we're just sort of learning new ways of doing that from from doing this we've now had some school groups come forward and ask you know if we can help them look at how they can start doing Repair Labs within their school communities which is really exciting so yeah and I can I really resonate with a lot of the stories people have told but in particular the qualitative sort of data and the I we ran a fashion repair lab during sustainable fashion week recently and I was amazed at how many university students walk around with holes in their crutches it was quite amazing so there is a need at the universities for sure and it's it is very interesting to see how we're going to record that and what we can do with that information going forward you're muted um thanks so much for that uh Ugo are you are you with us still oh sorry I am with music sorry Brooke Westerman I'm so sorry oh good hi I'm Brooke um I'm from Repair Cafe Woollen Gava in um Brisbane we've been going forward um just at the nearly two years now to Mark to you Mark um we started doing um our data collection through Repair Cafe Monitor so transparent from paper forms onto there um but we found that quite time consuming and that we were struggling to get at the sort of amount of information we needed um we now have an online booking system which we find helps with collecting some of that data because um the customers put that in themselves before they before they come so that that can be quite helpful in collecting more accurate sort of data about the item but yeah interested to learn about um how where we can put that data in sort of a more collective space because we have our data sort of sitting there we scan the forms in but it's um what we do with it sort of next I guess what I'm keen to learn about great and finally Louise who I leave join us halfway through if you're able to unmute yourself if you want to introduce yourself yes hello hi I'm I'm Louise I am a founder along with um Sonia Curse Slake of the Brisbane Base I Repair Cafe and we are we've got three coordinators too so there's two of us and Chris uh Lintot who is amazing we are very very keen to put information in because I think that's something we all need to know about um repairing I'm also a coordinator for Wynnum Manly Boomerang Bags and I tell you that because the team from Wynnum Manly Boomerang Bags volunteers at the Repair Cafe and we use our sewing machines to do repairs and we get very busy doing repairs recently and yes we repair the crutches of pants quite quite regularly and yes so yep we've been we've only been going for a year this is at the the last one we had was at last weekend that's our last one for the year and we restart in February great great well brilliant thank you so much oh I think uh Evelyn raised her hand yeah so I just wanted to add something on a on a different type of collecting data one of our repairers some time ago set up what he calls the Repair Cafe Body of Knowledge which is something which he shares with the other repairers so for example um you know like toasters when they come in what what sort of things can and can't be fixed and he's got a about a 20 page PDF which in which he shares all this sort of knowledge so that's that's just another aspect of data that can be useful to collect brilliant thank you for bringing that aspect as well excellent so um it it was a long intro but I think it was excellent to hear the range of reasons and the range of concerns that people have it will certainly help inform the rest of the session for for us and for everyone um I have uh we have prepared a short presentation about how we work and we'll share that and during the presentation feel free to ask questions in the chat and James will do his best to answer and then otherwise we'll use them in the second part when we go in and break out rooms and we can try to cover as much additional ground as possible so I'm going to try to share my screen can everyone see me I mean the presentation yeah great cool okay uh so we uh at the restart project have been running pop-up repair events for 10 years it was our 10th anniversary in uh June and you know like everyone else pretty much we started because we were frustrated with how many things could be used for longer if only there was a repair option and we knew that there was plenty of skills still in our local community but uh it was not so easy to access it and for many many products the range of paid repair options is very small compared to the amount of need that's out there and there's a few key reasons that uh we started from the very beginning collecting data like many of you are doing now um one was to measure our impact and to motivate volunteers and so that it could also help with some funding applications but also you know recognizing that impact uh means different things to different people and uh it has an impact itself on what kind of data you end up concentrating on and there's clearly multiple different approaches to this and we're not uh uh advocating just for there being one uh size fits all for us the environmental aspect has been from the beginning the driving force uh being able to demonstrate the amount of waste prevented the amount of co2 emissions prevented which back when we started was something that not very many people have thought about yet and then obviously with the kind of data that we collect came more of an awareness uh that some of the information we collect can be used to advocate for more repairability and more broadly for right to repair movement and legislation that's popping up across the world and now that's become a really key aspect of the work and I guess differently from other groups what we uh restart did was we at one point uh shortly after starting running events we kind of took a step back and look at how this problem can affect multiple uh groups in and not just the the repair events the restart parties that we were running and that's where we started creating our own uh tool that was called a fixometer and then it's involved in what is now a platform called restarters.net to help people collect data across groups and then we started working with other organizations as some of you mentioned the repair cafe foundation we worked with them uh and we created a standard uh so that everyone uh