 Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. So we're doing a special series of podcasts which I'm recording over Google Hangouts. So we're doing audio and video because for some unknown reason people don't want to come see me face to face right now. But there's always opportunity and the cool thing is I'm able to now podcast with people from all over the world. So we're going to get an amazing eclectic mix of people from different industries, different perspectives to share their story and tell us, you know, their thoughts and feelings on what's going on right now and all of that cool stuff. Hope you enjoy it. Please subscribe in all the usual places and enjoy. And we're live guys. Thank you for joining us on another podcast stroke video cast. And it's a real pleasure to be joined by Janet and Hugo who are the co-founders of the Restart project coming all the way from their living rooms, I think. How are you guys doing? We're well, yeah. Yeah, pretty good. Thanks. So when did you guys start like home working? Ah, just about two weeks ago, right Hugo? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, two weeks ago. Yeah, pretty much. We went out for kind of one last team lunch. That was it. Yeah, and then it was, you know, yeah. That was it. Oh, crazy. Where did you go? To a pizza place in Brixton. They were really gracious and yeah, it was good. They hit the spot. Yeah. And I get their clothes now, unfortunately. Yeah. But they've got, I mean, there's obviously, I think a lot of these ways they're still doing delivery. And I don't actually know what's allowed and what isn't. But yeah. I think it is allowed. Yeah. I think delivery is allowed. I think delivery is allowed. Although I hear people are a bit like cautious of taking food deliveries at the moment, you know, in case I've made handled badly and whatever. How did you transition to home working? Was it quite easy with the team or? I'll try to answer that, Hugo. So we have a fairly kind of distributed team as it is. We have two people working in Belgium. And then one team member who actually took the plunge and left London last year to move up north closer to his family. So that's actually kind of, we've had a bit of like a nice transition into, you know, a more distributed working. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. And we tend to be an organization that kind of is online first, in a way. So like we try to document so that people can kind of jump in and out when needed, you know. And so I guess it's less challenging than other organizations. And I've heard horror stories from larger organizations that are really struggling with teleworking. And for us, it's the different. That's true. And how are you finding it actually working at home? Is it something you did before or a little bit different for you? Different, but it's also different because of my current specific situation. I just had our second baby just over a month ago. But what this means is like, on the one hand, I get to see a lot of him. And on the other hand, I get to see a lot of him. And so it is more challenging for us as a family. Of course, the main part of them as usual is not me. I had to readjust and change use my working hours because it was just not possible with a toddler. Well, and a baby, it just gets a bit much. Yeah, that is true. I've got two. And I think I'm hoping they don't burst in the room while we're speaking. So if they do, like, we'll just style it out. But yeah, it's fun. They run doing like, hey, hey, how you doing? And you're like, you're trying to not to be like, get away, get away, get away. You're trying to be nice because you run camera. So it's a funny one. But everyone, I remember everyone was like, before this happened, everyone was like, I wish I could spend more time with my family. You know, I wish I got a bit more like balance in my life. And then I'm speaking to all my mates and like, oh, I can't wait to get home. Kids and like, it's a nightmare. So everyone got what they wish for. But did they really want it? It's quite funny. It's early days. I think all the advice around trying to keep a schedule is really is really crucial. Also, just let's not expect that everyone is going to be working the same amount the same way. It's just so fast. Well, then you find actually, I found that people often working harder now. So if they're not distracted by the kids and stuff, then you've got to remind people to actually take holiday, even though it's holiday at home, because you can easily you got nothing else to do, right? And you can easily get quite burnt out by being in front of your computer or making the video calls or whatever activity you do. You've got to just also remember just to like chill out a bit as well and and take the time. And that discipline of maybe creating a separate login for social and non working things. Yeah, yeah, that's tough. That's tough. That's tough. The schedule is interesting. I've I'm quite strict with my schedule like I diorized stuff, especially exercise and things like that. I find that really, really useful when I'm working at home. That's good. So the restart the restart project, Hugo, how did it how did it all begin? Right. So Janet and I both have had a chance to work and live in various parts of the world in the global south. I lived in Kenya for a few years. Janet has lived all over the place from Brazil to East Timor to Mozambique. And, you know, we've been working with activists and with communities trying to make the most of the resources they will have and inspiring them to use technology and communications in different ways. And then both of us ended up in London. And we we met at one of these gatherings meetups of professionals working in ICTs for development. And we we were both a bit disillusioned around some of the traditional NGO work. And also realizing that it was crucial that we do something here in the global north of the where people tend to replace things rather