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 Buettrich)
Dabba / Orange Farm / Village Telco (Rael Lissoos)
Ndlovu Medical Centre (Henry Marnitz)
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, B.a.t.m.a.n. & Meraka Mesh Testbed (Elektra)
DIY Guide & Zambia LinkNet (Karel Matthee)

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

Hardware aspects

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