that adheres to these standards basically collects the same uh type of information as core helping us to aggregate the data uh we'll go into a little bit more detail on that but so basically just to say that we continue as an organization to support our local um set of groups across London but we've kind of started uh early on and trying to network with other groups and organizations doing similar work because and your example uh really highlights this even 10 years after uh we started uh there's still plenty of questions around how best to go about the data collection whether what do we do with the spreadsheets I mean these are very recurrent questions so it's totally worth uh trying to demystify and and have like a pragmatic approach going forward so obviously we run like everyone else uh repair events uh where the focus is indeed on repairing things and uh that is important uh pointing out that because of that often people are not in a position uh because we're all all people are volunteers I mean James and I have the luxury of doing this as our job now but uh you know people that run repair events are all volunteers and so you can't also expect data collection to be the most important aspect for everyone although some people are trying to implement a data volunteer uh as a way to improve the amount of data that gets collected straight away and what is this kind of data that we are collecting it's not that different from what others have shared here uh what we have done is try to make it more aggregable by coming up with a range of product categories that uh most of the things that we see at repair events get fit under and we have identified some key aspects of all the products that are of interest to us and these are obviously whether uh the product was fixed or whether uh repair was started but not completed but there's still hope for it to be completed at a later stage in a number of ways and whether the product is indeed end of life and so might only be useful to extract them spare part or maybe just needs to simply be recycled and we are interested in the brand of the product so that uh someone in the future might analyze this data by brand uh we also allow for the collection of data about the actual model number of the product although we know that that is often complicated and uh because of the massive range of products out there and colleagues at choice will probably nod in here um there's so many model numbers of so many variants that it's you would need a lot of data in order to be able to um make some informed uh comment about the repairability specifically about a specific model specific full type which is why we need open data to begin with and so that other people can benefit from it or build on it in the future um other key aspects of the data for us is our uh the how old a product is so um and I'll explain why a little bit later and obviously what the problem uh was with the product and whether spare parts were needed for that repair and in case the product was not repaired um what what were the key barriers that prevented us from repairing that product and we also try to gather some information about whether the spare parts were provided by the manufacturer or not uh or were third party and whether um our whether an additional bit of work uh on the device uh would need to be done by a professional repairer or by returning to a new repair cafe or restart event or whether it could be the repair could be completed at home by the participant and uh our key focus is on uh electrical and electronic products uh now this might seem controversial but the real reason for this is well first of all restart as an organization started with environmental concerns around the growing mountain of e-waste 10 years ago I mean this is the origin of it all for us but um then starting to look at the data out there from our events from the range of repair cafes and from everyone else uh you'll see that on average and of course some groups will differ but on average approximately between 60 and 70 percent of all repairs um that are done at repair cafes appeared to be about small and larger electricals and so it is indeed the majority which is not to say that repairs uh on clothes or bicycles on furniture on jewelry isn't important of course it's important but it went also when we look at the opportunities to uh regulate uh future products we see for now uh the bigger opportunities around uh ensuring that future devices future electrical and electronic devices will be made in more repairable ways and and that informs why um we came together with organizations such as iFixit the repair cafe foundation Anstiftung which is the network of the it's a foundation that supports the network of uh German repair cafes it's a country where's the highest number of repair cafes across the world today um and with the Fixit clinics in the US to come up with the open repair data standard so the standard uh that I mentioned earlier which literally helps comparing uh the data from a repair cafe in Germany from a group registered with the repair monitor that some of you have mentioned with the data that's collected by Restart with our own platform Restarters.net with the data uh that others such as Repair Cafe Wales which created their own platform etc etc this standard is what allows us to pull the data together and clean the data at times because there might be some problem with it and and allow us to make some statements about the data which you'll see in a moment and we pull together and release this data twice a year at the moment every six months and we're currently working on an aggregation of all data we have access to up to October 2022 which is to be released by the end of the year and uh so you you'll see this is the most recent aggregation and the point is that everyone because the data is released as open source uh open data uh following the Creative Commons CC buy for SA share like sorry by attribution and share like 4.0 which is for our uses the most advanced standard for license everyone can reuse this data and build on it provided that they keep sharing whatever they come up with with the same approach and so we want to inspire openness and instill more of a sharing culture around the world and um this is a very important aspect of because