Latest / Mechonomist Podcast / Dan Hettinger of Western North Carolina Repair Cafe

Transcript

Dan Hettinger of Western North Carolina Repair Cafe · Mechonomist Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to The Mad Redneck Substack.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: This morning we have a special guest, Dan Hettinger of Western North Carolina Repair Cafe.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: We'll get right into it.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: So can you tell us about Western North Carolina Repair Cafe and
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: the upcoming conference that y'all are having in January?
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: So Western North Carolina Repair Cafe,
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: just like other repair cafes around the world,
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: we're A group of volunteers who meet regularly and volunteers of all skill levels
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: and pop around different locations,
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: but we invite the public to bring us our broken stuff and we'll fix it right then
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: and there for free, no questions asked.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Works on a lot of different levels.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're fixing stuff at no cost.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: We're Meeting with people and we're sitting down across the table from them
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: and we're showing them how the repair is done.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes we're engaging them in the repair process.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: So there's like an educational component as well.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's much work as I've done in the last 20, 30 years.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is probably the most pure form of community action that I've been a part of.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Really getting folks in from all different walks of life,
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: getting in the same room together and having a conversation
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: where otherwise people may never see each other out in the wild.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like I said,
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: works on a lot of different levels,
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: but the essence of it is just repairing stuff for free.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: So our event that we have coming up in January, we're calling it the Community Repair Summit.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: For Western North Carolina, and we're foremost inviting our volunteers to come in.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to invite other leaders,
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: other folks doing community repair adjacent work in the area.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: And we're just going to have a full day of workshops and classes and sort
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: of level up our skills as volunteers.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: But then also it's our chance to have some breakout groups
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: and some discussion groups where we're Sort of advancing the cause,
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: talking about other directions we can take it.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk about the other community repair organizations,
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: the networks of community repair organizations in Western North Carolina,
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: what type of organizations there are and what maybe some of the barriers are
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: to being able to do community repair, including maybe right to repair?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we've got our automotive groups, Zach.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: I know you get into that.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: We've got Garage Goblins started up.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: I want to say they really came on my radar about a year ago, maybe two years ago.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's another group,
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: Working Wheels, a little more integrated
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: into the nonprofit network around here.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: But both groups are offering free or very low-cost automotive repairs.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Asheville Tool Library,
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: and then some of the other tool libraries that we have popping up in the area.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty excited to see one in Yancey County.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: Our group is going to be visiting them next month.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then another tool library, the Henderson County Tool Library in Mills River.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: We went to visit them last month.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, a lot of different tool library organizations.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's folks that are doing home repair.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: There's quite a bit still happening following Helene with home repairs.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're kind of excited to explore possibilities of doing in-home appliance repair
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: the future, but not really ready to talk about that too much.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, we're just assembling volunteers and seeing who's out there already doing the work.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Sadly, we are seeing a lot of professional repair shops We're closing here,
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: just like I assume they're closing everywhere.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: So really trying to understand what's going on there and if there's a way
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: that we can community repair.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Organizers can somehow support repair professionally in the area.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Although that's a tricky one.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: as far as right to repair,
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: To be honest,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: we don't have a strong right to repair presence at the conference for now.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: If anybody's watching, yeah, we'd love to get that input at the conference.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: If anybody has anything to add to that, yeah, please reach out.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Ann Lawson,
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: who wrote a book about,
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think she wrote a book about the experience of working in a grocery store,
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: recently wrote a Substack post calling for a right to repair movement.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think right to repair has some interesting sort of crosses
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: between different types of people,
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: different types of people would be interested in right to repair,
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: sort of a nonpartisan type issue in our highly partisan industry.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I like right to repair.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: My next question for you, is this a movement?
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, absolutely.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we're seeing these pop up everywhere.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: in North Carolina,
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: we have a nice infrastructure in North Carolina,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: I would add, for building a repair cafe in North Carolina.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: We have an umbrella nonprofit called the Triangle Repair Network that Don
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: from Repair Cafe NC set up.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: A number of years ago,
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: but basically we pool our insurance costs and there's sort of a framework
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: for starting repair cafe in North Carolina.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: And from that, we've got a repair cafe in the Triad, Winston-Salem area.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's one in Charlotte, got a new one in Wilmington.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, there's one in Raleigh and what we're doing.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now there's a separate group in Henderson County and Transylvania.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean,
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: we can count probably six, seven,
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: eight different repair cafes independently,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: for the most part,
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: independently operating in North Carolina,
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: although we do share pooled resources through Triangle Repair Network.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a model that could be applied anywhere.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's nice to keep it in the state.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: That helps with quite a bit of the nonprofit side of the work, but...
