The Meeting

Our first big community meeting in a year happened yesterday morning. Many folks from around the island showed up to hear us give a "state of the network" report, and discuss the mid-term goals and needs for the project. They asked good questions, made good comments, and generally showed a lot of enthusiasm and interest in the advancement of the network.

Those goals are:

1. Straighten out our financial situation, and make sure it stays that way. Ideally, this would be the responsibility of some trustworthy person, who also has some responsibility for strategic development of the project-as-business.


2. Train a number (3+) of technically-adept folks who are geographically dispersed about the island to do new installations, maintenance, and support. This implies setting up at least one school and Sí a La Vida, which will be done as part of the training.


3. Expanding the network, making the service more reliable, and adding clients to reduce the financial burden of (and severe dependence on) our present commercial clients. A new tower, successfully installed in Sinacapa with a wireless link to the mainland, should bring us a long way in this direction.

Several of these items require, or don't make sense without, more money than we currently have, being Very Little. Also, we can't expand the network or add new clients without more antennas. The last ones we sent down were confiscated by customs, and there don't seem to be any for sale in country.

Now, we have found potential solutions to both of those problems. We're going to try to bring the antennas in through the CDC coop. And I have a very little time to get a proposal together for Cooperación Britanica, which may be very interested in a network that puts them in better contact with the many small organizations they work with.

We are on the brink of the next major phase of the project, when things will pick up dramatically. The next 6-10 months are absolutely critical. It's an exciting time!