[wsfii-discuss] call for organising volunteers: interfaces to wireless location portals

Mon Aug 29 16:31:19 UTC 2005

dear Mike,
On Mon, Aug 29, 2005 at 11:51:28AM -0400, Michael Lenczner wrote:
> I don't know if I mentioned anything about this too you yet, but I
> don't think anyone has done a very good job with the design and UI of
> portal pages.  The idea of __how the web should look and what it
> should do__ when I connect from a specific location.

I think this is a VERY good idea. The Thursday session of the Open
Geodata workshops is planned to focus on the data infrastructure
needed for building open local information services:
http://okfn.org/wsfii/wiki/OpenGeodata  

The focus here is on the back-end rather than the front-end, though. 
Friday 30th the geodata session will be much more 'hardcore', oriented
towards practical standards and APIs for data creation and exchange.

So the Friday could be an ideal day to have a design/UI session on
location portals, attention-focusing attendees from ilesansfil.org , 
freifunk.net , nycwireless.net and wirelesslondon.info  

I made a quick start on an outline. I'd like to call for volunteers  
to help 'bottom-line' this activity, expand this outline and 
cat-herd contributors. http://okfn.org/wsfii/wiki/LocationPortals 

> Maya and Benoit have worked on that for us in ISF.  Maya is moving to
> london now and will be attending the conference.  If there are people
> that you know of who will be attending and who have worked on this
> problem, i think it would be worthwhile to pay some attention to this
> problem and see if we can get things moving in the right direction.

Other suggestions in this area:

- Dana Spiegel suggested a documentation sprint on FreiFunk and
  WifiDog , to help others setup and contribute in the future.
- Saul held a 'Friday Freifunk Wrt Yurt Flashfest' a couple of weeks
  ago. http://wirelesslondon.info/WirelessLondonWorkshops
  I don't know if Mute's yurt ever moves from its home in Whitechapel.
  'Flashing WRTs in a Yurt' is such fun to say, though.

-jo