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, North Carolina alone,
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: but yeah,
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: we're seeing them not so much in the Southeast,
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: but certainly a large network in New York area.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, it's an old idea throughout in the West Coast.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: They've been doing it for longer than we have.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: And then certainly out in Europe, it's almost entrenched in Europe.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: That would just be the repair cafe model.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: But then, yeah, out of, I mean, I would say,
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Quite a bit of discussion around Repair Cafe.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard for me to,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: or community repair rather,
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: hard for me to distill how much of that is just because I'm in this bubble.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: But it feels like a movement.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like we're starting to see it in schools.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: We're starting to see repair as just a discussion topic in a number of places.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly in the high school level,
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: and we're even seeing some camps having,
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: like summer camp format where we're having a repair being taught in
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: the summer camps along with maker spaces and alongside tool libraries
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: and this whole concept of shared spaces.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, to your point, I don't want to gloss over the right to repair technology.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Too quickly, I do want to address that.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: Another discussion that I've seen sort of tangential to right to repair
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: is this idea
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: of a repairability index.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Zach, I don't know if this is something you've come across in your reading.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've never heard of that.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us about it.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that's something that maybe makes a little bit more sense with the kind
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: of stuff that we're seeing come in, consumer household, consumer goods.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: When I see rights to repair legislation,
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: it's often around like,
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you do see it on printers and you see it on electronic devices.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: We're not doing a lot of software type work at a repair cafe.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of times it's like blenders and toasters and small engines and things like that.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm also seeing rights to repair, you know, on large agricultural equipment.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Automotive,
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: automotive too.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Automotive.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, these are things that are outside of our wheelhouse,
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: but I will say something that does come to us often is these consumer items,
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: big box store appliances, things where you would normally see an Energy Star label.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: But instead of an Energy Star label,
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: we can have something that kind of indexes the availability of spare parts
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: or our service manuals published and available for this item.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Are non-OEM parts available for this item?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know,
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: when you go to buy your new refrigerator right beside your Energy Star label,
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: it's going to have a rating from 1 to 10.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: How repairable is this item?
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Can you keep it in circulation longer than 10 years?
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Even if it has a five-year warranty, is it repairable for the next 10, 15, 20 years?
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Which I like that idea quite a bit.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's sort of the carrot version of the spit from right to repair.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's something that's very market friendly, I would say.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: It kind of puts repair first.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, in the automotive field,
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of people don't know this,
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: there's a huge crisis in the automotive field right now because you can't find techs
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: because the pay is really messed up.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of independent shops are having a hard time getting
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're going out of business.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And with EVs coming and it's all electronics,
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: there's not techs that are really trained on that type of stuff.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think people really recognize that.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: We recognize how bad a situation it is as far as repairing automobiles
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: and what we're about to be facing when the advanced driver assist systems,
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: which are started in 2018,
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: start becoming the used cars and that stuff's not working and nobody knows how
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: to fix it.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: So we're about to be in a world of hurt as far as being able to repair vehicles
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: and Just mobility in general is going to be a big issue.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not that it isn't now,
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: but it's going to be an even bigger issue going forward because the EVs tear up,
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: the advanced driver assist systems tear up,
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: it all tears up, and there's really going to be nobody to fix that stuff.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and unless the industry changes drastically in the next five to 10 years,
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: which I think it will, um, people, we're,
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: we're really going to be in a world of hurt as far as being able to repair that kind
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: of stuff.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure you probably see some stuff like that just in home appliances,
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: but not to that degree,
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: um, with software and proprietaries, intellectual property and that sort of stuff.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, that's sort of tangential to what we're talking about.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want to get back to this idea of being a movement and, um, Why repair?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Of all the things,
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: a lot of movements we've seen in the past 25,
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: 30 years have been very ideologically driven and repair to me seems not that.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: So why repair?
