OK, winding down took almost a day
Fairphone Community Aachen’s 11th meetup …
… was quite a demanding 3 1/2 hour night – both for myself as well as for Fairphone Angels from Düsseldorf and Liège who pretty much saved my, err…, very own bottom module, albeit to everyone’s biggest dismay not another longstanding and most loyal first hour Fairphoner’s all new FP2’s core module which remained stubbornly un-revivable.
Turnout well exceeded expectations with 18 people (12+2 having FP2s, 3+1 having FP1s, 5 without a FP) in attendance plus three short-time visitors who nevertheless had FP issues to deal with. One was actually offering her fully functional FP1 for free … because “there are no more batteries to buy!” So you can guess – we didn’t accept that! (And directed her to the well-known Generic battery topic, of course.) The FP1 was in fact a recurring topic during and even already before the meetup – two locals who could not make it that night had actually been put in touch beforehand in order to let another fully working FP1 change hands from a now FP2 owner to a smartphone virgin. And a returning participant from the 10th meetup was spontaneously equipped with another surplus FP1, having seen her own iPhone 5 take a dive just the day before.
A brief introduction around the table revealed that the newspaper announcements paid off big time: Most of the unprecedented attendance resulted from these, but to a smaller part also from having looked us up online (and to teach myself a lesson, the events web page was explicitly mentioned, too). Almost every second attendee joined us for the first time, so a brief introduction to the Fairphone project and its two main drivers – conflict minerals/fair trade and sustainability/repairability – was a must. Most of the planned agenda (Android 7, alternative OSes, Crowdloaning) had to be pushed aside given the abundance not just of questons, but to not mince words: a heavy and partly worrying load of FP2 troubleshooting as well. This host was confronted with quite a challenge and would not have coped with it had it not been for “Angels in Action”: @amber and @oli.sax who provided tireless assistance and support as well as Aachen Fairphoner Christian who had volunteered early to let me demonstrate the dis/reassembly of his FP2 to the eyes of the newbies. I owe you folks a big measure of gratitude, not just for making the way to Aachen, but to also show up and help despite not everyone of you being perfectly well last night. You took quite a load off my shoulders.
And although we were able to solve quite a couple of issues (one FP2 owner just needed a little encouragement to re-establish contact between her camera module and the core module by her own hands, another was helped switching from Ubuntu to Lineage), we also had a major disappointment when no one was able to fix a founding Aachen Fairphoner’s all-new FP2 respectively its core module. It will now travel back to Fairphone Support.
So all in all a mixed bag – great attendance with many new faces, yet on the other hand also a couple of issues that might not have given the best (but perhaps also not the most representative) impression to some newbies. Nevertheless, virtually everyone was happy to be included in our email list and seemed to look forward to future opportunities to meet up and get in touch. We are eyeing the second half of November for Meetup #12.
See you soon!
P.S.: Additional thanks to @lorahaspels @Monica.Ciovica @lina1 for not just providing a ton of fresh merchandise and tirelessly advertising the event on social media, but also for just bearing with me