than repairing and using and fully appreciating the value of the things that they already have. And that's how we started discussing. And after a long time discussing, we moved to hosting the very first the restart party, which was a wonderful event and imaginable right now in June 2012. And the first very first event where a few people met up in a pub in north London and started fixing together. And, you know, this is an event that we had imagined. But, you know, until you actually see it in practice, you didn't know whether it would actually happen or not. And people that we had never met came and shared their skills and repairing electrical and electronic products brought by friends and others. And that was the beginning and it snowballed all from there. Amazing. Amazing. And is this mostly like small electronics, right? So like phones and laptops and stuff like that, tablets and. Yeah, the world small is crucial. And it's not just electronics, it's also small electricals. So small household appliance, kitchen appliance, beauty appliances. I would have never guessed that we would see a lot of hair straighteners and hairdryers, headphones, mumps, TVs, printers, you name it. There's a huge variety. I mean, we, when we started collecting data more systematically about the products that are brought to the events that we organize and the global network around them as, you know, it started in London, but there's people in those in or more countries that run events as part of our global network. We started collecting data in 34 categories of products, including, you know, from laptops to headphones and everything in between. And yeah, so it's really a huge variety of things that people would love to repair, but often they can't find a practical or a tangible alternative to finding a neighbor or someone in their community that could share their skills and help them fix it because a lot of the commercial repair is no longer available or isn't practical or at times it's just to expand. Another thing that we, so we expected there would be like this mountain of stuff that people wanted to fix. Like we knew because we just, we just know from, you know, living in this world. But what we did not expect was that there were all these people in every neighborhood and every street and every block that really want to repair stuff and help people repair stuff. And part of what's, part of what's interesting for our volunteers is the variety. It's like the roulette, you know, they don't know what's going to come in and it's kind of exciting, all the different things that they might learn how to fix and get a chance to fix. If you love repair, it's like instead of, you know, a lot of our, actually a lot of our volunteers do go down the street and they literally pick up, you know, the flytip stuff that people leave. But you know, in London people don't have the space or their partners are like, stop collecting garbage, you know, and so we really love our events because it's basically this, it's kind of the same thing except that they get to meet the owner of the device and they get to meet somebody else. And it's a really unique experience for our volunteers as well. It's amazing. So how does it work? So you mentioned volunteers. So can you just give me kind of run through like how the events actually work and yeah, I can do that. So basically, we don't really have a reference for this because it's kind of like this leaderless, you know, group of people that turn up and help each other. But basically, when you come, there's usually someone, a couple of people at the door who will help register your device and try and do it like a mini triage figure out maybe what's failed. And then they'll assign you, you may have to wait a little while, but they'll assign you to somebody who has the right skill set to sit down with you and help you. Yeah. And then hopefully towards the end, we can figure out what the outcome was and get a little bit of feedback from the participant and do a safety test on the way out. Yeah. That's the way it works. Yeah. Nice. And how can you become a volunteer to have a skill set of some sort and Yeah, we have a, we have like a forum and a whole platform for volunteers that can register their skills at restartures.net and share the link. Yeah. Awesome. That's really cool. And so what do you think the issue is? I mean, like a lot of these, like, why do you think people don't want to repair stuff first and they just go straight to buy something new? Like, for example, my phone broke, well, I smashed my screen like last month. And then the back smashed. So I went to, you know, this is like phone repair shops in the underground. I think like I smashed whatever they're called. And they were like, it's going to cost you 250 quid or something to fix. And you're like, hmm, so I paid like, I don't know, let's say 500 quid for my Android phone, plus another 250. I could just get another one for 500. Like, do I, you know what I mean? Like, it's interesting that the price to fix it is not so different from There's another disincentive for you. You probably, you probably are kind of semi aware of, which is that your Android phone soon enough will lose software support as well, right? So soon enough, you're going to lose the updates, you're going to lose the security patches. And so that also kind of subtly erodes the value of your phone for you. And so for us, we like to say that, you know, it's usually two sided. Usually the system is probably, you know, working against you and creating all these negative disincentives to repair. But then also there is a part to it where we've kind of gotten a bit, you know, we've gone a little bit conditioned and it's partly through these mobiles and electronics to be like, okay, well, it's just easier to just go online and buy another one. And what's really interesting about this moment we're living in is actually it's not easier to go online now. You're right. Yeah. Sadly, it's