[CWN-Summit] Report on the Community Wireless Summit

Thu Oct 14 01:51:59 CDT 2004

Hi all,

This came out earlier this week on WiFiNetNews.com -- thought it might 
interest folks -- sounds like it was an interesting summit.  ;)  Thanks to 
Michael Oh for pulling this together -- I'd love to hear what other folks 
think about the summit, how we could improve it, what you'd like to see 
happen next, etc.

In other news, the CUWiN team is on the verge of releasing a new 
"developers' build" of our software (tentatively version 0.5.3).  It 
contains vast improvements over our last publicly released snapshot. 
Stay tuned for more info in the next few days.  We're always looking for 
folks to test of the software, help with development, deploy CUWiN-based 
systems, etc.

I'd also love to hear what folks are working on in terms of CWN projects. 
I know that our group was incredibly energized by the summit and we're 
actively working on several projects based on the connections we made 
during the weekend.  Definitely keep us all posted.

In solidarity,

--Sascha

***

Subject: Report on the Community Wireless Summit

By Glenn Fleishman
Special to Wi-Fi Networking News
Permanently archived at <http://wifinetnews.com/archives/004323.html>

Michael Oh attended [1] Making the Connection: The 2004 National Summit 
for Community Wireless Networks in August: Michael Oh is the fellow behind 
[2] NewburyOpen.net, and the owner of [3] tech superpowers, inc. He sent 
in this report:

First off, I think the biggest thing was simply that everyone got 
together. The CWN (Community Wireless Network) world is something that 
we're all very involved in, but we're all very locally focused. It's 
almost by definition that we're mainly interested in our own hometowns, 
but sometimes that keeps us from seeing that CWNs all end up having a lot 
of the same challenges.

So, I have to give props to [4] Sascha Meinrath and the crew at U of I 
that put this together - it was something that we knew there was a need 
for, but no one had done it - and they created it out of thin air.

I'm also surprised that so many people showed up for the event. By my 
count, there were somewhere around 150 people, from people like Rob 
Flickenger (of Metrix and O'Reilly's Wireless Hacking book) to Michael 
Calabrese of the New America Foundation. More surprisingly, there were 
people there because their grants had funded them to come and do research 
on how wireless can help community development. That means that CWNs are 
getting a lot of exposure - and not just to the people that make them.

The turnout solidifies one thing - that CWNs are here to stay, and they 
are about a lot more than "competing" against for-pay wireless.

CMNs are about community, not about wireless. It's simple to say, but very 
complex to understand, since community is such a broad-based word. Still, 
this movement is one of the quickest forming community movements that I've 
ever seen or been a part of - and we all share the same idea.

That idea is that we all believe that community wireless will make a 
better world. We don't agree how, and we certainly don't agree what 
technology it will use, but we're pretty certain it will change how the 
world interacts. And this change is very different from how the 
corporations playing with WiFi in public spaces imagine.

The meetings were organized in three tracks - Organizational Models, 
Technology, and Policy. Going in, I thought that 2 out of 3 were of 
interest, but the Policy track was really kind of strange to me. I didn't 
understand fully how spectrum policy really would help the future of our 
cause.

This is one of the big benefits of the Summit - spending time with the 
policy "wonks" (which regardless of name, are very interesting people to 
hang around), at the very least because you're happy that SOMEONE is 
interested enough in spectrum policy to fight in the halls of Washington 
for us. Howard Feld and Michael Calabrese were people that I met, talked 
to, and understood after the summit. You may even see me in Washington 
sometime if they have their way... :)

Organizationally, the other benefit was meeting all of the other major CWN 
players in the country. There were people from NYC Wireless, Austin City 
Wireless Project, PersonalTelco, and others... We got to hang out, share 
stories of crazy wireless projects gone horribly wrong, and drink beer. 
I'm hoping that one of the results from the Summit is simply communication 
between all of the different cities, so we can all work together to 
further the cause.

I would love to coordinate wireless festivals in 4 major cities on the 
same day, share technology, or at the very least just have WiFi webcams 
that allow people in 4 coffee shops all over the country to say hi to each 
other. We would love to see projects like our [5] Boston Music Project not 
only exist in 4 cities, but also be connected between the different 
places, so that anyone in a coffee shop in Boston could experience the 
newest local bands in Austin. (FYI - this idea was sparked by Rich from 
Austin's work)

It became obvious that CWNs were already diverging into ideas about 
culture, arts, media, and community content. While incredibly powerful in 
concept, we also risk losing the focus of people outside of the WiFi 
community with this divergence. If we focus on such broad-based ideas, we 
look a lot more like community non-profits and less like WiFi 
organizations. Unfortunately, "WiFi as commerce" is the baby of the 
business section, not "WiFi as community development." In my opinion, 
that's why all of the CWNs have "fallen off the map" compared to the 
T-mobiles and Tropos Networks of the world - they're just no longer 
interesting to the business community anymore.

But I predict that the next wave will be when CWNs begin to provide 
"national local" content providing interesting local content for their 
respective cities, but as part of a national movement. That's the vision 
that I have for CWNs going forward - it's just a matter of getting others 
to sign on.

Fact is, we're all volunteers, trying to feed ourselves with other 
activities, so the chances for success depend on how dedicated we can be 
to another cause when we're already stretched for time. Luckily, there are 
already great examples of how this happens.

One of the best connections that I made was [6] Prometheus Radio, the guys 
that came from pirate radio and now specialize in 'powering up' Low Power 
FM (LPFM) stations. I participated in the Portsmouth, NH, LPFM barnraising 
last month, and they sure know how to motivate people. FM people have been 
fighting the fight for many decades - pushing back against the incumbents, 
correcting FCC shortsightedness, and organizing disparate groups all over 
the country. CWNs could learn a thing or two from them.

I think that if organized well, we can make the community wireless 
movement more than just an annoyance to the T-mobiles of the world - by 
providing content that can only be found locally. And the 1st Summit was a 
huge step towards that - even if it was just getting everyone in the same 
room.

(quote)Thanks, Michael!(end quote)

URLs referenced:
[1] <http://communitywirelesssummit.org/>
[2] <http://www.newburyopen.net/>
[3] <http://www.techsuperpowers.com/>
[4] <mailto:sascha at ucimc.org>
[5] <http://www.newburyopen.net/bostonmusic>
[6] <http://prometheusradio.org>