I can report back from quite a succesful summit put together by our very own Sascha Meinrath of CUWiN. This was the second such summit convened by Sascha. I dutifully served as requested on two panel sessions that we gladly opened to a general discussion in short order. I spoke more from a frame of community networking than anything else, as my time is mostly spent considering these issue in Illinois context, and organizing with others in Illinois to promote community networking principles and dialogue around them. I was pleased to have others in the community networking and technology sectors present to deepen the points I was most committed to, especially the Ohio gang: Bill Callahan and Angela Stuber. As my experience at the conference was fairly narrow I'd rather open it up to the several other AFCN folk to offer their comments, and for Sascha to summarize his own summit, along with links and references to how you can partake of the proceedings after the fact….

But I will offer this as something substantive for us to consider: 18 months ago, at the first summit, the questions of Muni-networks of wireles or wireline flavors weren't on the minds of the media, or most cities… at this weekend's summit it was asked, as it's been raining RFPs for some time now, and on the policy front we, along with allies, having defended certain local rights in many states - such as the freedom of municipalities to deploy networks (though not everywhere)… what happens if the networks we get aren't the networks we want?

That is, what if what is delivered out of an RFP process in your town results in something that doesn’t take into account the principles and values of community networking as elements of it's basic design?

Some in the community wireless crowd admitted being quite amazed at the rapid rise of the Muni Networks question across the country and globally. There is a sense that this phenomenon has in some respects eclipsed the community wireless networking movement, and more than that, it increases the explanatory burden… what is muniwireless? What is community wireless? How are they different? Why one versus the other? In what ways canthey be related or can the one inform the other? This contrast of muni-community need not be limited to wireless arena, but has applicability to deployment of network infrastructure generally, and more deeply, the technologies that constitute an info-structure and basis of local content.

I leave this an open topic… of relevance to all of us on list.

I'll close by saying that Harold Feld's closing plenary was quite moving…. And offer my regrets at not having been able to attend the opening where Mark Cooper and others spoke…

I await comments from others that attended, and anyone who has thoughts on the Muni/Community dimensions.

Sascha's note:

We're pulling together documentation -- at http://www.cuwireless.net/summit. My own experiences during the Summit were that it was a HUGE success for networking people, swapping useful info and resources, and
(most importantly) laying the groundwork for major follow-up initiatives coming out of the Summit.