Following on from yesterday’s coverage of Free Sydney Wireless with mention of other free wifi projects around Australia including our own Free Canberra Wireless in The Sydney Morning Herald (which I blogged about yesterday) we have been contacted by Association and Communications Events (ACE) who run Wireless World with an absolutely awesome offer: a free promotion stand/stall at Wireless World 2008 which is happening in Sydney on 2-3 April and also possibly a slot in the conference schedule to present - we’re currently in a mad rush to put together some ideas for our presence at the conference and line up a speaker; we have about 40 hours from now to get back to them with our response … but we’re definitely going ahead with at least the stall, which I’ve been told may be placed next to Google or Nokia.

I spoke to Chris from ACE this afternoon and talked about Free Canberra Wireless, Free Sydney Wireless and other similar initiatives around the country. I believe Matt also setup a Facebook group for Free Melbourne Wireless today. Also I explained BarCamp to him as he had heard that there was a BarCampSydney planned for the weekend before or after the Wireless World 2008 conference and was considering cross-promotion opportunities or perhaps some sort of integration.

He’s really keen on the idea of rolling out city-wide mesh networks at a community grassroots level (as am I, obviously) and it’s very cool that he’s managed to swing this for us simply because he believes in the concept and wants to support it.

I plan on going up for the conference to help man the stand/stall and be involved in anything else we get happening - although I won’t be presenting. Public speaking at that level is a little out of my league.

Very exciting times!

Also, in light of recent burst of interest and acceleration of the project I will be placing an order with Meraki next Thursday 21 February. I’ll be getting a few surplus units but if you’re interested please let me know just so I can make sure you’re covered. I’ll also be getting some booster antennas around the same time. Onselling price for the Meraki Mini units - which is cost price, no profit to me - will be $60 with this shipment as I should be able to get a discount on bulk shipping and by keeping it under the $1,000 import tax threshold (which we unfortunately invoked on the last shipment, cancelling out the discount we got on bulk shipping).

Free Sydney Wireless is probably organising a shipment soon too - drop by the FSW Facebook group if you’re interested.

I’ve been unusually busy the last few weeks with life events - sister getting married, interstate travel and various things and I was noticing that I’m starting to fall behind on enquiries coming in regarding Merakis and Free Canberra Wireless; don’t worry, I have your emails and I will get to them ASAP! Also busy staying on top of my Technorati search feeds to follow up articles about Merakis, particularly in Australia, and advertising the Free The Net campaign and the specific geographic projects here and in Sydney: Free Canberra Wireless and Free Sydney Wireless respectively.

Also I loaned a Meraki Mini to @timriley at last week’s CTUB2 and I’m onselling the last Meraki Mini in my surplus cache I had to @gnoll110 tomorrow. No profit is made from sales - I’m not running a business here, although I have been talking to Meraki about the possibility of a reseller/distributor capability in Australia to get the currently prohibitive shipping costs down.

However today there’s been quite a bit of talk on the blogosphere and on Twitter about the recent media coverage from The Sydney Morning Herald with their article today on particularly the Free Sydney Wireless Meraki wifi project but the other projects around Australia, including our own Free Canberra Wireless get a mention. It’s pretty awesome that these projects that have only been going a few months get a write-up like that.

The article was also syndicated on The Age.

Laurel Papworth also blogged about the today’s article, as well as Matt over at Free Sydney Wireless. It also got a mention at ABC Digital Futures and Lifehacker Australia.

This is absolutely fantastic that this initiative is getting such exposure and becoming recognised as a serious option for rolling out large scale wifi networks where other corporate and even government-driven projects have failed.

Also if you are the proud owner of Meraki devices and have set up a network please remember to head over to the Meraki Network Mapper and add your network to the map! @facibus - I don’t see yours on there yet!