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I,
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I can use my story to sort of buttress this for one.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, My relationship with repair is
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: born out of ignorance.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: I know a lot of folks,
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: when they tell their story of repair, it's like, oh, my dad fixed everything.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: My granddad went through the Great Depression and he fixed everything and it's ingrained in us.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: I will say that my relationship with repair is very much cultivated out of fear of ignorance.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: I have a story that I'm sometimes reluctant to tell,
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: especially around automotive folks,
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: just to show how ignorant I am from a starting point here.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: High school, absolute class clown, performer type.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Still an organizer at that time.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Still getting large groups of people together to do pranks, essentially.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: But I say that because in college,
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: four or five years later,
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: my friend and I drove down to New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: about two months after the storm.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And this was an evening that we came in to the city sometime
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: around midnight.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And The pumps that pump out the lower ninth,
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: the water that pools up in the lower ninth to pump it back up over
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: the levee had failed for some reason.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: And basically,
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: I drove my car through what I thought was a few inches of water,
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_01: but turned out to be 12 inches.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And my car lifted up and it floated and it pulled in
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: water in through the air intake.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: And shut my car off and we were sitting there floating and my buddy just got out
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: and we just pushed it to the side,
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: just right where all the other beat up cars were that got flooded out.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Piles of cars all over the place.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was not worried about my car sitting there with the other piles of cars everywhere.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: But we got to our destination and the next day sort of got into our volunteer network there.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was just asking around, what should I do?
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: I really had no clue how to get my car moving after that.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: One of the guys who was helping me out was like, when was the last time you had an oil change?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, oil change?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: I've had that car for five years and I've never gotten an oil change on it.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Probably had, I don't know, 60,000 miles before I gave it an oil change.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: So that was the first thing we did was pull the spark plugs out,
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: let it dry out,
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: gave it an oil change right there in the middle of the road right there with all
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: the other beat-up cars.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: And about a week later, put the plugs back in and cranked up and we drove home.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been changing my own oil ever since.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it was really just my awareness of how...
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: Completely ignorant I was to how the world actually works.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'll say that I was studying,
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: essentially brought in ideologically into the sustainability
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: and environmental perspective.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: I was applying that to everything.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized that my environment,
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: more so than going out and spending time in the mountains,
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: my environment, 95% of my life is like my home.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: And the stuff that surrounds me, that's my environment.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: I had no concept of how it works.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I aggressively began studying repair and just electrical diagnostics.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, that tied into my work at the time.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it was nice.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: And five years later,
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm fixing every appliance in my home because I don't have any money
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: because I'm doing work in the environmental field.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm fixing things out of necessity.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then I'm realizing that it's working.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Just learning how to solder,
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: spend 15 minutes soldering, and now I can fix the control board on my oven.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I saved myself $500 from buying a new oven.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: Got a welder that my friend gave me for like 50 bucks or something.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_01: Replaced a 25-cent transistor,
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: and now I've got a perfectly working, it's probably a $1,200 welder, brand new.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: Born out of ignorance, cultivated out of necessity.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, 20 years later, here I am preaching that gospel.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I really do.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to share a bit of my story.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've been involved in movements for 25 years.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the one thing and before I was in movements, I was an auto tech.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: And the one thing that always struck me about movements is a lot
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: of just didn't relate to what working class people did on a day to day basis.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's similar to what you say.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't know how the world works around you.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the thing I love about repair is it's just practical problem solving.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's just really practical problem solving that helps people get through day to day basis.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And to get a little ideological, it helps people be more autonomous.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know,
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really impressed with what's going on with
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: the Western North Carolina Repair Cafe and all the organizations in Asheville.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: Similar to you,
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_00: I drove some equipment up to Asheville after the hurricanes,
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: and I was able to see Asheville Tool Library.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that compound there is impressive, to say the least.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm really happy that I've been able to play the small part that I played
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: in y'all being able to do this.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I just, I'm really impressed.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's the next wave of movements.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: If I have anything to say about it, it will be.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: The next thing that I was going to ask you is what does success look like?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, our, our, Matrix for Success has changed over time.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I would say foremost,
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: we call it successful when we are
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: sitting down across the table from somebody in
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: the community and they're coming to us because they don't know how to fix it.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: They have no autonomy over this object.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right in front of them.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we begin the process and it clicks for them that this process is accessible to them.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes it's easier than they think.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: That is what we call success.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, a successful repair is something we're watching closely.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: We want to make sure that when somebody is driving, say, 90 minutes or an hour to come see us,
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: On an evening where they might not, you know, they're driving home in the dark.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: We want to make sure that it's worth their time to do that.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: So we take successful repair very seriously.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we do quite well at it.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Our repair cafes, we average above 80% success rate.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: So this is, yeah, a successful repair rate.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: So this is stuff, you know, we don't often know what it is coming in.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: We don't ask questions ahead of time.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of...
