BC Wireless is a non-profit volunteer effort. We all work to promote and build Community Networks using Wireless technology. You can read more about our organization from the About Us page.
Throughout the years we've observed that there's a lot of interest (and demand!) for community wireless networking, but getting people together to make it happen has proven to be a challenge. We've setup a volunteer system to help people find other interested folks based on their interests and geo-graphical location.
Here's a general idea of how it works:
- Jane creates herself a BC Wireless account and then proceeds to fill out the volunteer survey.
A bunch of other volunteers receive her survey, look it over and "approve it". 1
Jane's application is processed by a CommunityChampion, an Email is sent to her indicating that all is well and she should fill out the roles form.
- Jane goes to the roles form, and specifies what areas of interest she has.
- Roles are meant to act as a filter for other people to know what Jane is interested in doing. eg: She might be interested in writing Software, but not interested in climbing a 200 foot tower.
Then..
Maybe Jane needs some help with a network in her area. She can go into the people finder to locate people near her and with certain interests. She finds Joe who is interested in climbing 200 feet towers, she mails him, they setup a network.
- A few months later Mary comes along and wants to setup a wireless network. She lives in the same town as Jane. Mary hits the people finder, sees that Jane is interested in doing stuff, they make contact and Mary finds out Jane and Joe already have a network. Mary links in, life is good.
A year later Telus has yet-another backbone failure and the town is cut off from the Internet. Joe and Mary decide they need to find another way to get connectivity into their area. They load up RadioMobile and figure out where they can shoot a wireless signal to get connectivity from. They find 2 possible towns 10 and 20 KM away. Once again they visit the people finder, search for people in those two towns and make contact. As it turns out each town has connectivity from Navigata, and a local WISP. They setup point to point links with both towns creating a redundant network between their communities, and everyone is double plus happy.
Making contact with other interested people is the primary goal of the volunteer system. Volunteers also have access to other tools, like the TAFL grokker, forums, network tools and various other things we have yet to code, like the node map.
So what do you think?
If you want to volunteer, and work with other people you can fill out the volunteer survey from here.
1 approval really means we keep an eye out for spammers and inappropriate applications from cluttering up the system. we don't want a bunch of bogus volunteer profiles annoying people who genuinely want to help out.