we know that the data we collect is not providing all the answers but it can help change a system which is currently based on secrecy on lack of sharing of manufacturers defending in all fora their choices of trying to provide as few spare parts as possible for their products and not providing the repair information and trying to limit the way that people are trying to extend the lifespan of their products so this is why ultimately all of this is important and obviously bringing the data together allows us to analyze uh what's happening in a number of ways first of all uh you'll see like a massive spread of product categories with some of them have been more uh frequently brought to repair events but what this tells us is that there is a wide range of products and it's important when you advocate for repairability in legislation because very often we see as part of our advocacy on right to repair that the focus is just on a few product categories almost as if people didn't care about getting everything else repaired and so it's important to change the framing and remind legislators that the same people that want their laptop to be irreparable they also want their coffee maker to be irreparable the toaster and everything else to be irreparable so that's important then of course there's data around the the percentage of products that get repaired and these kind of resonates with most of what we've heard this morning um depending on the focus of groups there's uh 50-55% to 65-70% of success rate then obviously there's depending on the mix of products that you see if you see more electricals you'll see probably a lower percentage if you see more clothing it's unlikely that you will fail uh if you have the skills which I personally don't massively admire those that do but basically uh this data is all about uh electrical so you'll see like a the percentage of success is uh more around the 50-55% but what's most important is the other uh pieces of information that we can gather like from the kind of insights that we have so for example uh looking at what are the type of faults on smartphones in this case that are seen and dealt with at repair events why is this important because in legislation that actually just got discussed and finally voted on although a public statement is still about to come at European level um we had to deal with manufacturers saying that for example making uh a charge import replacement available was not a priority and in a meeting uh with manufacturers and policymakers we were able to say well according to the data from community repair which might not be the best data but certainly is data about real efforts by real people and it's the only data that's openly available to the world uh almost 6% of all the repairs that were attempted were indeed about replacing a charging port so clearly it's not insignificant when you look at 200 million over 200 million smartphones being sold in Europe alone and over a billion to a billion 400 million something like that a year around the world other examples of advocacy that can be done is on you know like what are the real barriers that people are experiencing when um trying to repair things and not being able to and you know lack of spare parts everyone knows that this is the case but it's great to be able to have data to back up all of this so that we're not just talking about anecdotal evidence but we're able to say according to the data we collect this is what's happening and then another aspect is uh the product age which might seem not very important but actually when you look at um some of the legislative approaches are about how long should a product be supported for and how long should uh the spare parts or increasingly software be made available so that a product can continue to be used and reused and if you look at this uh graph here you see that the products that are shortest live at the moment are mobile phones and uh and that means that certainly some of the barriers that people experience um are you know around the availability of parts and around uh software making a product obsolete or perceived as being obsolete in some cases well we should act on that but there's also other data and I don't think I've included that in today's presentation but that shows for example that for laptops if you have um uh the vast majority of devices that we see are certainly older than what uh policymakers think or manufacturers think the cycle of use of a laptop should be so uh our data show that over 40 percent of all laptops that are brought to community repair events happen to be older than five and a half years and so that means people want to keep using these products of course one could argue that people that don't want to reuse their products don't come to these events of course but we are trying to share a range of voices that typically are not listened to and this is helpful in making a counterarguments about extending life of products by making the parts available and making the software available for everyone I'll be very quick on this part of the work that we do and it's more experimental is that we try to involve volunteers in analyzing the data so that some of the data that gets collected about for example um you know what was the problem uh can be uh collectively in a citizen science approach be analyzed so that we gain some of these insights such as the ones around um how what kind of faults are more prominent in smartphones or in vacuum cleaners but this is almost uh uh just for people that are very very dedicated to analyzing data and some of you might be and not everyone though but ultimately the data is used in Europe in this case more prominently because that's where we are based and that's where we saw for now the biggest opportunities but Leanne will tell us more about what's happening in Australia and it's really helpful to be able to tell some of the stories and be able to also increase awareness about the size of the problem and I think I'll stop here I already went over time and I will then stop sharing and pass it on to Leanne maybe for a sense check of what the situation with the Australian right to repair opportunities. Thanks very much Hugo and thank you everyone that's been a wonderful kind of exposure of what everyone is doing and where everyone