Logistics: Date: Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 Times: 6pm - 8pm Location: GAFFTA, 998 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94131 Registration: http://sf-wifi-symposium.eventbrite.com/   Overview: 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(@GAFFTA) in partnership with San Francisco Department of... [read more]

Logistics: Date: Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 Times: 6pm - 8pm Location: GAFFTA, 998 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94131 Registration: http://sf-wifi-symposium.eventbrite.com/   Overview: 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(@GAFFTA) 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. Keynote Speaker: As a Technical Lead for the Open Technology Initiative at New America Foundation, Joshua King draws on his years of experience performing technology work at non-profit organizations to develop and implement free and open source software and hardware, keep abreast of emerging technologies and related initiatives throughout the world, evaluate and interpret a wide range of published information on future trends for telecommunications and media, and support the research infrastructure of an open Internet. Before joining New America, Mr. King was a Systems Engineer for OJC Technologies. He served as an Americorps VISTA Leader and was an engineer and board member for both the CUWiN Foundation and Acorn Active Media Foundation. Mr. King volunteered as a lead technology worker within the Indymedia movement in Central Illinois.