Sunday, October 22, 2006
From the beginning...
Beryl Forman got in touch with me last spring to find out more about the Chicano Park Wireless Network (El Ombligo) which Heads On Fire had helped to launch. She had proposed to the Golden Hill CDC that unwiring (unwire: to make wireless) their neighborhood's 25th Street Park. as a part of a larger plan to revision Golden Hill as an Intelligent Community. In our first talk, I agrred that Heads On Fire should come on as a partner. I also that the road ahead held some of the same hurdles the group working on Chicano Park had to clear: presenting a case to the City to get permission to use City property; figuring out how questions of ownership and liability would be answered; and addressing an assortment of security concerns from multiple parties. These are just a few of many. In the case of Chicano Park and some other community wireless efforts I knew about, these issues had mostly been sidestepped with varying degrees of deftness. Beryl and I agreed that someone ought to stop the madness and document some answers to these issues so that the community wireless effort seeking to share municipal space could at least have a road map. Producing that map seemed to me to be an excellent vehicle for the SDCTC to realize its mission. The Board of Directors agreed with me, SDCTC came on as partners. So did SoCalFreeNet.org and the Media Arts Center of San Diego. LessNetworks from Austin, TX agreed to be consultants.
Beryl Forman got in touch with me last spring to find out more about the Chicano Park Wireless Network (El Ombligo) which Heads On Fire had helped to launch. She had proposed to the Golden Hill CDC that unwiring (unwire: to make wireless) their neighborhood's 25th Street Park. as a part of a larger plan to revision Golden Hill as an Intelligent Community. In our first talk, I agrred that Heads On Fire should come on as a partner. I also that the road ahead held some of the same hurdles the group working on Chicano Park had to clear: presenting a case to the City to get permission to use City property; figuring out how questions of ownership and liability would be answered; and addressing an assortment of security concerns from multiple parties. These are just a few of many. In the case of Chicano Park and some other community wireless efforts I knew about, these issues had mostly been sidestepped with varying degrees of deftness. Beryl and I agreed that someone ought to stop the madness and document some answers to these issues so that the community wireless effort seeking to share municipal space could at least have a road map. Producing that map seemed to me to be an excellent vehicle for the SDCTC to realize its mission. The Board of Directors agreed with me, SDCTC came on as partners. So did SoCalFreeNet.org and the Media Arts Center of San Diego. LessNetworks from Austin, TX agreed to be consultants.