is based it's great to meet you all I've met um some or most of you but it's terrific to hear all of the work that you've been doing um just to give you a little bit of an update um in terms of the work that we've been doing in the Australian Repair Network is trying to pick up on the Australian Productivity Commission's recommendations that they've made in their right to repair inquiry their final report was released in December 21 and there was a whole lot of recommendations around the barriers to repair in Australia and they made a whole lot of recommendations around amendments to our Australian consumer laws and the possibility of the introduction of a repairability label similar to France and what's being considered in Europe that would appear on your products like a water or water efficiency or electricity efficiency label about repairability also amendments to our Australian consumer laws around manufacturer warranties and consumers understanding um there's also a range of recommendations around e-waste and product stewardship but also around amendments to competition and intellectual property laws so these are all sitting with our federal government at the moment um part of for those of you um who've attended some of our workshops previously we've highlighted that in the final report of the Productivity Commission a lot of submissions were made by people around the barriers to repair um some observations that were made by our commissioners was that um it would have been great to have better information or better data around some of the barriers that were being alleged about access to spare parts and repair information about product durability um you know premature obsolescence so this is really um part of the reason that we're trying to engage with our new federal government and with state and local governments um to say that we do have evidence we haven't you know been able to gather it and perhaps collect it in the best way and that's why I'm really pleased to have Matthew Steen and his colleague here from Choice because Choice is one of the consumer groups here in Australia that um have a really a strong voice with government um as with other peak consumer bodies and we're working closely with those groups there is a proposal in Australia as well that there might be something looked at what's called like a super complaint or like a class action on behalf of a whole range of products and brands in particular and that would enable organisations such as Choice to say look there's a problem in this particular market with these particular brands and so this is why we think um the information that we can gather and collect will actually be instrumental in having conversations and dialogues not only with manufacturers and industries but also with our governments at local and state and federal level and that's the work that we're we're doing um and continue to do and that's why we um really value the work that you're doing at the at the coal phase so to speak over to you James yeah yeah so um James will guide us to the next phase perfect okay thanks so much Hugo thanks so much Leanne um and thank you all for your questions during a good presentation I hope that answered a few kind of questions for you and the plan now is to split into a couple of breakout rooms just to kind of get some smaller groups going to allow conversation to flow a bit more easily um so I'm going to put everyone into a couple of different rooms uh and the idea is that when you get to your room um we can talk about kind of barriers that we all face at the moment to kind of collecting repair data so how are we collecting data at the moment and and kind of one of the things that are stopping is collecting more data is it that we don't know what to collect for example is it that we don't have time we don't have tools to use um and so we can talk about basically how we can try and record more data and and how we can share it more importantly and with the kind of wider repair community by in an Australian context and potentially globally as well if that's something that that you're interested in having heard Hugo speak um so I'm going to put you on to breakout rooms now Hugo will be in one I will be in the other so if you've got questions we're happy to answer them in the breakout room and let's hope this works so see you there and we'll have 15 minutes for this conversation and afterwards we'll come back into the moment together and we'll ideally have one person from each room to very briefly report back on some of the key barriers and potential solutions found in each breakout room um so maybe start having a think if if you're up for uh kind of summarizing what your your group says maybe volunteer at the beginning of the group okay I'm going to put you into the rooms now hopefully I'll come back um Hugo I don't know about your group but we we massively ran out of time and we could keep going for quite quite a lot longer um yeah absolutely and the level of enthusiasm and involvement is super exciting so I think there's you know some concerns and I think we'll um okay here we'll share from our group and I don't know if uh she's happy to go first yeah no worries great thank you for collecting all the inputs by the way it's okay I feel like we were just sort of getting our teeth stuck into it um there's so much to consider when you look at um what data is being collected what data we want to collect what are the limitations for collecting that data and what are some ways to work around that and I think one of the things that that came from it was having some sort of consistency does make it easier if we want to uh collectively use that data to bring about change but then the practical realities of when volunteers are busy doing repairs how do we then ask them to take you know in-depth details about brand model age of product and those sorts of things um when sometimes there's already a queue where people are waiting for repairs and and there's lots happening and um I think part of it was looking at um what information uh just from the discussions we were having I was thinking it's interesting to maybe have some sort of infographic about what data provides us with what sort of information and how could that then be used so that participants and volunteers can