We’re celebrating having reached 1,000 events logged in our repairs database, affectionately known as the Fixometer. We started alone in London in 2014 on this project, and we have 110 groups in 12 countries who have logged events and contributed repair data to our network.
Making it easier to log repair data
Reaching this milestone is a good time to reflect on how hard it is, no matter how easy we make it, for many of us to keep up to date in data entry after events. Of events logged this year, about a third of events are lacking repair data. (Scrambles to enter data from last event!)
We’ve experimented with live data entry at events, with limited success.
Meanwhile, we are working on supporting spreadsheet uploads for groups, with the help of some keen members of our network. This will require a little extra work, but it is very possible and worthwhile. It will also help us reinforce the Open Repair Data Standard with groups.
We’ve been told a couple of groups in the UK are sitting on a treasure-trove of historic repair data, from past events. So we may be looking at some massive leaps in future in the number of events logged in our database.
Making it easier to share events
Groups — and even groups of groups, like a network of repair groups in Belgium — have asked for a way to export feeds of upcoming events, for their own websites. We think this is a great idea, as it’s often hard to find consistent repair event listings in a city, country or a region. And not all of us use Facebook, so it’s good to be able to find this information on the open internet. So we’re building an events API. Stay tuned for more.
Also, users of our software can also now add the events to their personal calendars.
Help us help you
If you’d like to get involved and help shape the future of our events management and repairs database, we have a special discussion section in Restarters.net – if you don’t have an account, you will need to create one.