also not easy to be able to find an independent repair business or any business that could help you fix it. Parts businesses are still operating, we've noticed some of the key ones. There are businesses still operating. Yes. And we need to be a little bit careful also, because I think some of them are trying to take advantage of the situation. But but there are still many quality businesses operating. Yeah. So how would you, so if my phone is breaking now, being locked down, what would be the best thing like YouTube, find some reports and parts on Amazon and then trying to fill out how to fix my repair. So we're helping people to triage repairs together with our volunteers online. And, you know, we really have to be, yeah, we have to be real about what people can achieve on their own at home. Yeah. Yeah. So have you now transitioned from like the live events that you've been building over the last eight years and stuff? Has it been easy to transition to like online? Have you been, has it still obviously work in progress or have you found it? Very early date so far. We haven't hosted one yet. We know some people in our extended network have run test events. But it's an interesting time because, you know, members of the public might choose to prioritize other kinds of engagements as well. And also like providing the same time of care and personal support that we provide during a physical event is not really immediately possible because the whole point of our events is repairing together as opposed to telling you, yeah, watch this video and do it yourself. It's a level of confidence that you can help if literally you're holding the device together and learning how to disassemble or take apart a product, right? And you cannot replicate that entirely online. So we're looking at like potentially kind of more asynchronous approach. So getting people to send us problems they have, triaging them in the time that our volunteers have online because they're also super busy working from home. And then, yeah, like working through it with people. But a lot of them have come down to, wow, you probably do need to find a professional near you. And so, yeah, we're just trying to figure out how to work all the time. And you're like in your, obviously, you're both very successful entrepreneurs and you've been in it for a long time, right? Eight years is a great time to be running a company. Is this, do you think the biggest challenge you both have faced running a company? Well, we're a charity. I mean, technically, we're a charity. Social enterprise, but as much as from the beginning, we really wanted to be scrappy and bootstrap and make money. And very much we did in the first years when we were lean and hungry. We were, I guess, suppose we were more entrepreneurial. We ended up, like many, raising institutional funding to pay for the work. As much as there's this talk about social investment and investment in social enterprise, ultimately, and these investors, they seek an immediate financial return that we just weren't necessarily able to provide. And I guess our mission was more the system change piece, so the campaigning piece. And that, you know, there is no, ultimately, there's no business model for that work. So we have a lot of institutional fundraising. And actually, we've been really lucky in terms of, at this moment in time, our funders and our funding is really appropriate to the situation. And a lot of the work that we are planning on doing, we can carry on doing. So, but it is, it is an interesting time for charities and many charities are facing, you know, huge constraints and questions about their future. It's interesting what you're asking, Louis, because I think, like, the bigger challenge was years back when we had to make the case for all of this. And in a way, all of a sudden, I mean, it's not just this particular event, but there's been a series of realizations for people that, you know, repair is essential and should be at the heart of the way we look at the economy. And, you know, like climate change starting to be too late, a wake up call for people. And there isn't enough questioning of the way we consume yet. But it's certainly we don't have to explain why is it that we help people relearn repair skills and why we help them think differently about what products they're buying and whether they are repairable. Because it's interesting, like a natural, let's say a natural disaster, like, like what we're facing at the moment, it's quite humbling, right? You realize that, you know, in the face of a natural disaster from Mother Nature, like, there's nothing you can do. And all of this consumerism and stuff just, it kind of falls by the wayside almost. It gets you thinking, like, you know, I've got no idea how to really survive if it all goes down. I know my way to Sainsbury's, but I don't know how to go and hunt and survive and what mushrooms to eat in the forest and how to fix the stuff I've got at home, right? I've got probably got plenty of stuff at home, plenty of electronics to keep me going. But even though I did a science degree, and I probably should know how to fix stuff, I've got no idea. You know, you kind of lose the skills when you don't use them. And what would be interesting is if people, if this goes on long enough, will people's habits change, you know? And will they start to get more into fixing stuff and not using stuff as much? That would be quite interesting to see. Yeah, I think it's a bit of an open question. I mean, I had an interesting experience the other day, like trying to help a vulnerable neighbor who couldn't get the landlord to bring in an electrician to fix some of the light fixtures. So she's literally in the dark. And there it was, you know, on IKEA, I mean, me, of all people, I feel ashamed, but, you know, we needed an option. So there it was. And I was like, oh, this looks appropriate, you know, add to the cart. And then you get to the delivery window. And you're