Join us August 10th for a symposium on Community Wi-Fi as part of the Summer of Smart, an initiative of Gray Area Foundation for the Arts(@GrayArea) in partnership with San Francisco Department of Technology, Code for America, SPUR, The Bay Citizen, Change.org, GovFresh, Shareable, and many others! We’ll hear from thought leaders and launch a volunteer effort to build a free community wifi network in Mid-Market.

The symposium will have several speakers including a keynote address by Josh King, Technical Lead for the New America Foundation Open Technology Initiative. The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative (OTI) proposes to build a new type of tool for democratic organizing: an open source “device-as-infrastructure” distributed communications platform that integrates users’ existing cell phones, Wi-Fi-enabled computers, and other WiFi-capable personal devices to create a metro-scale peer-to-peer (mesh) communications network.

Prototyping a Community Wi-Fi Network

After hearing from community Wi-Fi speakers, a team will be formed to create a free wifi network in the Tenderloin and around Mid-Market. The team will use San Francisco’s 1 GB community broadband network and low cost wireless hardware to expand access. We will present our work directly to all nine major mayoral candidates at our final public forum in October. Our goal is to establish a new paradigm where the community co-creates the network with local government.

Agenda:
6-7: Drinks and networking
7-7:15: Community speakers: Ralf Muehlen (Internet Archive), Tim Pozar and more TBA.
7:15-7:30: Keynote speaker: Josh King
7:30-8:00 Introductions, icebreakers, idea-sharing, and team formation

Feel free to bring your questions, ideas, and research to the open discussion that will ensue after the presentations.