see the benefit in taking the time to record it and also um looking at I'm just going through my notes because we were literally talking right to the last second um just looking at different ways that people registered so having a reception or having a try booking form um it was suggested that more creative ways are used to actually get some information perhaps before the person is there wanting the repair to be done so if there was a try booking system set up where people can provide a photo brand details and so on before they actually come in um and again it was then looking at how do we um not make it too onerous on the volunteers in terms of having to upload the information multiple times or into multiple databases so how so sort of picking and choosing one system um and using that with consistency um just going through my notes again sorry um the other one was um looking at um if people are collecting data what the legal implications are of that and also sort of putting different lenses on when we look at the data collection in terms of insurance and legislations in different states um so I think that was that was about it if I forgot anything please jump in guys I think that's that's brilliant over to your group James um I arrived a little late to our group and I think we I'm not sure whether we agreed uh on who would be reporting back so I'm happy to do it and that's someone else's feeling um enthusiastic and wants to summarize the conversation that we had I'm happy to do a bit of a dive in there um that was a great summary um already given and I guess we followed many many of the same questions which is um what is the reason we want to collect this data what's the purpose what are we trying to achieve from it different groups actually have different focal focal point um depending on where their support and sponsorship comes from in our own location it's actually a community sustainability group so we are looking at um emissions and things like that or would like to but for others it is about just getting the products um out keeping them out the fact of keeping them out of landfill um there are the reasons for it can be um there for a split between the community or policy political kind of influences what kind of issues and the focus of our products electrical seems to be large with some but others not so um and there was a bit of a some comment about um weight as a as a factor because if we're doing fabric that's not enough uh fabric that is cotton as opposed to polyester there is a big impact um as to what the product is um the value of having a standard template which means that whether we have technology or not we can actually begin to collect the data and yes it may not get uploaded straight away but it is at least the correct kind of data is being collected um the other factor is that we also think it's important to have the discussion so collecting the data is one thing but the discussion with people the reason the community and building that community uh I know from our own uh experience we have people come back again and again because they enjoy the experience of being there they enjoy watching the repair process and learning something about it as they go so that's an important part of the process too and I think that's it unless somebody else would like to add some good stuff truly thanks William yeah I just wanted to add to it and I know we're kind of coming to a conclusion but and thanks everyone for being up for staying on longer than planned but I think the the whole point of the data collection should never really detract from the social and all the other values of these activities I think in a way it's just trying to add an extra pillar in the importance in the community because of course all the social and the skill sharing and inclusion aspects of this work in a way comes first and all will only come first we'll always come first but there's an additional element which is being able to collect the data and the stories and be telling compelling points about why we need more repairable products and to remove all the barriers that prevent us from fixing and I think using the combination of the data and all of the other good reasons to remove barriers to repairability that is really going to help us win over a lot more skeptics so absolutely data doesn't mean that the stories of why people want to repair aren't as important it's just like another layer that can help us in some other contexts and also I would like to just remind everyone that there isn't like one size fits all here and that different platforms take different routes but that's exactly why we recommend that you do pick one platform that works best for you and we're happy we're not going anywhere we're happy to provide further advice if you know as at the national country level you wanted to go ahead and try to have a united effort and we're happy to advise further and yeah so for any questions we'll be there and Leanne will share our contacts alongside the slides and a few helpful links and thanks again Leanne for inviting us and thanks all of you for all of your efforts in your groups first of all and for all the enthusiasm and the contributions you've shared today. Thank you thank you Hugo and James and Restart project thank you again and thank you to everyone just to follow up on some of the questions I was typing in the chat if you have been past this link to this webinar by someone else what that means is I don't have your email or we don't we aren't in contact with you individually so it would be great the way we're trying to gather people together is if you can sign up to the Australian Repair Network and if you just google that and put Griffith University the reason just for the sign up is that we're trying to collect a database of repair stakeholders so that we can communicate with you when we hold our events and for any updates so if you if you could do that that would be fantastic because I would love to have all repair cafe members on an email list so that I can communicate with you as things develop and we can continue this conversation you know and plan future events for you again so I really appreciate giving your time and again thank you to James and Hugo for giving their time this morning in the UK as well so thank you very much