Archive for June, 2007

Audio from the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks

June 6, 2007 at 7:14 am · Filed under Earthlink, Wireless Philadelphia, cable, digital expansion, ethos, internet, media, nyc, nycbroadband, pph, radio, wireless

As I promised yesterday, here is some audio from the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks.

I recorded three sessions:

Holistic Planning & Deployment of Wireless Networks

Shaping the Research Agenda for Municipal and Community Wireless Networks and Access to Broadband

Economics of Community Wireless Networks in Developing Countries

You can follow the links (click where it says ODEO) to see the session descriptions. Of the three, I recommend listening to the “Holistic Planning & Deployment of Wireless Networks” session. In that session, Michael Maranda from Chicago, Peter Fleck from Minneapolis, Robin Chase from Boston and Dana Spiegel and Michael Lewis from New York City each discuss their city’s respective projects.

I went through the trouble of pulling out Robin Chase’s comments from that session because the Boston story, which I blogged about last year when the city’s task force released their report, remains a severely underreported success story in the municipal field.

As I wrote in my article on the summit,

The Open Air Boston request for information describes a non-profit network owner that only provides wholesale access, but that does so in such a way that there is practically no barrier to entry for retail service or application providers. (When the portion of the Boston RFI emphasizing the desire for an open source solution was read out loud before the breakout sessions on Sunday, the audience broke into applause.)

The price target for service on the Boston network is $10-15 a month, which they believe they can get to precisely by cutting out the money grubbing cablecos and telcos.

The deadline for responses to the RFI is this Friday, so you better get cracking.

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Report from the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks

June 5, 2007 at 8:31 am · Filed under digital expansion, ethos, internet, media, nyc, pph, wireless

My article on the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks has been published to the GovTech Digital Communities site. Check it out.

I definitely wanted to talk about the international-ness of the conference (it used to be the National Summit for Community Wireless Networks) and the growing attention to municipal broadband projects. And CALEA is the most under-reported story in the field, so I had to give a summary of the summary we heard at the summit.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to talk about the devices the wireless geeks were playing with at the summit. I couldn’t be everywhere at once and hardware is a hard thing to give an overview on. The gist is that our future devices will look something like a souped-up cell phone: a portable device that will have ultra-lightweight projectors for screen and keyboard.

Andrew Greig, from Koolu, who showed off his hardware the instant I sat down across from him at the dinner table, was saying that the World Health Organization has labeled keyboards as the number one vehicle for disease transmission. I can’t confirm that, but I can confirm that the virtual keyboards are pretty cool.

We also saw one of the “$100 laptops” (now going for about $150), though we didn’t get to see it in action. Île sans fils was showing off Wi-Fi Dog, which is actually an application, but they were showing how to install it on wireless routers. One summiteer showed me a device for getting into closed networks like ones at airports, which was pretty cool (though not quite as cool as this new doohickey).

Audio from the Summit.

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Rooftop Films – Every Day This Summer!

June 4, 2007 at 9:42 am · Filed under film, nyc

Rooftop Films kicked off its 2007 Summer Series this weekend with a free sneak preview screening in Fort Greene Park. It also kicked off a pretty incredible new partnership with IFC.com, the website of the Independent Film Channel.

We started Rooftop Films as a pretty low-tech affair: To get in, you had to pull a string at street level that was attached to a bell on the roof. The projectionist had to hold his hand on the takeup reel to keep the wind from blowing it off. Mark promoted the event by passing out handwritten notes on scraps of paper.

Within two years, we had figured out that luan plywood attached to tin studs was lighter and more durable than sheetrock on two-by-fours and that spending $5000 on a video projector was a smart investment if we were serious about this film festival thing.

Rooftop Films is now one of the largest film festivals in New York City, if you measure by attendance, number of films shown, number of screenings, or number of hours, though certainly not if you measure by budget. They show the best films bar none and the Summer Series is pretty widely acknowledged by New Yorkers as one of the coolest things about summer in the city. (I can say this unabashedly since I’m no longer directly involved, except as a friend and member of the audience.)

And now it hits the little screens for all of the online world to enjoy! Yay for technology. Every day this summer you will be able to see a new, lovable, fascinating, daring short film on the Rooftop channel at IFC.com. 100 movies in all.

It’s exciting to see Rooftop getting some recognition after all of Mark’s, Dan’s, and Sarah’s hard work. (Sundance showed love earlier this year when they asked Mark to be on the shorts jury for their festival.)

It’s also exciting that these films will be able to reach an even larger audience, since that was the whole reason we started the thing – to build audiences for deserving movies that would otherwise go underappreciated. If we wanted people in other cities to see these movies, we used to have to load the projector into the car and drive them there ourselves.

Nothing beats seeing those movies in the great outdoors, of course, and many of the Rooftop movies can only be seen at the live screenings. So if you’re anywhere near NYC this Friday, be sure to check out the opening night event, “This is What We Mean By Short Films…” on the roof of the Open Road Rooftop Project (350 Grand Street @ Essex on the Lower East Side).

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