Having finally wrapped up my involvement with the very successful BarCampCanberra 2008, including all preparation before the event on 19 April and post-BarCamp tasks including processing and publishing 14 audio podcasts of presentations … I am now once again available to pick-up and continue with Free Australia Wireless which unfortunately I haven’t really touched since attending the Wireless World 2008 exhibition 4 weeks ago.

I’ve been fielding a few enquiries from local Canberra people interested in participating in the project and made contact with a few 3rd parties - community groups etc - but it’s time to start taking things to the next level; large-scale awareness and promotion campaigns, advocacy and lobbying local government. The upcoming ACT election in October I think will be a good opportunity to do this - I’ll shortly be contacting David Mathews, Labor candidate for Molonglo, who with his history in Information Technology will be an ideal contact point to start talking to local government about the Free Australia Wireless project in Canberra as I really think that we are going to need the cooperation, endorsement and support of local government and councils to roll out mesh network nodes particularly in business districts where it’s a bit trickier than just plugging a Meraki node into a residential ADSL-connected local network. We need to be able to assure local businesses of the legality of providing free wireless access without the need for a carrier licence.

As for ongoing research and such I’m still working on turning my Asus Eee PC into a router so I can provide free wireless via a Meraki device over a 3G USB modem; I’ll be using this to start providing free wireless in my workplace and once I have gained some interest and support for the idea then I plan to take the idea to our IT department … which takes me to the next point: content tracking, logging and filtering. I’ve been asked a few times about this and although I appreciate DFWFreeNet’s position on this I don’t think it’s a position that we can maintain - so we will be looking at options for hardware or software that sits between Meraki gateway nodes and wired networks for tracking usage at a detailed level and providing a level of additional firewall protection and content filtering to prevent the downloading of illegal content through free wireless networks.

Also, work is ongoing with preparing the content for the new and consolidated Free Australia Wireless website. JJ has been talking to the Open-Mesh people and made progress with getting them interested in gaining the necessary certification to start bringing Open-Mesh devices into Australia - which would be awesome given that they’re cheaper, fully open source … not to mention that Meraki (the company) hasn’t been very responsive, helpful or interested in assisting us so we are looking at other options.

First day of the 2-day Wireless World 2008 tri-summit and exhibition, with JJ and myself working flat out all day promoting Free Australia Wireless, explaining how mesh networking works, what our plan is and some of the finer details … occasionally with some one-on-one sessions with people lasting over 20 minutes. We had about 90 fliers at the start of the day and finished up the day at 5:00pm with only 4 left.

Really good day, got lots of people interested in the project and got a chance to hone our project spiel and a better idea of which points to emphasise or explain in more detail or in different ways - although luckily most of the exhibition visitors had at least some basic knowledge of 802.11 and WLAN.

Also got some good contacts in government and other vendors that we can follow up in the coming weeks to discuss opportunities and gain support for Free Australia Wireless.

On the right here is a pic taken by Chris Rodrigues (one of the event organisers) of a 20 minute Meraki installation and configuration demonstration I gave yesterday in the main presentation area of the exhibition.

Unfortunately I had to return last night back to Canberra so today JJ, Matt and Ajay will be looking after the Free Australia Wireless stall, and Mark Pesce will be delivering his 30 minute presentation at the Wireless & Mobility Summit next door to the exhibition this afternoon.

Sorry, and how could I forget to recognise the assistance of Alison who came down to the stall yesterday just to say hi to JJ and myself … and ended up helping out with promoting Free Australia Wireless and answering questions about mesh networking topography and Meraki specifications - at one point even looking at the stall herself while JJ and myself had to go off at 3:30pm for the Meraki demo. Thanks Ali!

Also have a read of Mark Pesce’s latest blog post Everywhere which is what his presentation today will be based on.

JJ took some photos of the stall and my presentation and I’ve also put up an article on Norg.

That’s right - if you’re on Twitter then go to the FreeAusWireless profile page on Twitter and follow. We’ll be microblogging our exhibition at Wireless World 2008 in Darling Harbour, Sydney, over the next two days.

Once again - if you’re in Sydney then it’d be great if you could drop by the Free Australia Wireless exhibition stall at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre (stall #65) and say hi.

The plan is that I’ll be driving up tomorrow morning (leaving Canberra around 5:00am) and will be behind the stall with JJ and Ajay tomorrow, and then on Thursday it’ll be JJ and Matthew. Also Mark Pesce will be giving a half-hour presentation to the (paying) Wireless World convention participants on the Thursday.

We will be giving a 20 minute demo of Merakis and maybe JJ’s new FON tomorrow at 3:30 - that demo will be in the free area of the exhibition.

If you can make it to the Wireless World 2008 exhibition in Darling Harbour next Wednesday or Thursday (2-3 April) please contact me for a free printable PDF ticket to the exhibition:

Email: nboehm [AT] purecaffeine [DOT] com
Mobile/SMS: 0409 288 464

It’s all happening; countdown to the Wireless World 2008 conference in 3 weeks plus upcoming BarCampSydney v3 as well as (I’m pleased to announce) the inaugural BarCampCanberra! Yes that’s right - last Thursday we got confirmation from the ANU that we will have the use of three rooms for BarCamp on 19 April.

It’s not about a bunch of geeks getting in a room and talking code snippets and beta platforms and frameworks. There might be a bit of that - but that’s not what BarCamp is about. It’s about anyone involved in technology, social networks, information, web, podcasting, business and start-ups … anything!

There’s going to be a few peeps coming down from Sydney to support our first BarCamp so if you live in Canberra there’s no excuse for not coming! 19 April. Head over to the BarCampCanberra v1 wiki page and add your name … or if you don’t have time, just post a comment here with your name, the topic of your presentation of if you’re just attending … and your t-shirt size, as we’ll be ordering a bunch of t-shirts (sponsored, so they’re free) and I’ll stick it on the wiki for you - because I’m a nice guy :-)

Now, I also should announce that we will be consolidating our various Free Wireless projects across the country under a single banner: Free Australia Wireless … JJ has done some great work with the logos and now we’ve just got to build the site. Between the various blogs we’ve already got some great content to populate the site with so it will do a better job of answering the usual questions like: What is Meraki? How do I use it? Is it secure? How can I get involved?

Oh and I’ve already started taking orders for Free Canberra Wireless Meraki Bulk Order #3.

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.