like, oh, actually, I need another solution. So we got a lamp off of gumtree. And a really kind person, you know, delivered it to us like that, you know, and so it really gets you thinking. Well, I think the same way, you know, next time I need a budget emergency lamp, you know. Yeah, gumtree is great because that's all reused like old stuff, right? People's things that you can use and recycle and those things. eBay's the same. I mean, they're great, actually, certainly in times like this. I found also there's a lot of, in my area in London, I'm in Islington, there's loads of Facebook groups now for the different postcodes. And so people are like, and the WhatsApp groups as well, like we've got a spare loaf of bread. Does anyone want it? We have a spare or does anyone have? Yeah, no. I mean, I'd really love this a paradigm of mutual aid because really, ultimately, that's what inspired the restart party was, you know, I worked in Brazil where they have, they have a, they already have a word for a collect, a fluid collective of people that help each other without a leader. You know, it's called Muchira. And it comes from Guadani indigenous culture, ultimately. And it's just funny because if you think like, I remember asking, like early days, I've been in the UK for maybe 12 years now, my mom's British, but I needed to kind of learn. And I asked, you know, is there something like the Muchira? Is there something like, is there like a, in the British social operating system? Like, does this exist? And I remember people telling me, oh, that's the blitz spirit. And I was like, oh, but that's a long time ago, the blitz spirit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really, it's really, it's interesting because I think what you find is like the silver lining in, in these kinds of things is that your kids really sweet, by the way. Well, one of the silver linings is that, you know, when everyone has a shared experience, you know, like the country's right, really, people pull together. You know, it's really, it's really cool. And that's what we had in the blitz. And that's probably what we're having now. Like every human on the planet is thinking about this situation right now in it. It's funny because London, as you'll know, right, when you come to London, if you've not been born here or lived here for a long time, it takes quite a while to tap in. You know, despite having a million people, it can be quite lonely. People are busy, they're working, they're, you know, it's quite tough and it takes a bit of time to find your thing. But now, when something happens like this, suddenly the community comes out. Yeah. And everyone, you know, they keep time and carrying things in the wall. It does, it does make you think, though, it's like, um, that we, and when we run restart parties, we do often have this people come and they have like almost like a, like an emotional response or like, or some people also sometimes people come with other needs that are not about the electronics. And what you can tell is that we don't have that many spaces on a recurring basis. Maybe because we're a highly secular society, we lost some of the kind of like meeting spaces or coming together spaces where, you know, there's, there's no, nothing required of you. And it's all just out of, you know, just for the, it's for the greater good. It's for like, it's for human connection. Yeah, sometimes people feel like they wonder what's the catch. Whether, you know, like at one point they will be asked to pay or why is this happening like this in an open way with no questions asked and you can bring, you know, whatever, like you could be coming for whatever reason. And yeah, I remember meeting someone in London who works in finance. And, you know, after listening and being kind of really impressed with what we do at one point he was asking me, but do you really think that this needs to be a not for profit initiative? Like why? What are you doing? And so it's like, yeah, look, you know, it exists in this way because it exists in this way. I mean, it's not, we're not trying to like create another exploitative environment where people are coming because of a service. You know, people confuse the types of efforts often, you know, we're trying to rebuild connections and give some hope actually one volunteer doing these events in Hackney Bridget wrote a wonderful blog post about the importance of giving people hope and particularly this time. She quoted some eco philosophers whose name I'm going to forget but she said that hope is something you do and not something you have. And I really like I definitely agree with that. And the other thing is I think like radical openness is something that we don't really practice enough of. And I think, you know, oftentimes like, you know, in the tech space also, and we say, this is a diversity initiative or we're all about open. This is open night. Everyone's welcome. It's open. But are we really like meeting people where they are, you know, are being radically open, I think means it means more than just opening the doors and, you know, making a call out. And that's like that's our challenge at our events as well. I think it's constantly a challenge to truly be radically open. But I really I think what your thing boils down to is like random acts of kindness. You know, like, like people coming to coming to your events with a problem and a complete stranger saying, Hey, don't worry, I'm going to help you fix it. And I don't want anything in return, you know, apart from maybe some conversation and, you know, that's it, right? Like, you know, people need to be kinder to each other and these things, you know, enable that I think it's really cool. And I and I and I hope, again, with with the stuff that's going on now and even before, it's like, you know, people can just be a little bit, if the people are a little bit kinder to each other, it will just make the world, you know, that bit better. And so I think, yeah, I