• MeetingJanuary2005

Personal Telco Monthly Meeting for January 26 2005

When and Where

Urban Grind Coffee 2214 NE Oregon St. (take 22nd Ave. 2 blocks North of Sandy Blvd.)

Wednesday, January 26th 2005. 6:00pm - 9:00pm

Agenda

• 6:00PM - Introduction to Personal Telco for newcomers.
• 6:30PM - New Nodes and other announcements.
• 7:00PM - Business followed directly by informal meet and greet.

Audio

[http://www.personaltelco.net/~tom/podcast/PTPJan262005.mp3 Part1 mp3] BR [http://www.personaltelco.net/~tom/podcast/PTPJan272005.mp3 Part2 mp3] BR [http://www.personaltelco.net/~tom/podcast/rss.xml PTP Podcast Feed]

Agenda Items

• New Node Announcements
  • ["Node674"] - NE Rodney and Skidmore: Installed a MetrixCommunicationLLC unit on the roof. Very good coverage.

  • Brandon Psmythe from ProStructureConsulting announced that they have some clients who are giving roof access for PTP installs.

  • New node needs to be installed on 20th and Belmont, Nigel makes a call for help.
  • House at 20th and Hawthorne is offering roof access to be part of the network. Currently looking for a backhaul point.

  • RickLindahl is installing a First Responder Network in Beaverton that is currently open to facilitate testing (ESSID: WashCo). It is located along Murray Blvd. near Farmington, TV Highway, etc. Look for large grey beer kegs on utility poles.

• Other Announcements

  • NigelBallard announced that the city is working on installing a wireless cloud in part of the city which is undisclosed. There is also the potential for the city to fund a commercial mesh install bearing the PTP ESSID. PTP was also featured in a Portland Monthly article which, though rife with misquotes, is nice coverage. Nigel also met with Tom Potter who was really excited about free wireless (city and/or community sponsored) serving the underserved.

  • Parking Meters and Trimet buses appear to be getting Wi-Fi for administrative purposes, but not public consumption.
  • Many new faces with interest in making things happen!

  • AaronBaer talks about what PTP is: Community Org, Non-profit corp, Educational Resource.

• Node Request Plan of Action
  • Request Tracker - System for tracking and managing tickets.

    • 45 requests for new nodes are currently in RequestTracker.

    • JimmySchmierbach is working on restructuring the system to make things more bite-sized and manageable. There will be three groups to support nodes, as follows:

      • Contact Group - maintains contact with potential node hosts to let them know how things are coming.
      • Site Surveyers - go onsite to get information that will assist in design and installation of new nodes.
      • CAB Builders - build Clone Army Boxes for nodes.

    • Contact JimmySchmierbach to become involved.

• Yearly Node Audit - KeeganQuinn has done a full audit of PTP nodes to get things up-to-date and determine which nodes need attention to bring them inline with current PTP standards.

• PTPNet - Project to connect all nodes either through wireless of wired connections. First major step is accomplished--determining security model. Layer 2 bridging will be deployed soon.

• MississippiGrantProject - Application was submited to the Meyer Trust on January 15th. The decision is scheduled to be made in March, and we should know by April if the funds have been approved.

• Hack Nights - TomHiggins hosts Hack Night almost every Wednesday. Join the General mailing list to hear about them. You can also borrow books from the PTP Library at Hack Night.

• TomHiggins is also working on another Play Date for a Saturday in the future.