Wireless Toronto

Board Meeting June 19 2007

• Harbourfront update - there will be an official launch the week of July 16th - WT can have a presence and table there - details to be worked out.
• financial update
• No report at this time - financial statements have begun to posted on the private wiki (thanks Gabe) but we do have a positive account balance - big issue is membership renewal and any unbilled recent members (see below).
• InSite Toronto? - video art project - working with InSite on a grant application - up to 18 locations depending on funds - Gabe is the lead on this. Toronto Arts Council and Ontario Arts Council are being approached.
• hacknight report
• potential venues: IDeal, Bar Mercurio, ++? no one has followed up yet - it was thought that IDeal might not be a good fit - there is a lot of spill over there and they don't appear to have a lot of money.
  • Carrot Common – ethernet has been installed from Evan's office (basement) to the Aroo storefront.
    • coordinating with Evan and store owner to follow-up with PoE installation - this is moving forward and should be ready to go soon.
• www.city-surf.ca collaboration - this is an infant business venture - walking tours of the city done by Ali that are scripted tours available as pod casts (e.g. West Queen West artwalk sponsored by the Drake Hotel) - if a given tour goes by a WT hotspot he will mention it and it can also be a source for location specific content.
• Collection X? - this is a new website, Toronto-based, a more Web 2.0 Terminus 1525 - it is more about community art, and a bit fo a Flcikr vibe - created thru the AGO - Arts Access. The AGO contacts wondered if WT wanted to collaborate on Nuit Blanche - the proposal was not interesting or a good fit - Gabe is going to meet in the next two weeks to talk about a more suitable form of collaboration with Collection X.
• What was the problem at Rustic? - Jason went unplugged and plugged it in and voila - fixed. Jason noted Cafe Taste goes up and down, SLM has been up and down, Lettieri was down, and SPIN - Harbourfront went down for 30 minutes - at teh time of the meeting only 29 of 35 deployed hotspots were up. Reports of Dufferin Grove being 'choppy'. Gabe's visiting Dufferin Grove, SLM tomorrow.
• Help with support calls & emails - how do we improve this? Gabe is the only subscriber to the support e-mail list but if we expand we need a trouble ticket system. Q - what are the volumes? It varies (on a good week it might be 2 and and in a bad week 15) and mostly it's “I cannot connect”. Let's have an FAQ on the portal page and some instruction in the outgoing message of the support voicemail.
• Adopt-a-venue & uptime - lot of hotspots down right now - what is to be done? Volunteers attending to basic issues (like turn the router on/off) at far-flung venues is not interesting nor is it going to be more interesting. So we need to think about two problems occaisonal issues or frequent problems. We need to build a histogram/map of downtime and address nodes that are most problematic and also gives patterns – WiFiDog does not do this. Swap out bad routers.
• membership renewals - OOPS we're a bit late getting going on this but we are moving forward ASAP - Edward & Gabe shall make this so.
• DGP 2nd router - to cover south end of park for which we have no further contractual obligation but nice to do and fun for anyone interested in mesh (Nick?). Can we put an attena at the North end and cover the park that way. Good OMNI now but signal goes out to rink and soccer field (with a second attena we need to make a visible installation and there is an issue with that - also cost issues). Cheaper to set up repeater. Someone needs to lead this. So far there is no upsurge of demand for this at the park.
• netneutrality.ca banner - (maybe)
• portal page work - Hack Night in two weeks - July 3 - and it will focus on portal page
• wifidog update: profiles, recent/frequent users, more stats - auth server updates and profiles are now active and in use in Montreal. Laika website has an exmaple. Supports pics, links, blurbs. In users box people on line, recent, and most active users at that hot spot (that feature was added by Dana at NYC Wireless). Gabe wants to upate auth server to put this in there and Jason is willing to help - before Hack Night. New volunteer Zoltan might be interested. Issues with WiFiDog need to be worked on like the Flickr box, Upcoming, . . . .
• YDS renewal/expansion - Sponsorship is coming up for renewal July 1st - Gabe has advised Patrick at YDS re costs to continue and costs for expanding coverage and adding a second router. No reply from him yet. The DSL Line is in our name and are we prepared to front this - NO. They are currently advertising free WiFi with prominent WT logo (95 people have connect 191 times at YDS so far this month) at the square now.
• SLM install - Constraints time frame Nick & Wes had taken this on but both of them are not available when SLM is availble to have this work done. Edward has spent about 8 hours of real time trying to coordinate alternate times. And this pointless. Both Gabe and Edward have more time now. Next Monday June 25th. OK Yes. Install 5th router and possibly do North Market. Let's try mesh over Front Street first, if that fails we will try either WiMax or 2nd DSL Line. We will get paid when the work is done.
• Distillery - follow-up have heard nothing back - they were concerned with legal liability issues - while we know there are none we did successfully overcome this objection at Harbourfront. Edward is going to follow-up to assess if there is real interest. Venue Agreement. Terms of Use. Send them. + screen caps of SLM, YDS, DGP portals. Edward to do this.

• Alley Jaunt - Wireless Toronto was accepted! Yeah! Detials of the application are on the wiki. They are doing a catalogue/program and if we want to be in it we have to submit soon. Keep it vague in terms of our info for this to keep our approach flexible. August 11th and 12th + plus set-up set-up on the 10th. Gabe: “who is the creative director?” And assign components to individuals.

• Bloocourt Village BIA is interested their Board has approved interest - Gabe will provide a quote on a subsidized hotspot model not a muni model - the BIA is acting is the sponsor and coordinator of the provision wifi among member businesses. Concord Cafe is a Bloorcourt BIA member.

* Parkdale BIA has not yet responded re moving forward with some model of BIA wifi - Jason will follow-up. A meeting is required. Gabe does not think a WiFi mesh model is feasible. Assuming siting, power, but still hardware alone $175 per outdoor router and two per pole ($400 per pole) OR 1 per pole ($200 per pole) and Parkdale is a big BIA - to cover the whole thing 50 poles that would be $10,000 to $20,000 in hardware, no net access, no labour, no DSL. We would be trying to be something beyond what we are. We would have to have staff. Maintaining this would be beyond our means. Again do the hotspot model for any business in the BIA to have sponsored by the BIA.