think what you guys doing a beautiful, you know, and it's, it's people being kind to each other. It is. And there are challenges, like so one of the things that might be fun to we should also say that it's, you know, like there's a challenge to create this social space, right? So a lot of a lot of our volunteers are super skilled and they are motivated by giving their skills and sharing. But they're necessarily good at kind of narrating or creating that, you know, social bond with, you know, with the total stranger out of the blue. So there is also some work that has to kind of, I think of people over time, they learn how to do that. But initially, a lot of people do get really engrossed in the technical challenge in front of them. And we have a challenge of making sure that it's that it's still a social experience and that the participant learns something as well. Yeah, yeah. It makes me want to like, learn to fix stuff. Again, like it's quite a nice thing. It's like a chemistry union. Like the great thing is that you're like kind of following, you know, it's it's technical, you're you're following a way and all those things. Also, mind you don't read the motorcycle diaries. It's funny. Wait, do you mean, you know, you're not talking about Percy's book, but the Che Guevara? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've got a copy in the big shelf there. Don't ask me to bring it out. But in fact, there is Jen. Oh, then do you know what? I'm actually mean this. I'm going to get it. Not not that. But I mean, Zen in the Art of Maticycle. I watched that as a film. And then I read I read this book. This is by Robert. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing book. And it kind of reminds me a little bit about what you guys are. Well, I just published a kind of like what I'd call maybe like a feminist 21st century remix of him talking about like the empowering part of repair as well. And kind of, yeah, like the way that, you know, that challenges like, well, it empowers people and empowers them potentially to challenge power structures and the patriarchy and everything. So I, I appreciated that too, because I feel like sometimes the books that are written about craftsmanship and repair and well, a lot of the time they're written by men. So, but yeah, that is absolutely a reference. And I think why are they written by men? Why they will win by men? I mean, there's an issue. There's a gender issue, I guess more broadly, like in, in, in the professions in this, the, the way that we qualify in our skills. Yeah. A lot of we have, we were actively seeking out women repairers and, you know, kind of recruiting them and working with them. And a lot of them do tell us that, that they really, that one of their greatest regrets is that as girls, they were not as involved in, you know, in their dad's hobbies or in, in the kind of technical world that they saw in front of them. And so a lot of them are kind of like compensating maybe adults. Yeah. As a percentage, how many of you are volunteers are women? I would say it's roughly maps to the kind of percentage of engineers, which is, which is roughly like one in 10. One in 10, one in 10 volunteers are women. Wow. Yeah. Interesting. And in other, so we don't fix, you know, clothes and furniture and other things, but some repair groups do. And there you have a very gendered, kind of, a very gendered split where, yeah, women are teaching people how to fix textiles. Yeah. The things, and it's nothing against that. It's just that we really want to see women represented in what, with batteries and plugs and electronics. Yeah. Interesting that. Yeah. I mean, it's a choice, I guess, women make earlier on, right, to do the science subjects or arts. I've got two daughters, so it's going to be interesting to see what they navigate to. I mean, I love science. My wife works in the hospital as a physio, so we're both like sciencey. It'll be interesting. I get them involved in my hobbies. And yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. I'll be cool to see where they end up. Well, there is a question about, like, what, you know, I guess with women in STEM more broadly, like, is it a pipeline problem or is it a problem, like, later on? And I think there's, there are the two parts of it. I think, I think girls do leave technical subjects earlier than boys. But I don't, but I think at this point women are actually quite represented when you get to higher education, let's say. But whether they stick around and whether the incentives are there for them to stick around seems to be one of the bigger questions. It's also a personal choice. Like, you tend to find women don't prefer going into those types of subjects. Like, if I think of my social circle, I mean, most of the women, and I think they all did better than the guys at university for sure, went for more arty type subjects or certainly the jobs they chose. That's the question of, like, where does that come from? I think it's probably ultimately a little bit of nature and a bit of a bit of nurture, right? Well, what about, what about the structures, though, like that are around them? Like, there's so many other questions about, you know, how easy it is to, like, to be a woman in technical fields and to be promoted. And I mean, I don't know, I don't pretend to know all of them, but I think there are some also just kind of systemic or structural issues there, too. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I think in the UK, you know, out of any country in the world, I think my daughters could probably be and grow up to be whoever they want to be. Yeah. You know, like, they can choose different things. I think there's definitely been, been, like, structural problems also, I guess, like role models as well. There's not many, like, female role models to look to in those subjects. Yeah. I've also heard it said that it's, you know, that men find it difficult to role model for women sometimes and, like, because of perceptions or whatever, that sometimes even when there's a lot of men who want to help role model and mentor women, it can be kind of problematic and it can create its own problems anyway. But it seems like for us, we've noticed that if we kind of cluster women and get them together, so at our events, if we, if we create kind of just, like, you know, like a little gang of women in the corner that are, that are all the parents together, they're visible and they're part of the event, but they kind of hang out together, that really helps. What do you think about it, Hugo? Yeah, definitely. I think that we've made some mistakes and actually there is the risk of kind of creating an exclusion by trying to be inclusive rather than, you know, like, inspiring people to do what they want to do, but not, like, set aside from others. So, like, our more successful attempts at bringing and supporting, bringing together and supporting women repairs has been actually, like, not, like, making them part of, like, bigger events that we run and having the right amount of support so that it's, that they feel an extra incentive. But I would also say, I would defend, we also have skill shares for women and non-binary people and I think it is a good space. Like, I think we should have the both. I think we should create a space for women, especially to get to know each other, to get started, but then also, let's be together and be visible at the main events and that I think that's what we're going to be doing going forward. Yeah. No, you can actually see a cluster of women or non-binary people involved at fixing together, they can be a force of inspiring other women that come maybe just like some help with their appliance, but actually might think deeply about how they could get involved themselves, otherwise they wouldn't necessarily be able to see them. The girls and the kids that come, they definitely, they absolutely need to see women repairing and getting technical as well, so it's good. Yeah, no, no, I mean, yeah, what you're doing is awesome. What I find just really interesting and we're never really going to know the answer to this is how much of it is genetic. Having two girls has been interesting because like me and my wife, we're like, oh, we're going to give them lots of different gender neutral stuff and they can play football and they can play and they can do ballet and they can do gymnastics and they can do those kind of things and I love science. I've been, certainly at the moment as we're at home, there's loads of cool online science stuff and music and dance, whatever. So I'm trying to like expose into as many things as possible, right? But obviously like as a parent, you know for well that your kids spend their whole lives trying to unlearn the things that you try to teach them. So you've got to also give them the space to make their own choices and so it's just, I think, fascinating just to, you know, how much of it is what is the nurture, like the environment I'm creating for them and how much of it is like, hey, they're born with it, the DNA. Inates, I don't know whether to say genetic, but yeah, innate characteristics. It's like in my house, for example, my brother, like the first thing that he, you know, that is left from his creations at preschool was, you know, a plate with the Milky Way galaxy that he had drawn, you know, at age three or something, you know, and I definitely was, I just wasn't drawing the Milky Way galaxy. That is just, that's just. So when did, when did you get interested in, in this stuff? Like has it always been? Yeah, so for me, I grew up with my super technical brother, he was older, and so for me, there was a lot of the kind of, I guess there wasn't, it just, it just didn't occur to me to become technical. I was just a more of a social person, just like from very early on, but, and also I could just get help often, and then there was a bit of that kind of, oh come on, go on, just can you just fix this for me kind of thing. And so I, I mean, I got really interested in the, what technology could do for us, like, you know, I really got interested in the early internet, you know, I, you know, I coded some websites and HTML in the late 90s, but I was never interested in the physical side of technology, it just, it was just a, you know, it's like a thing, you know. And I think I became interested more as an activist, or more as like a kind of, damn it, I'm gonna do, you know, to make a point of this, I'm gonna, I feel like Ugo, you were a little bit more geeky and hands-on by nature, I don't know, is that fair? Yeah, well I guess, well my, I received a computer and played with it, with my father, I think at age six or seven, and you know, it was an old Texas instrument, one of those with cartridges, and that you could also connect like a tape player to load software to it, and you had to be careful about what volume in the tape player was not too high or too low, otherwise the computer couldn't read the software in there, like it was a whole other world, you know, pre-floppy disks, and I guess I've developed a fascination with helping others make the most of this equipment that they had, like I remember helping friends sort out the low RAM memory availability so that they could play their video games, I will go to friend's house and somehow tweak some files so that they could free the memory from their early Windows versions, you know, the Asian Windows. I feel like you were like, you were in student government and you were involved in some procurement campaign related to equipment or something like that. Yeah, so there was a time, you know, when students, I guess it's true now, but I'm on the receiving end as a much older person now, but you know, back then we knew a lot more about computers compared to the teachers and the people that were supposed to make decisions, so I remember actually for my high school, helping decide what computers should be bought and