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Almost enjoy a little bit of mystery about what's coming in,
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: although it's become quite predictable over time.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we still are actually fixing four out of five things coming in.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: But again, our most successful repair is the one where the repair process is demystified.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I have one last question for you.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: I know you said you want to go 30 minutes and this is a little bit of a bigger,
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: more heady question.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that has really impressed me with being around y'all in comparison
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: to where I am from is the amount of leadership that is in that community.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: We talked six months ago about doing this conference and
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: the next thing I know there's 20 people Who are taking ownership of the conference.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's real leadership.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to talk a little bit about leadership in your community
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: and leadership in the repair movement.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what do you think about leadership?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think it is?
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: And why are people taking so much ownership and being such leaders in this context?
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, I think ownership is the right word there.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think that ownership is tied to leadership.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then when you talk about the idea of,
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: um, more people coming in, there has to be a conduit for allowing for ownership.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's something I've certainly struggled with in the past.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's, it's easy to, um, To just say to yourself, it's easier if I just do this myself now.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: But then when you've got something that you're planning like six months out
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: in advance,
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: it gives you a little bit of room to open up and say,
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: okay, what if we allow other people to contribute in a meaningful way?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because that breeds leadership, grassroots leadership.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is something I struggle with quite a bit.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's...
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: For so long, this has been a closed door, a concept for me.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: I more or less try to control every variable.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And it's absolutely been more successful this year because we're opening it up
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: to allow other people to contribute.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it's out of necessity.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's growing so quickly.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so much more satisfying to have a contribution That said,
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: we don't have any system of governance,
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: not even a system in place for making sure the discussions go in
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: a democratic fashion.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: It really is pretty informal at this point.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to take that next step.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen other organizations take that next step, and we can
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: take their input here.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: Broadly,
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think the idea of just Western Carolina being a hub for this,
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: I
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: do believe that there's a certain extent that there's a tipping point in place
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: where if there's enough of it happening,
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: then you reach that tipping point and it spreads much quicker.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a,
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: for lack of a better word,
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: a peer pressure effect here where it's like as it becomes normalized,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: it becomes more normalized.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you just get a cohort of enough people doing the work together
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: and you're consistent,
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: you know, that's another thing is that we've been doing this work since 2018.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's consistent.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: We make our schedule a year in advance sometimes and we kind of lock it in.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: We know that we're going to be there and people can plan around it,
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: visitors and volunteers alike.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like an ad hoc thing.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that helps a lot in building momentum.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: Moving from location to location helps a lot in building momentum.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't get solid into one place.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: So we're able to build sort of a larger network of just people
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: that are paying attention to the work we're doing.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: And again,
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think it all comes back down to same as sitting across the table doing
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: a natural repair.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think if somebody is observing us as organizers,
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're probably coming and saying, hey, this looks easier than I thought.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that's certainly a message that we're trying to get out there.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it is easier than you think to get this started.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: Many, many repair cafe organizers are not even fixers themselves.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: They're just people that know people that know how to do this or they know how
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: to arrange a place.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes the volunteers are bringing their own tools.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't need to haul around a bunch of tools.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need to have a bunch of supplies.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: That is something we've grown into.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: We've got a pretty solid inventory of tools and supplies that helps us keep
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: that success rate high.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not a necessity.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, starting a repair cafe is incredibly easy.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And again, most of the stuff that's coming into Repair Pepe is a very easy fix.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and there's two people on the chat who are leaders in Alabama,
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: and we haven't reached that tipping point yet, like Western North Carolina has.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: We have leaders in Alabama, and we have good leaders in Alabama.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: We also have a lot of really bad leaders in Alabama,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: and we haven't reached that tipping point of good leadership to where you have
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And there's some work being done to create those leaders, but we haven't got there yet.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the things that I really love
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: about visiting Western North Carolina is you get to talk with people and there's
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: a culture of this type of leadership.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's an asset to y'all's community and an asset to the region.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: Does anybody want to ask any questions of me or Dan before we sign off?
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know we got three people on here.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: Just put them in the chat if you have any questions.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Dan, you got any final words?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't think so.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't just be
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Sort of clear about this, I suppose.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: I do feel like we have momentum in Western North Carolina,
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: but I don't want to let that stop anybody from getting started
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: in their
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: own communities.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like I said, it's incredibly easy.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got questions, reach out.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's WNCRepairCafe at Gmail.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: It'd be the easiest way to reach me, but there's all the social media channels.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: You can find me through or find me on here.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got follow-up questions.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: All right, y'all.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming, Dan, and I'll be seeing you out in the whirlwind.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Cool.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate it.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: See ya.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Dad.