mtl3p

I haven’t said anything about this publicly so far, but the story is out.

Du WiFi jusque dans les parcs
“Un projet de partenariat financier entre la Ville de Montréal et l’organisme Île sans fil fait son chemin dans les couloirs de l’hôtel de ville.”

Front page of La Press. Middle of the page. Who ever thought it would come to this.

We’re proposing a project to the city for a 5 year community / public partnership worth one meeelion dollars. (really). The new board was elected with this project in mind and they’re doing a great job. Hopefully it goes through.

UPDATE: Those numbers are just initial numbers that came from a working document. I don’t want to get in trouble from the guys doing the heavy lifting on this project if the final proposal ends up being for different amounts.

And I signed on to Patrick and Dan’s coworking project to be an anchor tenant. I don’t really enjoy all the hype these days around the *camps and the Yul* ’s but I’m very attracted to the people that have committed so far. And Patrick and Dan say that they’re going to make a real effort to create a diverse team of co-workers. I’m counting on them following through with that. I’ll miss hanging out with mai kurent offizmaet, but that’s life.

Welcome to the wireless city, which brings human socialization - call it real animal life - to Internet use, which all too frequently can be an isolating experience, with you confined within four lonely walls. Wi-fi spots remove the “virtual” from the overly hyped “virtual community.” They replace emoticons and smiley-faces with genuine eyes and smiles, while retaining the many glories of the Net.

good article

Lots of stuff about how ISF is different and how we’ve focused on physical communities.

I went to this party last night underneath the overpass next to the train tracks. Right outside my house. It’s like people took over my living room. It’s apparently the party that facebook made. I’m rethinking joining the FB. . . mostly because the party was pretty good.

The weird thing was that I could detect absolutely no tension about the whole Temporary autonomous zone thing. It was totally chill - which I found .. kinda lame. The last time I was at a party like that was at the anti-globalization protest in Quebec city in 2001. Now *that* was a intense overpass party.

couple more links:
-lessig leaves copyright and turns to gov corruption

-Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace by danah boyd

Over the last six months, i’ve noticed an increasing number of press articles about how high school teens are leaving MySpace for Facebook. That’s only partially true. There is indeed a change taking place, but it’s not a shift so much as a fragmentation. Until recently, American teenagers were flocking to MySpace. The picture is now being blurred. Some teens are flocking to MySpace. And some teens are flocking to Facebook. Which go where gets kinda sticky, because it seems to primarily have to do with socio-economic class.

What I lay out in this essay is rather disconcerting. Hegemonic American teens (i.e. middle/upper class, college bound teens from upwards mobile or well off families) are all on or switching to Facebook. Marginalized teens, teens from poorer or less educated backgrounds, subculturally-identified teens, and other non-hegemonic teens continue to be drawn to MySpace. A class division has emerged and it is playing out in the aesthetics, the kinds of advertising, and the policy decisions being made.

-and I’ve added an about page to this blog. please let me know if it makes me look like a jackass.

-There’s a great video piece on ISF. Complete with interviews of the new owners of Pharmacie Esperanza about our new hotspot there. I wrote a whole entry on what I found significant about this story, but it got accidentally deleted.

that’s it for now.

I never imagined that this many other people would have bought-in to this idea that wifi should be used to bring people closer together. I always saw ISF as a far-out experiment. It’s neat to see it turn into something else.

We had the ISF AGM on sunday. I didn’t put myself forward for the board this time. They’re are great people on the board and exciting times ahead for ISF. I’m excited to be part of it - but in a different role now. I’m less important in many ways and that’s wonderful - for me, but more importantly for ISF. It’s wonderful to know that ISF doesn’t need me to survive and to thrive.

Link to article.

Lancement du nouvel organisme « Le Réseau Sans Fil de la Montérégie »

C’est devant un groupe d’une quarantaine d’invités du monde municipal et communautaire que Raymond Quintal, président du Réseau Internet de Brossard, a officiellement lancé la semaine dernière le nouvel organisme à but non lucratif Montérégie Sans Fil.

Cet organisme aura pour mission de fournir aux utilisateurs d’ordinateurs portables munis d’une connexion sans fil (WiFi) un accès Internet gratuit dans les commerces et les lieux publics de la Montérégie.

Selon M. Quintal, la technologie de points d’accès WiFi peut être utilisée dans le but d’amener les gens à entrer en contact entre eux, à contribuer entre autre à briser l’isolement des personnes et à favoriser l’émergence de nouvelles communautés.

Ainsi, Montérégie Sans Fil entend utiliser ses points d’accès pour promouvoir l’interaction entre ses usagers, présenter des oeuvres artistiques originales utilisant des médiums inusités et enfin fournir de l’information qui soit pertinente localement.

Cette offre de services rejoint celles déjà fournies par plusieurs organisations au Québec telles « Île sans fil » à Montréal, « ZAP Québec » à Québec, « OG WiFi » à Ottawa-Gatineau et « Centre du Québec » à Drummondville.

Présentement trois points d’accès WiFi sont déjà opérationnels, soit le Centre communautaire George-Henri Brossard situé au 3205, boul. Rome à Brossard, le Centre communautaire Nathalie Croteau, au 2210, rue André à Brossard et la Maison Le Réveil
au 930, rue St-Jacques à Longueuil.

L’objectif est d’ajouter une vingtaine de nouveaux sites en 2007, surtout dans les cafés, les centres d’achats, les restaurants, les « hôtels de ville », les bibliothèques, les parcs, les centres pour personnes âgées, etc.

Grâce à l’équipement fourni par chaque établissement hébergeant un site d’accès WiFi et à l’expertise de l’équipe de Montérégie Sans Fil, il suffit désormais aux étudiants, aux intervenants sociaux, aux retraités, aux touristes, etc. d’avoir un ordinateur, ou tout autre appareil muni d’une connexion sans fil (WiFi), pour se brancher à Internet.

Les usagers doivent s’inscrire pour accéder au service et assurer la sécurité et l’intégrité du réseau. L’inscription étant gratuite elle peut être faite au moment de la première connexion ou en visitant le site web www.monteregiesansfil.org.

My American colleague Joshua Breitbart has a summary of the International CWN Summit written up in some gov magazine.

Sure he talked about the amazing projects from Croatia, Latin America, and the exciting developments in the US muni area. But he started off the article by talking about ISF’s exploits:

“Compared to the more professional attendees of other wireless conferences like MuniWireless and W2i, the people at the International Summit for Community Wireless Networks are a ragtag bunch. They do things like walk up to a McDonald’s drive-thru window at 2:30 in the morning impersonating a car in the hopes of scoring some late-night food.

But its folks like this that invented wireless networking and, judging by the Summit attendance, they have spread their innovation to every corner of the globe. Their gusto was on clear display at the three-day affair in Columbia, Maryland, May 18-20, but so was a sense that big challenges are on the horizon.”

Who led the charge to McDonalds after the bar when everyone else started walking back to the hotel? That’s right. ISF-ers. And I think it was our idea to trick the McDonalds’ intelligence system by pretending to be a car. Conception - 10. Execution - 2. Or vice versa.