looking at a procurement document, and you know, now fast-forward 25 years later, we're looking at what computers should be allowed on the market based on whether they are repairable or not, and what kind of procurement public institutions should put in place to prevent unnecessary waste, which I guess is, you know, like at a very different scale, it's some of the same ethos of why, so. Yeah, definitely. Someone needs to tell Apple to make their phones to last longer. I'm sure, didn't they get caught out somewhere? There was something that came out saying that they... Yeah, so there's been all kinds of battery gates and all sorts, and they've been fined in Italy and France by the antitrust authorities, although peanuts, little money for them, and a class action settlement, much more substantial in the US, although nothing really that can change the behavior, they're more like reactive measures, so that's why part of our work has evolved into campaigning for what we call a universal right to repair, so that, you know, manufacturers should be a lot more transparent about the limitations of their products and also make them much easier to be repaired and not exclusively by themselves. If my image earlier in this video was like stuck, like, it's because I was like beachballing, and I'm one of those people that I have a MacBook Air with four gigs of RAM soldered on the motherboard, and that's it. That's, there's no upgrades for me. You need to go around to upgrade your RAM. I'm stuck. I mean, there's only like one guy in Taiwan who will do it for like, you know. Yeah, and I mean, this is not just an Apple problem, but it's an example of some of the situation we're now stuck in, and that's why we ask for regulation to help change the scenario, because everyone is stuck into this situation where products have become more and more miniaturized, and as a result of that, often, or as an excuse for that, manufacturers choose to solder components that in the past were never soldered, such as RAM or a hard drive or a solid-state drive into the main board, which means that in case that component was to fail, or if you wanted to upgrade it because all of a sudden you realize that you need a computer with twice as much memory, you're no longer able to do that, and you need a new one. That's it. The keyboard, the infamous keyboard on the MacBook, wasn't it, you know, the £1,700 keyboard where you had to replace the whole top case, the whole thing on the top. So there's numerous examples of it, but there's also, and this is something we're watching, is that companies are increasingly using software locks to prevent repair. So don't Android, I'm sure I got a message saying, if you've got an old Android, something or other, you're not going to get the security updates. Yeah, so there's this issue that particularly in the ecosystem, because Apple on this front, they tend to support its products for longer, for five years, and at times longer than that. But although we'd love every phone to be supported for 10 years, why is it that a smartphone is supposed to last two or five, you know, it should be up to you to decide when it's appropriate to upgrade to a new one. The amount of spare phones I've got in my desk is like we do have. But anyway, the main issue is that as part of the Android ecosystem, not even Google itself supports officially its smartphones for longer than three years, when it comes to security updates, which, and in fact, often they interrupt at a completely arbitrary time. And that sends the message that this is it, and you should upgrade and get a new device. There's been other approaches, and you know, it's possible to support a product for much longer, because free and open source alternatives that are very hard to install and take a lot of time actually can make use of the same code to support phones for a much longer period of time. And Fairphone, for example, has been able to support for a year. But yeah, we need it as a standard. Yeah, definitely, because most people can't be bothered. Like, you know, how do I go and install it? Understandably, it needs to be easy. One of the things we fear is that the mobile is like this new paradigm for, you know, you look at it and you're like, Oh, it's three years old, you know, what we fear is that that is going to become the paradigm for other product categories. Like, now that you're smart television needs, it needs updates, it needs patches. Are we just going to treat this gigantic TV screen, which has a huge impact in production? Like we treat a mobile like, Whoa, three years gone, just throw it on the pavement. You know, and when it's physically still fine. And this is a real threat coming forward is all these smart, quote unquote, smart appliances and things is that if they become physically, if they become, you know, they become unusable because of software, then we have a big problem. And then there's another aspect to the repair kind of the right to repair piece, which is around manufacturers using software to lock down components. So for example, there are ships where we suspect that Apple could just at any time decide to lock them down and keep independence from replacing them. And this is something we're really watching with great care because it could really undermine repair. 