You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. No truer words ever said. But a close second, you don’t know what you don’t know. Unknown unknowns. Blind spots in your world of information. In our fast-paced world, where attention and time is money, it can be hard to get information to the masses without the help of professionals.
In my case, I was spending time and energy creating a system to share, and I wanted to share it. I’m not much of a door-to-door salesman, even when what I’m selling is free. If I have to beg you, its not for you. Better off to have interested people come your way. People that want you.
NYC Mesh has public access points on every router across the network. For every red dot on the map, that’s a spot where you can get free open Wi-Fi. No password, no captive portal, no sign up, no data mining, no tracking. Just some nice volunteer geeks who want to help others in the afternoon. This performs some degree of advertising on its own. What is this -NYC Mesh Community WiFi- SSID and why is it all over the city?
A surprising number of people, myself included (for years), never get past that point, and assume it’s something to do with the city. This is more akin to Link NYC, a heavily city funded for profit business, that was gifted phone booth footprints in exchange for advertising screens. Those have massive advertising campaigns behind them, besides the body sized screens they directly advertise from. Easy.
For NYC Mesh, a volunteer run non-profit, not the same. We have to be scrappy, more DIY, and picky about how we leverage funds and volunteer labor. I figured some local targeted spaces would be helpful in building out the neighborhood. Places like public parks, large outdoor patios, and places where people co-work from outdoors in the summer months. You need Wi-Fi to get online, and here’s an open network waiting to be used. But how do you get past that stage, and connect to learn what this is all about?
I decided to make a graphic, so when someone is interested, it gives them all the answers. This can be printed, laminated, and placed at these spaces, where we have profound public access points, creating passive outreach. I’m not sure if this had an effect, but I can say the last two years since deployed, the area has grown in density significantly. I’d like to think this helped.
