[hackerspaces] Repair Cafes - A great idea for hackerspaces

[Charles Paul]

Sorry to hear that Mars.  BTW, I think what you are doing with NOLA
Node is great, and you should persevere through these setbacks.
People ask me about your space all the time.

All the best,
Charles

On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 2:07 PM, Mars brown <itcamefrommars at gmail.com> wrote:
> I know those signs...
> Perhaps it should be
> "100$ for me to fix it, 50$ for you to watch, and 25$ for you to learn and
> do it yourself!"
>
> The space I'm working on getting going is temp on hold a bit... mostly
> because it quickly became a dozen people wanting to come by 3 times a week
> wanting me to "help" build stuff... breaking point was a particularly nasty
> attitude person pissed off and storming around complaining to everyone
> because I couldn't focus on just her project.  :(  the next week we went
> from a dozen people showing up to 3 (including me)
>
> I do like this idea - and I would totally be into this if I were there...
> but anyone I helped wouldn't be able to get away without getting an earful
> of how to and this is a ____ and you can use a meter to test this like
> this... etc etc.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 1:55 PM, dosman <dosman at packetsniffers.org> wrote:
>>
>> I like the idea, but I think a slight modification of this into "we'll
>> help you fix it yourself" rather than "we'll just fixit for you" would be in
>> order. For our space at least, we already get too many people coming to us
>> with projects like "I want to pay you to build X for me". That sounds nice,
>> but all of us already have full time jobs and plenty of our own projects
>> we'd like to work on. If someone wanted help fixing their own stuff, I'd
>> hand them a screwdriver, tell them where to point it and help them use a
>> volt-ohm meter to diagnose. They would learn (part of our mission), and in
>> some cases they would likely resolve the problem too.
>>
>> This reminds me of a sign in the back of a TV repair shop I used to work
>> at: "It's $25 for me to fix it, $50 for you to watch, and $100 for you to
>> fix it". That's not quite in the same spirit as this issue, but I always
>> thought it was funny.
>>
>> -dosman
>>
>> On May 9, 2012, at 1:57 PM, Buddy Smith wrote:
>>
>> >
>> > http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/world/europe/amsterdam-tries-to-change-culture-with-repair-cafes.html?_r=1
>> >
>> > When I saw this, I immediately thought that we should begin discussing
>> > it.
>> >
>> > A snippet:
>> >
>> > At Amsterdam’s first Repair Cafe, an event originally held in a
>> > theater’s foyer, then in a rented room in a former hotel and now in a
>> > community center a couple of times a month, people can bring in
>> > whatever they want to have repaired, at no cost, by volunteers who
>> > just like to fix things.
>> >
>> > Conceived of as a way to help people reduce waste, the Repair Cafe
>> > concept has taken off since its debut two and a half years ago. The
>> > Repair Cafe Foundation has raised about $525,000 through a grant from
>> > the Dutch government, support from foundations and small donations,
>> > all of which pay for staffing, marketing and even a Repair Cafe bus.
>> >
>> > --buddy
>> > _______________________________________________
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>>
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