100% on the positive side, Tesla. So really the first car that offers software updates, right? So often the things with cars is people change them, what actually quite a lot, you know, send your leasing and stuff. And while certainly going like the leasing way, right, less people are going to be owning cars. Maybe it's actually going to be sharing cars. But at some point in the very near future, but Tesla do like regular software updates. So I think that's great because you'll end up changing if you have a Tesla, for example, or something like it as more cars go that way, you'll end up having to change the hardware of the car less as the companies start to start to update the software. And they could probably actually then make money selling extra stuff via the hardware updates. I think there's some cool stuff. I mean, would you mind if Apple or Android tried to sell you a cool update? Yeah, so if they're saying that, look, we can't afford to update you after a certain period, then we should think about, okay, are we willing to pay for that update? The answer is, in my case, probably yes, but we should be offered that, I think. But they need to build for the future. And I think that's what we're seeing is that the business models need to radically change. And this hasn't really reached the sea suites of these organizations yet. They're still, I mean, they have talented engineers and designers who are absolutely up to the challenge tomorrow. But until they get, from a leadership level, the business models change, we're not going to see this. And so that's why, for example, at Tesla is potentially a good example of, and I don't know all the details of what you mentioned, but I can imagine that because of the culture and the leadership, they're willing to entertain these radical changes. Yeah, definitely. What's quite interesting though is people's psychology. And someone sees an influencer on Instagram with a new iPhone for $1,000 or £1,000, you're like, I want one. Like people just buy them, right? I know a friend of mine lives with her, her flatmate, her flatmate lost her phone. So I think they broke her phone, it was repairable, but she was like, no, no, I want the new one. It's like our hunting and gathering, you know, it's like hard, hard wired stuff. It's weird, right? It's like, if I say to you, like, whatever you do, don't buy the new phone, you're thinking, oh, I've got a better phone. I've got a better phone. But it's also true that the same doesn't apply to the vast majority of other appliances. So I think even people that tend to get quite obsessed with their phones, they're still awesome. I mean, it's not just about, you know, the, you know, some of the scary stories about how the smart appliances might decide to shut you out of them and not let you use them for a one point just randomly. But I think that there's something about the smartphones that, you know, in rich respect in a few years time, probably would look back and say, well, that was the anomaly. Because for many other things, even people that might be a bit like excited or excitable about a phone upgrade would totally be with using all of their other things for as long as possible. So let's also not get too like sidetracked by that. Yeah. And like, the Sonos scandal, I don't know if you've heard of that, but the Sonos scandal around them kind of dropping support, I think that was really kind of a sea change moment, because what I think what some of the tech companies realize is, oh, wait a minute, people actually really do want to keep some stuff. And they're going to be really upset if we force them to bin it. So I think, I think it was right, I think we, I think that, and I was encouraged by the backlash to Sonos on that. It wasn't just, it wasn't just like, you bastards, I spent money on that. It was, this just doesn't make any sense. Like, it's bad for the planet. It's bad for me, you know. I hadn't realized how big that would be. Like the fact that, you know, like I thought it was just geeky music fans, but actually it's been huge. The amount of, I mean, it forced Sonos to go for a soft U-turn. And, you know, like it's actually still improving. I mean, even the very fact that they remove this feature, so cool feature to brick their device when it was sent to them, you know, when they were suggesting that people could mark a product for recycling. And, you know, by doing that, no one would ever be able to reuse that product again. And it was prepared for recycling, right? By making it impossible to be used again. And that's gone. That feature no longer exists. They've updated silently at one point the operating system so that you cannot like do that again, which is, which is an interesting side development. Definitely. That's great. I also remember Apple changed all their connectors, like a few years ago, right? Big up for them about that. But everyone still bought them, ultimately. So a lot of people are concerned with the universal chargers and connectors, but we're, we've got our eyes on the price. We're more interested in, you know, design for repairability, you know, this, that all the stuff we've already talked about, because we think that absolutely where the, and that's where the companies are going to push back so hard is on design for repairability, repair documentation, you know, and access to affordable spare parts, they're absolutely going to push back on those. Yeah. Well, I think what you guys are doing is great. I mean, it's, you know, you don't even think about it. You buy your phone, you don't think what the repairability is like, or you don't even think about them designing it not to be repaired. I mean, you know, it's a great thing to highlight and, and you're, yeah, really good work. Really good work. Thanks for having us on your show. Pleasure. Thank you so much for coming in. I'm looking forward to attending one of your events live in London, or if you do one online, please let us know. What's the best place for people to find you and see what you guys are up to? Well, you, our site is verystartproject.org, and we are very acting to Janet's, particularly on Twitter at restartproject, and we're on Instagram and Facebook as well. And all our work on the right to repair is on repair.eu, because we're launched together with partners, a campaign, European wide campaign, to push for right to repair in legislation, national and European level. So follow us there as well. Amazing. Well, we'll put all of that in the show notes. And Janet and Hugo, thank you so much for coming in. Stay safe, stay healthy. And I look forward to seeing you both in person and live at some point soon.