WISPiab work meeting 200806

Work meeting of the WISP-in-a-box project

The WISP-in-a-box project

Date

June 2-3-4, 2008

9-17 h

Location

Building 43 C, Hummingbird Room Meraka Institute

Pretoria

Invitation List

People and organisations with an active interest in building a concrete product that helps bringing

connectivity to underserviced, underprivileged and overcharged communities in Africa.

Invitation list:

• Steve Song / Shuttleworth
• Rael Lissoos / Dabba
• Henry Marnitz / Ndlovu Medical Centre
• Mark Summer, Inveneo (with request to forward to Ubiquiti)
• Elektra
• Mike Jensen
• Kobus Roux, Meraka
• Karel Matthee, Meraka
• Kim Gush, Meraka
• David Johnson, Meraka
• Chris Morris, Meraka
• Grant Cambridge, Meraka
• Shela Boshomane, Meraka
• George James, Meraka
• Johann Hugo, Meraka

More proposals are welcome!

Budgets for travel, if needed: Please contact us!

Contact

Sebastian

mail: sebastian@less.dk skype: sebastian_buettrich cell: (+27) (0) 79 915 32 92

Timeplan

Note: This is Draft!

We currently still have unconfirmed participants and time collisions - the timeplan is draft level and will be adjusted to people's ability to join for limited periods.

Day 1 - Monday, June 2

Morning

Creating Context

Introductions, Presentations of participants

(Short 10 mns, informal project introductions)

• WISPiab (Sebastian)
• Dabba / Orange Farm / Village Telco (Rael, Steve)
• Ndlovu Medical Centre (Henry)
• Peeble's Valley Mesh (David Johnson)
• Digital Doorway (tba)
• IP04 (it46, rowetel) (on behalf of the project: Sebastian)
• Inveneo platform (Mark Summer)
• Wireless Africa project (Chris Morris)
• Freifunk & Meraka Mesh Testbed (Elektra)
• DIY Guide & Zambia LinkNet (Karel)

• Other stakeholders?

Afternoon

Business models

Introduction: Sebastian

Business models may be classified according to a number of different dimensions -

e.g. financial/economic layer, tech/network topology layer, applications layer.

Based on the experience of the participants and projects, business models should be reviewed with the goal of reaching a downselection of models that should be implemented/supported in the first iteration of the WISPiab project.

see e.g.

http://wirelessafrica.meraka.org.za/wiki/index.php/WISPiab_specifications#Business_Models_.2F_Use_cases for a rough overview of topology implications.

In particular:

• Voice services - The Village Telco
• "Line sharing" - sharing internet access between
• Telecentre / Internet Cafe

Cooperations and Resources

There is significant overlap between projects on the technology layer. All projects are subscribing to free software models (GPL / CC, etc).

We are operating against a backdrop of

• challenged (human) resource situation
• brain drain / skills exodus
• wanting to build local (i.e. african? ... southern african? .... south african?) capacity

Cooperation between projects seems appropriate and possible.

The goal is to conclude this meeting with a clear picture of modes of cooperation.

Advisory Group

We wish to form an advisory group / peer group, including the invitees of this meeting, but not limited to these.

Day 2 - Tuesday, June 3

Morning

Technical Requirements / Specifications - detail level

Examples of concrete detail issues:

• Authentication - where and how
• Billing in mesh networks
• VoIP in mesh networks

Afternoon

Status and planning of implementations

• WISPiab status and work plan
• Dabba / Village Telco work sprint, June 16-20
  • Can we prepare and support that workshop

Day 3 - Wednesday, June 4

Morning

Productification / Dissemination / Rollout strategies

• Strategies for the productification of software packages
  • Sourceforge platform plans (Steve?)
  • Ubuntu / UCK (Sebastian, Mark, Elektra)
• Rollout capacity

Afternoon

Next steps

• Dabba Worksprint
• WISPiab work plan
• Digital Doorway work
• Wireless Africa, June meeting

etc