Open data hackathon for the Right to Repair

In preparation to Fixfest 2019, join us on Thursday 19 September between 18.30-21.00 at Mozilla Berlin for a fun dive into an open dataset of repair data on electronics and electrical repairs performed by volunteers around the world.

This event is in support of the Global Climate Strike

Help us discover key barriers to repairability and bring back our Right to Repair.

You don't need to be a data analyst to get involved! We're also looking for help in creating data visualisations, so join us also if you're a communicator, artist or inquisitive repair activist and if you want to help push for the Right to repair with data.

Tickets

Event map

Additional Information

As part of the Open Repair Alliance, community repair organisations around the world collect data on every repair attempted at Repair Cafes, Restart Parties and Fixit Clinics. The importance of this data cannot be underestimated: it shows citizens’ efforts, often tackling repairs for which a commercial repair option simply wouldn’t exist.

Analysing this data can provide us with key insights to influence those who design, manufacture and regulate products in the first place. We want to document and highlight the barriers to repair that people come up against, whether it’s lack of spare parts, poor documentation, or simply bad design. And use the findings to push for a universal Right to repair.

We are currently especially concentrating on computers, as new regulations on their repairability will soon be discussed at EU level. So we are looking into our data for common problems, common (and less common!) solutions, and what are the barriers to repair we should highlight to policymakers.

At the event we’ll be exploring data from over 15,000 repairs, combining datasets from The Restart Project’s international network and from the Reparatur-Initiativen in Germany. An amazing group of volunteers around the world has fixed over 50% of these devices, preventing tonnes of e-waste and hundreds of tonnes of CO2 emissions in the process.

We’ll have data and research tasks suitable for newcomers and experienced analysts, and we’ll provide the tools needed to do the analysis (unless you already have a favourite of your own, in which case we’ll provide the raw data!). All you’ll need to do is bring a laptop.

We hope this is just the beginning. Our goal is to inspire ongoing collaboration and support between the repair and the open data communities. We’ll also be happy to answer questions on Right to repair in Europe, and the way we collect data

If you are interested in consumption, resources, the circular economy, zero waste, green IT, this event is for you.

Learn more about the Open Data standard that repair groups are creating together here: https://openrepair.org/open-standard

And of course we’ll have plenty of refreshments to power us through the evening!