AdamShand, TerrySchmidt and MattPeterson will all be talking at the Eye for Wireless (http://www.eyeforwireless.com/) conference (different talks) in Austin this December. Here I'm putting some ideas as I think of them about them for the presentation. Adam's talk is titled "Community Networks and Why You Should Care".

Presentation Draft

• Introduction

  • Adam Shand & Terry Schmidt

  • Talk is a little obsolete now but ...
  • Time for questions at the end.
• What are Community Networks?

  • Whatever we want them to be

  • Publicly accessible
  • Free as in freedom (hopefully as in beer)
  • Maintained by the user
  • Evolving (802.11b for now) ...
• Who Is Building Them?
  • IT Professionals
  • Geek Hobbists
  • Have spare time and disposable income
  • Enjoy doing this (like working on the house or car)
• Commercial Cooperation
  • Building user interest and encouraging early adoption
  • Encouraging low cost technology
  • Different markets
    • Hot Spot vs. Residential Areas
    • Grass roots market probably wouldn't be interested in commerical access (at least to start with)
• Do It Yourself
  • Educating end users
  • Building cheap access equipment
  • Innovation in access control, resource control and scaling technology
• Politics

  • Building network equivelent of the FreeSoftwareFoundation

  • Helping bridge the digital divide

  • Internet access for something other then money (FreeGeek)
• Future Sucess
  • Has to be cheap and easy to participate
  • Has to be open to the public
  • Has to be able to grow and scale organically
  • Has to be pervasive
  • Has to be end to end (no NAT)
• More Information

  • PersonalTelco

  • FreeNetworks

  • Other WirelessCommunities

• Check out http://www.afcn.net/

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